Remember liminal spaces? For a moment in time, they were all the rage when it came to independent horror productions across all forms of independent media alike. And why not? For the newest generation of horror fans, who have grown up with the interconnectivity of the web and a nostalgia for a life they could have never lived, locales that should ideally be filled with people lacking such a presence do give off a kind of eerie, contemplative feeling that occasionally tingles the spine. They were so pervasive that you’d even occasionally see them pop up in games that you wouldn’t even expect to see them in. Looking at you, Trepang2.
But then you find projects like ODDCORE that take the concept of these places, and instead of using their strange lack of warmth as a source of horror, they opt to use them as a fun backdrop for a frenetic, fast-paced first-person shooter with some occasionally effective horror elements.
Developed by the appropriately-named ODDCORP and published by Scarecrow Arts, ODDCORE‘s demo has debuted as part of Steam’s Next Fest, giving us an ample look at what it has to offer when it finally releases in full in the distant future.
A Race Against Time
One ordinary day turns into a neon-tinted Hell as you’re suddenly thrust from the comfort of your home into the confines of a digital hellscape. At least there’s a friendly face to guide you around. Timee, a friendly mascot shaped like a clock, breaks the dire news to you with a big smile on his face. You’re officially an ODDCORE runner now, tasked with keeping the many rooms of the ODDCORE Theme Park & Resort free from any unsightly corruption. What kind of corruption, you may ask? The kind that looks terrifying and is trying to kill you.
ODDCORE is a first-person roguelike, meaning that you’ll be playing through a randomized assortment of rooms throughout the titular facility. You’re equipped with a single weapon and gadget of your choosing, with every weapon having two distinct firing modes. The demo gives you quite a few toys to play with to get a good idea of what to expect in the full game. You start out with a basic pistol, but you can swap it out for a shotgun, SMG, or even a sword, with each weapon carrying its own distinct advantages and disadvantages. The sword, for instance, is incredibly powerful. But it’s a sword, and not a gun. You can probably see how that might be an issue.
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Opposite to that are the gadgets, which are much more plentiful and tailored to specific playstyles. You’re incredibly mobile already, but what if you could add a parkour slide to your arsenal? If you need to make space from your foes, why not blow them back with a burst of energy? Or throw a stuffed animal full of explosives to lure them away? Hell, if you want, you can even pull your foes closer to you if you want to expedite their eventual demise. Though the strict limit of one gun and one gadget was a little off-putting at first, the game does thankfully feel balanced around your incredibly minimal tool set. Your weapon can even be upgraded throughout your run as you use it.
But beyond just randomizing every room you’ll be blasting through, ODDCORE also has another thing you’ll have to keep track of, and it’s even more dangerous than the colorful monsters you’ll face. It’s the one thing nobody can outrun: time itself. Every run is capped at five minutes, demanding that you not only run like a banshee to get things done, but that you do everything in your power to keep the clock going as long as you can. Nowhere is safe. Not even the occasional trip to an upgrade store pauses the clock.
The most defining feature of ODDCORE, though, has to be its most ubiquitous element: souls. Progressing through a run gives you souls, which, on the surface, serve as your main currency. You can purchase upgrades with souls, of course, and they run the gamut of your typical percentage-based improvements. Better damage, additional health, additional jumps, tweaks for your gadgets, they’re all standard fare. But, given the game’s constantly-ticking clock, you’re also able to buy additional time for your run in 30-second increments. This is arguably their most important use, next to flat-out being able to heal yourself by shooting them at your feet. Souls are your be-all-end-all in ODDCORE. Your management of them will ultimately decide the fate of your many, many runs.
And in these runs, you’ll come across plenty of different challenges to tackle. Aside from the usual “kill all enemies to proceed” objective, sometimes you’ll have to do something completely off-color in order to successfully move forward. One particular room I stumbled across a handful of times funneled you into a tight corridor with a monstrous face quickly trailing behind you, demanding that you sprint to the exit before it catches up. Another needed me to take control of specific points on the map instead of just killing everything in sight, and another needed me to collect some adorable walking sunflowers before killing everything. It’s nice, and since just about every room barely lasts more than 30 seconds once you know what you’re doing, the dopamine stream you get is pretty constant and consistent.
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As for actually playing ODDCORE? There’s not too much to say. Your range of motion is pretty standard for fast-paced shooters, and the gunplay mostly amounts to just plinking away at your foes until you need to reload or recharge your alternate attack. The game’s visuals certainly elevate things. The occasional trip into a place you’re not supposed to be in certainly strikes a chord of fear every now and then, some of the game’s more unsettling enemy designs did startle me quite a bit, and the funky, chunky bits of colorful amusements and low-poly models in-between really give ODDCORE some enjoyable personality. I even enjoyed the small arcade you can visit in between runs, where you can use tokens gained from your runs to play traditional arcade games of all kinds. There’s even a coin pusher, which you better believe I dumped all of my earnings into.
Should You Play ODDCORE?
ODDCORE scratched an unexpected itch for me. I’m not a huge fan of games like this, yet the addition of a form of resource management — one that serves multiple functions, even — along with the looming presence of a countdown timer really won me over here. Add to that the irreverent downtime between runs and the contrast between its poppy atmosphere and flashy horror elements, and you have a shooter that grabbed me for far longer than I ever would’ve originally thought.
Does that mean you should try ODDCORE yourself? It’ll depend on what you’re looking for. It’s not the most revolutionary shooter I’ve ever played, but it does what it does well enough with just enough originality throughout to make for a cohesive and addictive experience. Will that extend beyond the game’s demo into its full release? Well, I’m not a psychic. But I’d like to think that it will. What’s here in the demo is good, and I can only imagine that even more content will make an already strong base game even more enjoyable.
You can check out ODDCORE for yourself on its accompanying Steam page.
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