This is a freeware game that I’ve been meaning to mention for a while. It’s not very polished or professional, nor does it have anywhere near universal appeal, but after stumbling upon it during a random trawl of GameJolt I found myself enjoying it the whole way through in a B-movie sorta way. RTD: Evil is a horror-themed platform shooter inspired very heavily by Abuse, with standard FPS controls letting you run, jump and shoot freely on a 2D plane. It’s also based on a particularly terribly drawn furry splatter-horror webcomic. If you haven’t run screaming for the hills, hit the break for the trailer, accompanied by some of the shockingly cool soundtrack.

The backstory origins thankfully have little to no bearing on the game, other than the fact that you’ve got animal-people as the main cast, and the world is overrun by superpowered (fast, tough, clawed, mutated) zombies known as Reworks. In fact, the art is much better than the comic the game is based on, although still not great by any means. In spite of it’s failings, it ended up being more than the sum of it’s parts, at least for me. There’s lots of monsters to explode, a good range of guns to play with, and even a couple of quite memorable boss encounters, all tied together by a really good soundtrack, and the game doesn’t outstay its welcome at around 2-3 hours long.

The premise is pretty simple; the world has a bit of a zombie problem, and our protagonist, Leigh, has gone scavenging in the ruins of a secretive research firm in search of supplies and/or information. With a bit of guidance from Davis (your hacker buddy/man on the outside) nothing could possibly go wrong! Right? As always, the answer is ‘zombies’. Ammo and portable adrenaline-based health packs are doled out sparingly through the story, although attempting to conserve your resources too much will likely get you killed, especially as the game showers you in resources before major encounters, and provides you with more bullets than health. Shoot first, shoot hard and always aim for the head. You know the drill.

Oh, and a small spoiler warning: The game has a false ending that can lead to the story ending prematurely. You don’t have to do anything too special to avoid it. Just keep your hands off the controls after the fight in the screenshot directly above.

[Rework The Dead: Evil]

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This article’s game is Dungeons of Dredmor for the PC (code is redeemable on Steam), by Gaslamp Games!

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