The second episode of a short series on games I discovered at WASD 2023.

Anger Foot

I guess I was expecting some silly fighting game when I sat down in front on Anger Foot. The goons had alligator heads?

But actually it was a hyper-frenetic first-person Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games, 2012) with a thumping beat that doesn’t let up and squeals to a frenzy when it is killing time. In fact, even writing about it now has got me pumped again. I just downloaded the Steam demo and had another go.

There are so many strange touches, like the obsession with toilets or how every criminal dances to the throbbing beat, this is one ultra-violent vigilante game that has burrowed deep into my skull.

Anger Foot is scheduled to be released this year.

The Entropy Centre

Oh this feels very much Portal (Valve Software, 2007). An abandoned research centre, some whiz bang sci-fi gun and an eccentric AI sidekick.

Initially, The Entropy Centre shows off the power of a gun that that can reverse time by rebuilding collapsed ceilings and stairwells but that isn’t puzzling, that’s just an over-elaborate way of pressing a button and opening a door. But soon we move onto cubes on pressure plates and rewinding time so that cubes move backwards onto positions you need them – it’s effectively a way to move objects without being near them.

This involves plotting your moves in reverse and it didn’t annoy me as these rewind games normally do. One thing that did annoy me was that my cubes seem to bounce quickly when reversing a pick up/drop action, and it was very easy to miss the precise moment you need to stop the rewind to allow myself to progress to the next step. It seemed, in my time with The Entropy Centre at WASD, that the game remembered only path and not velocity, so even if I left a cube on the floor for ten seconds, rewinding wouldn’t hold the cube there for the same amount of time.

But it looked lovely and polished – definitely up for seeing more.

The Entropy Centre was released last year.

Roto Force

Roto Force is an arena shooter where you’re confined to the edge, a la Tempest, but you can leap across to the other side any time you want to. You’re always placed at the bottom of the screen so when you leap, the entire arena spins to put you back at the bottom where you belong. There are weapons upgrades. Plenty of checkpoints.

And it’s inventive, the first levels start you out in a square with curved corners – but the boss is a bird who snatches you up to its circular nest. The shape of the arena continues to change with each stage. It’s a demanding shooter, one I’m probably not equipped for, but I think I’d do better with a gamepad than the mouse and keyboard I was offered at WASD. These are facts.

Roto Force is not currently scheduled for release.

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