Putrification, is it putrid?

Putrefaction

How low can we go?

Tentacles, that means one thing, Lovcraftian!

Indie Developer Kazakov Oleg's Putrefaction, this is a horror fps with a rock-bottom price and minuscule filesize. We start with simple text exposition. It's 2079  The world population is falling ill to a disease that transforms them into horrible yet shootable, monsters, this disease is of course called Putrefaction. Being an enthusiastic agent of the "Brotherhood of Purity" what I can only guess is a christian abstinence group against pantless monsters. You naturally find yourself entering a particularly putrid concentrated underground complex. Being on an 11 year nofap, high on g-fuel, and blasting christian deathmetal into your airpods, you can't hear the haters, only the call of purity.

Spelunking the depths of...Putrefaction!

Putrefaction starts off a little underwhelming. Blasting away at a few basic enemy types with two different guns at first had me worried what I was in for, but further on the game became more and more spoopy. There isn't a single spoken word of dialogue in the entire game, no friendly npcs, and not much more than the few text boxes that give vague hints to the story. Towards the end of Putrefaction supernatural elements make their eerie appearance, still not offering much in the way of answers plot wise, we're purposefully kept 'in the dark' so to speak.

Haunting level architecture, music, and lighting supplement Putrefaction's skeletal plot. I found myself running and gunning through abandoned industrial corridors, sprawling caves, and some mysterious temples. Helpless to the machinations of this indie Madman, Oleg. Horror atmosphere and intrigue can make a game great, but don't get me wrong, this is not a walking simulator, bucko!

An troupe of nasties stood in the way of me and solving this malicious mystery. There's enough enemy variety for the length of the game in the form of both melee and ranged attackers. They spawn in waves until doors and energy barriers unlock. All of this is punctuated by a few multi-phase bossfights that provided the most difficulty and deaths I experienced. Enemy encounters felt more like an action game than horror.

Sadly this big nasty wall, mouth, thing only makes a limited appearance in the series

Putrefaction makes use of the number keys with an array of guns. Starting with a humble fire ax and automatic rifle, I quickly amassed an armory fit for an fps hero. Bottomless magazines and quick weapon switching kept combat moving at an entertaining pace. Much to the joy of veteran gamers, Putrefaction has a right mouse-button alt fire, but no iron sights. It's all hip fire and strafing, and that's a good thing.

Bustin' makes me feel good!

Now the game does have some issues, the lack of polish you get from indie games is a given. There's no mini map, enemies sometimes spawned right behind me during combat, collision detection had me getting stuck on seemingly smooth surfaces and minuscule objects. All minor issues aside, Putrefaction is fair and balanced enough. Technically it runs smooth on my OP system with no freezing or crashes. There were no game breaking bugs to speak of.

Things wrap up pretty quick in Putrefaction, the game took 2 hours to beat, this is better than overstaying it's welcome or being poorly paced, especially if the difficulty curve were to continue and turn into a 10 hour plus affair. Getting this out of the backlog was easy enough. That's the recurring pattern, it's a short game with a small file size and very low hardware requirements. If that's your kind of thing.

Having played both Putrefaction 1 and 2, I can't say the first game is an essential purchase, but it led me down a rabbit hole, into a 'void' as it were. Stay tuned for more smoking hot commentary, and the second entry in...

...Putrefaction!