Outer Terror is a new roguelite horde shooter in which you battle through loads of enemies in order to survive.
This specific genre of roguelites has skyrocketed since the huge success of Vampire Survivors, and it has seen some truly great entries, doing very interesting things with the premise. Outer Terror succeeds in that regard, it carves out it’s own niche and really does stand out.
Let’s start at the beginning. As you boot up the game, you are presented with some creepy music, and even creepier imagery. Outer Terror aims to be a pulp horror title primarily, and it very much is. The game is just dripping with it. You then get to choose a level, which are displayed as different stories, each with their own intro and narrative.
That’s right, this game brings narratives to the roguelite horde shooter genre. Every level is set up in a similiar way. As you a plonked into the world an intro cutscene plays which describes the story. Then you are free to explore the map. You can either play it like a traditional roguelite, and just try and get stronger and kill loads of baddies, or you can dart around the map, following the story, getting quests from other survivors of whatever hairy situation you find yourself in. I found it really engaging, although not quite perfect – when you are talking to a quest giver you can still be attacked which led to my deaths a couple times.
And let’s take a second to talk about the games style. It’s mad, but I kind of love it. The character and enemies are low res 2D animated sprites. Only the front-facing sprites have been animated, meaning you will basically only ever see characters looking left or right from the front. This is placed on the backdrop of a simple 3D world, with PS1 like textures. It’s rounded off by a CRT filter and other post-processing effects (you can turn these off). It was definitely a gamble by the developer, but it really paid off. It fits the weird and scary atmosphere that the game is gunning for perfectly.
In terms of gunning for things, the action in Outer Terror is fairly straightforward. It’s by the by for this genre. You kill enemies, level up and get a choice of different upgrades, ranging from pistols, axes, mines, etc. These bullets fly all around you at the hordes attacking, either by auto aim or you pointing the analogue stick in a direction. It’s perhaps a little disappointing that given the bold statement the developers made with the design, they played it safe with the combat.
Ultimately though, Outer Terror is a great game. It’s currently only £7.99 on the PlayStation Store, and I think that price is worth it. It’s a good entry in the genre, but more than that, it’s a game with true style, one that will probably stick in your mind for a long time.
Outer Terror is now available on all modern consoles and Steam. For a different kind of action game, why not check out Yet Another Fantasy Title.
Code supplied by PR Hound on behalf of Ratalaika
