Immediately upon loading Chop Goblins, the latest game from Dusk developer David Szymanski, you’re greeted with title screen music that sounds like a dark carnival crossed with a Saturday morning cartoon, perfectly setting the stage for the wackiness you’re about to experience. Over the next five levels, you’ll chase the titular creatures as they cause mischief throughout the time stream, which is exactly as much of a delight as it sounds. Szymanski pitches this game as a microshooter, meant to be played in a single sitting, which is a surprisingly refreshing pitch in a market that seems to favor 50 hour open-world epics.
The story in the game is all delivered via level intro screens, but they go a long way in establishing exactly what you’re getting into. You’re told that you broke into a museum and opened a dusty old box in the basement and inadvertently released the Chop Goblins, who immediately get ahold of a time traveling artifact and start wreaking havoc. While it seems like it could be just a small background element, this whimsical story colors every aspect of the game, from weapons to levels to one of the most fun depictions of Dracula I’ve ever run across. The five levels range from city streets to gothic castles to ancient Greece, packing a lot of variety into the short runtime.
While five doesn’t sound like a lot of levels, each of them is created with a great deal of care. Not only are they lovingly rendered in elegantly low-fi Quake-style graphics, which Szymanski has used for his other games, they are also densely packed with hidden areas and multiple routes to progress through. Each level is littered with Chop Coins that give the player points, and scouring the area to find as many as possible will help you climb the game’s built-in leaderboards. There were a few times that I got turned around in some of the more maze-like sections, but for the most part everything in the world is well signposted so you always know where you’re going and where possible secrets might be hidden. It should be noted that the levels don’t have checkpoints within them, but they’re each brief enough that it’s not frustrating to have to start over upon dying.
Chop Goblins is a shooter, so all the good level design in the world would be meaningless if the shooting doesn’t work, and I’m happy to say that it feels snappy and satisfying. There are only five weapons in the game, but they each fulfill their own purpose and have great feedback to them. Since the game takes place in various time periods, the weapons vary wildly, from a single shot flintlock pistol to a magic wand to the epic rapid-fire stake gun. Szymanski also smartly limits the amount of ammo you can hold for each weapon, forcing you to swap weapons frequently and hunt for ammo to stay afloat. Juggling weapons is super satisfying. There’s nothing like taking a long range pistol shot to blow up a gas can near a group of goblins, then switching to an automatic shotgun to mow down the survivors as they descend on you.
The Chop Goblins themselves are also well crafted and bring the whole package together. Their huge heads and exaggerated grin are immediately iconic, and each of the variants are visually distinct enough that you can read their behavior at a glance to prioritize your targets. They don’t have complicated behaviors or use any sort of pack tactics, but there’s still enough moment to moment choices to be made in a firefight when you’re balancing melee vs ranged enemies.
Their voice lines are also pitch perfect, making every battle a perfect combination of mechanical tension and laugh out loud humor.
Szymanski is having a hell of a year. Not only did he release Iron Lung, a short-form exercise in tension, in March, he also worked on the excellent immersive sim Gloomwood, which released in Early Access in September. With Chop Goblins, Szymanski has officially gone three for three in 2022. Chop Goblins is a delightfully whimsical arcade-like experience that’s a perfect time killer. The extra difficulty modes, competitive leaderboards, and hour runtime gives you plenty of reasons to come back.
Like a well-worn VHS copy of a favorite late night B-movie, Chop Goblins is something I’ll return to anytime I need a quick experience that puts a smile on my face.
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