From the era of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, the modest first-person shooter has branched out into countless, intricate directions. The genre has broadened in both narrative and gameplay to cover everything from vast sci-fi epics to dense objectivist parables to multiplayer-focused military free-for-alls and almost everything in between.
Sometimes, though, you just want a reason to blast a bunch of strange little creatures in odd, cramped spaces.
Credit:
Oddcorp
Keep your distance… they will bite.
Credit:
Oddcorp
For those moments, there’s Oddcore, an Early Access roguelike boomer shooter that deliberately contrasts with the grand, self-important shooters out there. Its mix of frantic, fast-paced combat, semi-randomized encounters, and a well-tuned risk/reward upgrade loop makes it an ideal pick-up-and-play title — one I keep finding hard to put down between quick runs even as I write this.
Hang on for one more stage
Oddcore opens with a zany, stripped-down story about being stuck inside an unfinished theme-park resort whose “infinite room generator” has gone haywire. After a brief tutorial, that setup mostly acts as a pretext to toss you into a series of unsettling liminal rooms that feel like a corrupted PlayStation 1 disc. Each low-res, polygonal chamber slowly fills with malformed black-and-white fiends, most charging at you with the kind of zeal reminiscent of Serious Sam, nipping at your ankles or drifting toward you while firing sluggish pink projectiles.
Credit:
Oddcorp
No, this isn’t a shot from some forgotten PS1 title.
Credit:
Oddcorp
This isn’t the sort of shooter where you hunker behind cover and pop out for a single shot when it’s safe. More often than not, each variant arena is a relatively open field where foes will swarm from every direction. You’ll spend most of your time backing up and strafing to dodge closing enemies while constantly checking over your shoulder to make sure no new threats have spawned behind you.
Oh — and did I mention all of this runs against a strict five-minute clock that keeps counting down as you play? To push an Oddcore run beyond that limit, you press a button on your weapon to open a portal to a bizarre shop dimension, where you can trade the souls of fallen enemies for extra time. Those souls can also be used to buy slowly machine-randomized bundles of upgrades to health, firing speed, and helper gadgets, or hoarded to trigger a quick healing burst during a firefight.
