Bullet-hell arcade shooters have been popular lately, with hit titles like Vampire Survivors and Ball x Pit bringing more players to the genre. While both of those are great titles, I wonder if Viscera would get more recognition if it had a bigger marketing splash.
Viscera is a top-down bullet hell action game where the goal is simple: shoot as many monsters as possible, and don’t stop moving. There’s no roguelike element here. If you die, that’s it. Reload the level once again, and there are no permanent upgrades to help you. Every round starts and ends with an online leaderboard flashing on the screen, revealing just how bad you are at the game. It’s addictive, but lacks polish and a mechanical depth I’ve come to expect in modern games, even if they’re emulating the feel of arcade machines.
Right from the start, Viscera lets you know that it’s not here to waste your time. There is no settings menu. There are no cutscenes. You hit play, and you’re dropped in the middle of a futuristic battlefield crawling with creepy aliens. The directive is clear: shoot the hell out of them, or die. As you mow down these insectoids, power-ups appear, along with portals and occasional area-of-attack boosts.
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Okay, there is an illusion of permanent progression: new weapons are unlocked as you rack up the high score. You don’t get to choose these weapons directly, as they’ll only appear after picking up power-ups. Besides that, get ready to spend a lot of time on the first level, as each one requires achieving a certain rank before unlocking the next stage. You’re not even given the privilege of dressing up the main character for entertainment value.
For a game about big explosions and carnage on screen, the muddy art style doesn’t help at all. There are splashes of colour here and there, but most of the screen is covered in tones of brown and yellow. At times, I could barely make out where my tiny protagonist was in a sea of monsters.
Performance is also not much to write home about. On a rig with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super and a Ryzen 7 5700X3D, the game tumbles to the mid-50s during heavy load. I didn’t even bother trying it out on the Steam Deck, which can usually handle recent AAA games without too much fiddling.
Perhaps the biggest blunder of Viscera is its price. For $19.99/INR 880, you can do far better, and not just in the same genre.
Verdict
In an age of strong, innovative bullet-hell-and-heaven shooters, Viscera fumbles to establish its identity.
REVIEW COPY PROVIDED BY GAME.PRESS.
