Immortal Redneck is a first person shooter that has the titular character, a mummified redneck with a penchant for glib one-liners, shooting and cursing his way through three progressively more difficult pyramids filled with ancient Egyptian monsters. It may bear resemblance to games like Quake and Serious Sam at first, but at its core is a set of systems taken wholesale from roguelite action titles like The Binding of Isaac and Rogue Legacy. The game hosts a whole range of features familiar to anyone who’s played a roguelite in the last few years; procedural generation, classes, skills, permadeath and a literal upgrade tree.
The game plays very much like a modern take on it’s 90’s influences. Character movement is fast and there is a mix of enemies that force you to keep it that way. From static ranged attackers who fire projectiles to faster melee based enemies that chase you out of cover. The designs of the enemies are very readable and their behaviours are predictable, which makes the early part of the game deceptively easy. When enemy variety is upped, however, you understand that learning the way the enemies work together and which of them to focus on is important to each encounter.
Enemies regularly drop health, ammo and money which will eventually despawn; this helps to encourage you out of cover and comes right out of the 90s shooter playbook. Guns drop from downed monsters too and there are about 30 to choose from with each having it’s own strengths and weaknesses. Enemies might even drop a powerful game modifier presented in the form of a papyrus scroll. The effects of these scrolls range from simple stat boosts to more strategy affecting abilities like immunity to arena traps, damage reflection or the chance to turn enemies into chickens. Oh, and some of these scrolls can be rather less helpful. I was unlucky enough to pick up a scroll that removed all of my previously collected upgrades just before a boss fight. Naturally, you can’t tell what a scroll will do until you pick it up which creates the familiar risk/reward gambit. If you’ve grabbed a couple of useful power ups, you probably won’t want to risk losing them.
The layout of the three pyramids is randomly generated from a large pool of hand crafted rooms and there are more than enough of them that the game never feels samey. There’s a generous variety of design in each room too and a surprising amount of vertical space in which to explore and, well, shoot at stuff. You’re able to climb up ledges from the get go and can later upgrade the amount of jumps you can use. There are occasional secrets hidden in the larger spaces and I suspect there’s a lot to learn in Immortal Redneck for anyone looking for a title they’ll keep going back to.
As you make your way up each pyramid the floors become smaller and smaller, encouraging as much exploration as you can manage as early as possible so you’re better prepared for the more difficult fights towards the top. There are usually a couple of exit rooms on the larger floors and occasionally you will find a reward room with one or more treasure chests in it. These can be freebies but there are a few presented as little challenges. In these rooms enemies don’t spawn and instead you’re tasked with getting through a gauntlet of jumping puzzles and traps without taking damage. It’s a nice way to break up the otherwise relentless pace of high energy gunplay, I like to call this gameplay punctuation. By that measure, a full stop might come in the place of boss fights. There are two in each pyramid, one at the halfway point and another at the top. Each boss will require a different strategy to defeat and they’re sufficiently difficult enough that they become choke points for progression.
When you die in Immortal Redneck, your current run is over and you’re deposited back to the start with all of the money you’ve collected. You can spend this money on an upgrade tree, I really do love that it’s an actual tree, ripped directly from Rogue Legacy. Here you can boost statistics like health, damage and defence and even unlock a shop and different classes.
Classes offer alternative powers and starting weapons as each class has a passive and active power which can be popped off in the middle of a fight. Again, this plays into that moment-to-moment strategy formulation that is at the heart of the roguelike genre.
Standard roguelike fare with the shop as well; you can buy a few upgrades, shortcuts further into each pyramid and the ability to revisit the pyramid set up you previously visited – albeit without gaining coins again. Once your ready to move on, you can re-enter the pyramid at the cost of your remaining coins.
I’m really enjoying my time with Immortal Redneck and about the only thing I don’t like about it is it’s main character. Whether or not he’s intentionally cast as a foul mouthed doofus is hard to read but those glib one-liners I mentioned before? They rarely hit base. The Immortal Redneck himself may well fit with characters like Duke Nukem and Serious Sam but I never had any fond feelings for those characters either. On top of that, there are a few one liners that seem to be more prone than others to activating. If I have to hear “What’s wrong McFly, chick chick chicken” one more time I may throw my computer out the window.
Changing your strategy to account for what skills you have and what enemies you’re facing is fundamental to Immortal Redneck and it’s ability to take so many design trends from roguelites and apply them to the shooter genre is it’s biggest strength. I recommend to anyone looking for their next roguelite fix. It’s a polished, fun experience and I’m going to do my best to at least beat the second pyramid.