Impale your time not your wallet

Impaler by Apptivus is a 2D arena round based first person shooter. That is it, it does nothing more than that. You begin your run and see how far you go without dying. You choose from one of six weapons, well the SMG at the start, then earn the other guns doing various tasks. To well kill everything each round. You also have your impaler, this launchers a spike from the ground. To cause massive damage. Any enemy defeated by the impaler gives you health. There are some pseudo physics puzzles, (kind of). You push an urn on to a light to get more money or health.

Impaler does exactly what is meant to, waste your time in an arena. Each round is pretty short. They vary with each weapon, the shotgun is going to give you more difficult foes than the SMG. This is good way to balance the difficulty. So cannot blast your way through early rounds with the shotgun, because the shotgun's early rounds are different then the SMG's. It is a clever way to gt you to want the other weapons to see how their rounds differ, which enemies they will throw at you.

Graphically, it is a 2D FPS like doom and duke nukem. It is good for what it is, the bad guys are varied and look cool in their pixelated form. The level is always the same, this is one of the two gripes I have against Impaler. The same room for every round takes away any atmosphere, the game wished to add. It would have been cool to see some different rooms, rather than the same one with different colour hues. I can look passed it the same way I can look passed the music glitching.

The music is really good, with it's 90s old school metal soundtrack. Giving you a nostalgic feeling. Reminding you of the moment you played doom for the first time. It is really good, when it works. I found it does glitch and sound broken after a while. The sounds of weapons and foe are good, they sound like they are meant to.

Impaler knows what it is, and does it well. Especially if you have the steam deck. I feel impaler would benefit from the portable nature. Being able to turn it on and off and not worry about your save. Great for train journeys and any time you have time to waste.

At $2.99 Impaler becomes a must buy.

More rooms and weapons would help it in a big way, at the low price, It does not feel needed. When Impaler gets released, you should pick it up for the small change it costs.

(MY COPY WAS A REVIEW COPY)