Paint the town red (use your fists)
~ Author: Jacob Bullard
Paint The Town Red (PTTR) is a first person bar brawling simulator with voxel-based enemies made by South East Games. If you haven’t heard of a voxel, to make it simple imagine every enemy is made of tons of small minecraft blocks. As you cave in their skulls with a tire iron tons of those little voxels fly away for some cartoonish destruction! Almost like a bucket of lego’s is spilling out of their heads. Along with the standard levels to brawl in there is also a rouge-like part of the game called Beneath! As a personal lover of rouge-likes I was surprised with how well they handled it and how much fun it is to play. I assumed it was a small side project but it takes the cake as my main reason to play! To prepare for the Beneath, I recommend trying the starting levels for fun and for function!
PTTR first came out back in 2015 but officially released in 2021 in its final form! Before we get to the dessert, we gotta get into the meat of this bloody cut, THE GAMEPLAY. With very tight and fast controls PTTR let’s you feel like John Wick as you cut your way through bikers, buccaneers, and much more. Each level sets you in a different location, along with transporting you to a different time. Each of these different settings are called “Scenarios” and give you access to a whole new batch of deadly devices. Each item you pick up, be it a barstool or baseball bat will eventually break, and you’ll find yourself in quite a tight spot. Unless you just… grab another. Each Scenario has weapons and objects scattered around for you to throw and thrash with that help you come out as the last man standing. The Disco Club (Club Beatdown) may have some groovy hair combs for you to gouge someone’s eyes out, and the Biker Bar of course has some nice and hefty bottles so you can give someone a contusion followed up with a new hole in the neck to breathe with! Along with weapons you also have 3 abilities to use, which charge up as you beat people to death!
The name of the game tells you exactly what your goal is, to paint the town red! Now you don’t have a PDA and a paint roller like in House Flipper, so you gotta make do. As the gore fest begins you’ll find the weapon pool draining and the standing persons dropping, which means you’re on your way to your goal! As a wise split jawed alien once said “Were it so easy”. When you’ve painted the scenario in a lovely crimson shade, you’ll finally grab the attention of the scenario’s boss. Him and his henchmen will come for you! Yes that’s right! You! You lucky dog… oh wait they’re angry. This isn’t a congratulatory pow wow this is a coma-causing throw down! Each Scenario has a special boss with different abilities that will give you a fair challenge, but after they’re dealt with you’re free to exit the Scenario and replay it with extra modifiers to up the ante! Now that we have the ground level covered, it’s time to go BENEATH.
A giant red spire has appeared on earth and you’re here to stop it. Hopefully. Choose a class, descend the elevator, and get ready to fight. The Scenarios from the main game had a colorful cast of characters but they’re all human after all. In the Beneath there’s a vast array of colorful crawlies and grumbling goons! Tons of fantasy and horror inspired monsters are available to slaughter as you descend deeper and deeper into the Beneath. Buy upgrades, find weapons, kill Shard Lords for permanent upgrades, and find out what’s really going on down here. Trying out different classes and upgrades to find out what works best for you is tons of fun, along with the extremely gratifying gameplay that lets you splatter your enemies in a cartoon fashion. Family Friendly Fun!
Along with Scenarios and the Beneath you can also hop into the Arena, a challenging gauntlet of levels to test your might! (VOXEL KOMBAT) I would recommend spending a fair amount of time in the other game modes before hopping into the arena as you might find it a bit too challenging, since the amount of health you have stays between levels with only slight healing with the completion of each wave. One death and it’s back to the beginning for you. Try to beat your score and compete amongst your friends on steam! Even if these three game modes don’t have enough gameplay for you, the workshop scene is very popular for PTTR! Find custom skins, weapons, and maps available to download for free. Steam workshop automatically installs anything you “subscribe” to so no need to hassle yourself if you aren’t the tech savvy type.
PTTR has a great style, fun gameplay, and solid music as the fighting grows more chaotic. So far this game has already eaten 61 hours of my time and I think I will find myself going back for more. Even if you don’t care for the arena or scenarios I would still grab PTTR for just the Beneath. Most rouge-likes go for decently cheap and PTTR is only 20 bucks on steam, let alone on sale! Give it a try and let me know what you think! I’ve never given people a direct means of communication through my reviews, so here it is! Contact me at jacob.bullard766@gmail.com with your best PTTR story! If you like my reviews you can also find my other hobby at “j_bull_miniatures” on Instagram to see my painting!