I’m not sure if FPS The Explorator is real or I just fell asleep watching Adult Swim, but I’m already in love
(It's definitely real - there's a free demo on Steam)
Old-school FPS adventure The Explorator contains much more intense shooty violence than the adorable lizardy folk that populate it might immediately suggest. I really want to use the word ‘zany’ without irony here to describe its hand-drawn 2D style and animations, but I’m afraid that ship has long since sailed into the sun. I’ll go with ‘caffeinated’ I think. Like the Adult Swim cartoons it reminded me of, it’s got a sense of the sardonic and a penchant for violence, but still comes from a place of having recently devoured several bowls of suspiciously colorful cereal. Anyways, forget all that. I mentioned an FPS in the title, so I must assume you’re here for the violence.
It doesn’t take long before your relaxed jaunt down the corridors of the ship you begin the game on is interrupted by a legion of saber and machine-gun wielding nose-havers. You’re stuck with just a pistol at this point, but even then, bullet impact is screen-shakingly solid. The Explorator takes the tack of throwing big groups of not-that-smart dudes in your path, and it’s very satisfying to manically click them all to death. On the negative front, it does have a stamina bar, which I reject on a spiritual level for this kind of zippy strafer. But who knows - maybe there’s a good reason for such a restriction that's yet to reveal itself? Maybe it’s hidden in the below trailer?
The game does seem to slant towards a touch of RPG territory. You can, for example, equip armour, visit merchants, and sort your inventory. The island itself is huge, and exploration is thus encouraged. My wishlist currently includes a few more interactable elements to populate the island with more than just vistas and shooting. Maybe a few readables? I would like to know the history of both this place and the squeaky lizards that inhabit it. Either way, this art really rattles my saber. You can check it out for yourself via The Explorator’s free Steam demo.