#long story short the menu photos were Not accurate and the prices were double what they ought to have been

[miodiodavinci]

tried something new for lunch and now experiencing intense buyer’s regret hgsfghks

[mistershinyobject]

CROSSBOW: bloodnight

Here’s the story:

It’s late. I was working on some stuff on my computer and just finished. I had less than an hour until I needed to get to bed, but I spent so long working that I didn’t get to play Hades, a roguelike that really wants to be played an hour+ at a time, so I’d hate to have to stop halfway through.

So I look through my other games, either ones installed or small indie games that I could install in 5 minutes. Receiver and the Ghostrunner Demo are mostly what I’ve been using, but it’s a little too stealth-centric and doesn’t give me that button mashing rush I need. Superflight and Luftrausers are too skill intensive. Other games have to be played in a story mode that doesn’t have great chapter selects, or are too hard to hop in and out of. I definitely don’t want to play multiplayer. Devil Daggers got very close, but the annoyingly dark atmosphere and art style tenses makes it hard to relax.

I get desperate and head to the store. I sort it by shooter, since FPS seems the most like what I need. I get the normal big dumb shooty games, CS:GO, Doom, big expensive stuff. I think of how to describe what I’m looking for. Short? That just gave me games with short story modes. Fast? I want something that can be played quickly. I type in fast and it suggest fast-paced. I click it, that’s close enough. Once again, same sort of stuff. I click singleplayer. At that point I start scrolling through, but they’re all big campaign games.

Then, I see it. CROSSBOW in big bold capital letters. I click it before I consciously register it. The cover art looks like it was whipped together in minutes. Reviews are positive but there are only about 100. I catch a glimpse of the auto-crossbow in the store page’s video, as a crossbow fanatic I’m used to them but it’s got some nice detail to it. The prongs actually bend, and the machine gun nature of it is explained by the triple-chamber, again unrealistic but not outlandish.

The description looks nice. It’s a score-attack arena shooter, which means it would be short, frantic, and replayable, which is what I was looking for. I ignore the flavor text about demons or whatever and go to the reviews to make sure the game isn’t just crap. The first professional review says “Pretty much Devil Daggers with a crossbow, a dash move and a dark gothic setting and it's addictive as hell.” I’m sold. I scroll up, double check the price, a measly 2.99, and buy and install it.

The opening title screen is just the cover photo. The main menu is just the cover photo. I don’t care. I click start. It tells me the crossbow was outlawed in 1193 for being demonic. I give this game huge credit, because it was in fact outlawed by the church (except if you were using it in the crusades) but not because of demonic implications, just because it’s incredibly powerful and can cause a lot of pain and anguish, which was seen as un-Christianly. But I’ll accept it as story justification.

Then, the game proper starts. No instructions. I have a crossbow. A zombie spawns in front of me. I hold the mouse button and it spews bolts into it. It dies. I love this game. More stuff spawns. I shoot it and it dies. A big guy spawns, and he shoots bats out of his mouth like the guys in Devil Daggers. I shoot it in the eye a bunch and it dies. I get curious about right mouse button. I hold it down and the middle prongs spread out. The bowstring gets pulled back further. This is again fairly accurate, since automatic crossbows (which did exist in 1193, albeit in China) were not fully primed, since the automatic nature required the string to be at half-pull. But with it fully primed, clicking left mouse fires a small explosive round. I’m in love again. Alternating between the firing modes, I kill zombies, bats, squid monsters, some werewolves show up. At one point, I get some sort of super move that rains giant bolts from the sky.

I invite my fiance in to see the game because it makes me so happy. She says “Honey, that looks like shovelware.” I don’t disagree. The game is barely minutes long, and the art is the same everywhere. But I love playing it.

I go online. No one is talking about it. There are no reviews of it. I can’t buy any merch. The developers have other games they care far, far more about.

But I don’t care. I love CROSSBOW: bloodnight.,