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0 OTXO by devs Lateralis, incidentally latin for “sideways movement”, is a single-player, top-down, violent shooter with rogue-lite elements, whereby, upon death, some of your progression is carried over.
OTXO – Maximum Overkill!
Playing as a super-manic character, you innocently put a mask on and are whisked away to a strange mansion. Searching for your lost love that has been taken from you, can you survive the onslaught of enemies that stand in your way and rescue her? You need to kill pretty much everyone inside the building in order to progress and venture further. Playable on either controller or keyboard and mouse, let’s get cracking!
Gameplay
OTXO, pronounced Oh-Cho, is a simple monochrome 2D retro-looking pixel game that, similar to the movie Sin City, highlights items such as blood in red. Having had the love of your life taken from you, you wash ashore at the foot of a huge mansion.
All is clearly not as it seems as you chat with the gardener outside. They clearly explain that you’re not the first to wash up and that there is no way to leave. Your only solution is to enter the mansion and shoot your way through it.
Entering the lobby/bar area you are introduced to a lady that wants you to invest in various liqueurs using money that you currently do not have. Each drink interprets into a perk that will help you when running through the mansion.
The tutorial is fairly swift and explained well. Your job is to kick through a door to enter a room and then drop every gun-toting enemy that you see before they drop you. The gameplay is fast and you need to keep your wits about you as the accuracy of the AI is quite unforgiving.
Time to focus
To aid the multiple enemies that come up against you as you kick your way into each room there is a Max Payne-style slow-mo, also known as “focus”. A round reticle that is your aiming direction also doubles as the focus gauge. Setting off the slow-mo depletes the circular gauge. Fear not for once it has run out it does steadily refill.
The gunplay is fast and rather than reload it is sometimes quicker to simply throw your weapon to the ground and quickly pick up one that has been dropped by your enemy. From pistols, shotguns, rifles, submachine guns, and grenades, there are numerous weapons to choose from!
Rolling across the floor, leaping over furniture, and smashing through windows, you cannot progress until there is pretty much claret all over the ground and the only person with a heartbeat is yourself.
Toss a coin to your killer
Coin is collected from fallen foes and can be later spent at the lobby that you first entered. Meanwhile, a nun outside the mansion helps you, bizarrely, by allowing you to choose what type of gun you may find inside. Of course, you do need to pick the gun up from an enemy first.
Although the gameplay is fairly run-and-gun, it is fun to play with the modifiers and weapons. Finding what works for you makes OTXO refreshing due to the number of combinations. There are over 100 abilities as well as 150 unique rooms that can become part of your randomly generated level.
Boss levels are certainly interesting and for a second I felt as if I was up against one of the sentinels in Bitmap Brother’s Xenon. Yeah, I am old, however, the timing and moving around to aim the perfect shot felt nostalgic!
Graphics & Audio
OTXO is presented beautifully in black and white. Despite not being the biggest fan of modern-day pixel graphic games, I had a soft spot here. The splats of red captivated me as I seemingly went on a rampage throughout each level. Taking out my stress has never been so much fun. Violence aside, I felt myself regressing into my childhood where I would spend hours playing top-down 2D games on my Atari ST.
Characters, weapons and rooms are all well drawn and everything just flows very smoothly. The focus slow-mo worked well as gaps in gun rounds allowed you to time your dodges. Animations were responsive and tight with no screen tearing despite the speed of the action.
The soundtrack is adrenalin-pumping. Driving you to maintain your progress through the mansion as you tactically wipe the floor of the enemy “The Raid” style. I enjoyed how the music slowed down during activating focus and sped up as it ended. Great touch!
Longevity
Each level is random, therefore kicking down each door reveals a variety of room layouts, furniture layouts, and numbers of enemies. There are 8 areas to play through and combined with the modifiers there is a crazy amount of replayability.
Final Thoughts
For a game that is actually a personification of depression, OTXO is a really fun game to simply sit down and play. With fun game mechanics, blood splatters galore, and an interesting storyline, you can’t really ask for much more. Can you find the best build for your gameplay and rescue your lost love?
OTXO gets a Thumb Culture Gold Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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