Ever wondered what combination of items in a roguelike shooter would be necessary to slay a violent Mona Lisa come to life, complete with angry eyebrows? Probably not, but Antipaint has the answers you haven't sought yet.
Releasing onto Steam today, Antipaint is a great bit of cheap and straightforward fun. You play a tiny block of an artist armed with a tool of creation, and are tasked with slaying a horde of blobs to create works of abstract splatter.
It plays like a touch like Binding of Isaac—but with some Vampire Survivors thrown in for good measure. Instead of crawling through dungeons, you're boxed into a small canvas and made to fight off waves of foes. There's also a very welcome dodge button that lets you get out of trouble with a quick press.
- Cruel is a frantic run-and-gun shooter where you boot cultists out of windows in a cursed apartment block that wants you dead
- I felt goodwill and hope for the future seeing Cybrlich and the Death Cult of Labor, an FPS that's 60% HUD and looks like an Adult Swim cartoon where you smoke 'deepweed' to restore your health and blow clouds that spell out 'doink' and 'loud'
Upgrades are plentiful and wonderfully weird—like the 'Colour Wheel', a bouncy ball you need to pick up every time you huck it, or the paddle ball which bounces around you as you fire. Most are sold to you by a floating, Bob-Ross looking shopkeep, but you also get a pick of three freebies to flesh out your build every now and then.
There's a fun push-and-pull between avoiding enemies and getting upgrades that I really like. Gun down some blobs and they might drop money, but that cash vanishes after a short time. You have to balance running and gunning with making money, and I'd often find myself accidentally tanking hits because I grew too confident.
Anitpaint's visuals are a little basic, but charming in an 'early internet flash game' sort of way—what surprised me was the soundtrack. It's brassy, big-band jazz that has no right to go so hard for such a lightweight shooter, and it fits the tongue-in-cheek ambiance of a giant Mona Lisa throwing roses at you very well.
There's not much else to say about Antipaint—it's a very stripped-down experience, but it's also reasonably priced at the moment. You can get it for £6.09 ($7.19) until March 21, though it'll only be a smidge more expensive after that. If you're still umming and ahhing, there's also a free demo with a humble enough file size, so there's no reason not to check it out if roguelikes are your cup of tea.
