Viscerafest

Not your everyday shooter. This first-person shooter (FPS) may be predominantly pink, but its as hardcore as they come. You'll play as a bloodthirsty psychopath doing battle with keen, intelligent aliens whose attacks will quickly drain your health and armour. It's also packed with humour for an outlandish experience. Fans of retro shooters will love it!

Pink isn't the exclusive domain of Barbie! Welcome to the quirky world of Viscerafest, an FPS that defies convention with its candy cane colour scheme and trashy aesthetic. Developed by Acid Man Games and Fire Plant Games, this game with a neon aesthetic serves up a unique experience for the first-person shooter, or FPS, genre.

Gone are your boring old warriors! In Viscerafest, you play as Caroline, a heroine who's violent, romantic, and quirky all at once, just like Harley Quinn. And she's determined to put a ring on her man's finger. But to do so, she'll need money, and there's no better way to get rich than by collecting bounties on criminals. Her quest whisks her along on a crazy adventure, taking out aliens and exploring terrifying alternative dimensions. All for love, of course!

The plot doesn't try to be high-brow, but we really liked its sense of humour. Our sarcastic heroine spits out hilarious one-liners wherever she goes, especially when dealing with verbose aliens just before she turns them into mush.

Our favourite part? The extremely colourful artistic direction, a bold choice that creates the game's unique identity, far removed from the usual dark tones found in FPS games.

While technically the game reminded us of Doom, with its 2D sprites, artistically, it's a festival of colour and an explosion of neon pink.

But be warned, Viscerafest isn't fooling around when it comes to the difficulty. The game forces you to keep a close eye on your ammo (you'll often run out), to keep moving, and to use your abilities wisely in order to survive. The enemies aren't messing around, and to heal you'll need to play butcher and collect your enemies' hearts before they disappear. Not one for sensitive souls.

The tutorial does a good job of getting you used to the gameplay and encourages different mechanics, like the bunny hop, which was our favourite way of getting around the levels.

To help you on your way: Caroline, our intrepid heroine, has a mean right hand. Press and hold the attack button to charge her attack to the sound of a rubber band stretching. She's very, very flexible. This punch alone can take out most enemies you'll meet. Land a combo of three punches and you're guaranteed an instant kill.

Another thing we loved was the save system in Viscerafest. You collect tags that you can place anywhere to set a checkpoint. If you don't have any on you and you die, though, it's back to the start of the level.

Viscerafest might not be revolutionising the genre, but it does bring a breath of fresh air to the FPS scene with its neon pink aesthetic and truly demanding gameplay.