Have you ever asked yourself what might happen if AI toys had an uprising and brought the human race to extinction? What about if the only hope laid in a toy AI cat thing and his unusual friends? Well, if you ever thought about those things, maybe you need some help.
I don’t have that, but I do have Gori Cuddly Carnage, a game made by Angry Demon Studio and published by Wired Productions you might like. If you’re here wondering if this is the new cutesy 3d platformer appropriate for your children on a Sunday morning before church. This game is probably not what you’re looking for. However, if you’re looking for chaos, carnage, blood, and gore with a charming story, read on.
A Tale Of A Cuddly Cat
You play as Gori, a hoodie wearing cuddly cat (sorta) who is rushed off the planet by your creator, The Professor. Who is the professor? Well, she’s only the one that’s basically single handedly responsible for the violent toy uprising that now you’re going to have to deal with if you ever want to see her alive again. Fun huh?
After you’re whisked away on your ship, you’re going to have to return to earth, stop the AI toy uprising, and find and rescue your friend and owner, the Professor. If you’re wondering what her name is, well, keep wondering. All of this is told to use through screen shots of comic books, which I, for one, was ecstatic to see. More of this, please.
Gori has two friend’s to help him out at the beginning of this adventure. First there’s F.R.A.N.K., a sentient hover board with an attitude problem who serves both as your means of transportation and your weapon to slaughter blood thirsty unicorns, severed hands, mutilated houses and any other enemies you may come across. Second there’s CH1-P. He’s a lethargic control module who doesn’t seem to be to thrilled to be doing much of anything, including helping.
Game Play That Will Bring You Back
The gameplay in Gori Cuddly Carnage is like if Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Devil May Cry and Doom’s soundtrack had sex and produced the near perfect mutated demonic love child. While I’ve just compared it to a bunch of things keep in mind, all those things mashed together have a very unique feel to it. Unique like I haven’t felt in a long time, honestly. All of this is mixed together with offensive cursing, and darker humor made this game right up my ally. Yes I probably need help too.
The level design is very intuitive, doing a great job of teaching you each new ability at the beginning of the game. Each level increases the difficulty but in a fair way and of course laced with Gori style carnage. You’ll run into photo booths now and then. These are used to buy upgrades and cosmetics mostly. Also your trusty hover board is censored by default. Fear not as you can fix this at these photo booths but it will cost you.
The platforming in Gori Cuddly Carnage is mostly great but feels a bit off once in awhile. You have to kinda pull back on the controls as you hover board between platforms. Also before I move on to the tech stuff the story is actually shockingly touching and actually made me want to root for Gori numerous times to find his owner/inventor/um, mom I guess? It’ll make sense if you play it or maybe it won’t
The Nerdy Tech Stuff
Gori Cuddly Carnage is locked at 60fps regardless of what you set the FPS cap at. While a bit disappointing, this isn’t the biggest of deals. It would have been cool to see some higher FPS modes, though.
When I first turned the game on, I noticed a ton of hitching every time I entered a new area, the sort of thing usually caused by shader cache. I opened my settings, and the game had audio set everything to very high(Ultra) 4k. I’ve had this issue in other games before. While my card(2080ti) is 4k capable in many cases it has given me issues at 4k when I was plugged into my 4k TV. I have a 1440p monitor I use now so I just turned things down.
With settings on high at 1440p, everything was pretty rock solid with a dip here and there in boss fights when a horde of unicorns would show up. Side note, turning on ray tracing didn’t seem to do much performance or reflections wise, so I just left it off. I have a first-generation ray tracing card, so your mileage may vary.
Steam Deck Stuff
For our Steam Deck players, at the time of writing the Steam page for Gori Cuddly Carnage sports no rating for the Steam Deck at all. However, I played through the first two levels on my LCD model, and with everything set to medium at 720p, I had no issues holding the coveted 60FPS. I actually had no frame drops at all that I noticed. Also, the game has cloud saves. So bouncing back and forth on PC and Steam Deck(or any handheld PC)is no problem. It’s not uncommon for indie developers to produce games that work fine on Deck and get verified later. It’s possible this happens. The game isn’t connected to any third-party launcher that could kill it running on Deck later either.
Conclusion
When I heard there was a game named “Gori Cuddly Carnage” I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was worried it would like depth, game play and story as many indie games with this sort of humor have in the past. I’m happy to say it has all those things while managing to not where out it’s welcome. The one place it falls short in just a little is the platforming. it’s not all the time but once in a while it just needs spaced out just a bit more. Other then that I loved this game. Which is why I’m giving it the highest score I’ve ever given a game while writing for this website.
Gori Cuddly Carnage is available on Steam, Epic Games, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.
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