- Release the Beast!
Who knew a World of Funny Animals have it's own version of purgatory?
Exit Limbo: Opening is a 2020 Beat 'em Up gornfest made by indie producer Virtual Craft Studio, set in a world of andromorphic animals... in the aftermath of a virus outbreak that turns almost all its population into zombie-like monstrosities.
Rhino, an andromorphic rhino-man, wakes up in what appears to be purgatory, without his memories, surrounded by corpses and himself drenched in blood. There's smell of blood and death in the air, and as Rhino tries crawling his way out the dead around him suddenly animates themselves. But Rhino's a fighter, and he's not going down just like that.
After surviving an attack from hordes and hordes of deformed, zombie-like creatures (later called the "infected" in-game), Rhino ends up in an underground community of rodent-people, tended by the rodent girl Vivian and her father, the village Chief Sekuru, in the middle of a wasteland swarming with assorted monsters. Now Rhino must seek the truth behind all this madness.
Exit Limbo: Opening contain examples of:
- Acid Attack: There are infected mooks capable of vomiting green stomach acid in later levels. Try hitting them from behind.
- Afterlife Express: Invoked; the first level have Rhino waking up in a train, and upon regaining his bearings, realize he's the only one alive, being surrounded by dead passengers in various state of decay. Then the passengers wakes up as he approaches them.
- Always Night: The entire game takes place after dark. It really brings out the creepy atmosphere in addition to all the gore and violence.
- Amnesiac Hero: Rhino, who have zero memories of what happened before and must uncover the truth.
- Beast Man: All of the characters, bosses and NPC alike.
- Body Horror: The effects of mutagen infection on the animal folk, turning their bodies into a deformed mess. Their heads swell and becomes far too large for their bodies, for starters, and their limbs and exposed flesh in a state of semi-decay, and that's not getting into some of them having their ribs coming out of the torso...
- Bloody Hilarious: The amount of onscreen gorn and overkills the game constantly throws around can occasionally fall into this.
- Blood-Splattered Warrior: Rhino, the entire game. His shirt is already splattered with plenty of red when he wakes up in the opening, and he spends every single level kicking ass and ripping heads in that attire.
- Bullfight Boss: The first boss, Junkie Ram, who spends the entire level charging and tackling at Rhino. Fighting Ram directly won't work, and the best way is to trick Ram into ramming at a lowering door with a set of spinning gears behind, which raises the doors upon impact while momentarily disorientating him - allowing Rhino to shove Ram into those gears. Rinse and repeat a few times to turn Ram into a pile of red sauce.
- Camera Abuse: You can expect the camera to be constantly splattered by bloods, guts, and chunks of flesh from slain enemies, all the damn time.
- Cliffhanger: The game ends with Rhino discovering the kidnapped Vivian, all strung up in a lab, with assorted mutagen canisters injected into her in the aftermath of her captors performing assorted kinds of experiments after her abduction. Then comes a black screen with a "To Be Continued" plastered over it.
- Damsel in Distress: Halfway through, Rhino's benefactor, Vivian, gets abducted by the villains responsible for the mutagen outbreak, kicking off a Roaring Rampage of Rescue for Rhino. One which ends with a You Are Too Late, if the cliffhanger of an ending is any indication...
- David Versus Goliath: All of the bosses are several times larger than Rhino. Junkie Ram can even lift Rhino with a single hand!
- Department of Redundancy Department: This line from Vivian, when Rhino begins regaining consciousness and tries looking around.Vivian: "We don't usually take in strangers... let alone strange-looking strangers!"
- A Dog Named "Dog": Your player character is a rhino-man named Rhino. There's also a bull-man named Bullocks and a boar-man named Boar serving as bosses. Averted for the rodent people who have names though, notably Vivian and her father Sekuru.
- Finishing Stomp: Can be done on an enemy after knocking them down, before they regain consciousness, by pressing the attack button. They burst into a bloody puddle after that.
- Gorn: Roughly once every ten seconds.
- Ground by Gears: Rotating gears are a common hazard that shreds entire chunks of Rhino's life if he touches them. These gears can also be used for throwing enemies into, and is in fact the best weapon for the first boss, Junkie Ram. It doesn't kill instantly though, if Rhino have enough health the gear will spit him out and Ram needs to be shoved into those gears at least six times.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Even in the early stages before Rhino's power upgrade, he can already rip enemies into two horizontally. There are enemies who can continue fighting without their lower bodies attached as well...
- Heroic Mime: Rhino doesn't speak, though he does grunt and / or roar during his fights.Vivian: [trying to converse with the awakened Rhino only to get zero response] Oooooooookay, not the talkative type, I guess.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Most of the enemies will break apart like piñatas filled with bloody chunks of meat after they're killed. The selling point of the game is in fact the number of times this trope can regularly happen.
- Meat Moss: Every. Single. Area. in purgatory is coated in flesh and organs, with walls and floors adorned with living tissue - many which are constantly dripping blood.
- Metronomic Man Mashing:
- When fully powered up, Rhino can grab any nearby infected and smash him left and right, occasionally using a mook as a makeshift club on other mooks.
- The first boss, Junkie Ram, does this to Rhino during a cutscene, though it doesn't affect his health in gameplay.
- Mook Maker: A section in a tunnel contains infected spawners, who will regurgitate enemies to attack Rhino from all sides.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Rhino can sit on downed enemies and repeatedly pummel their skulls in by pressing the Grab button before they get up.
- Off with His Head!: Another one of Rhino's Finishing Moves, should his enemy be weak enough. He'll rip their heads off with his bare hands.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The game's equivalent to zombies are simply called infected, and given the setting in a world of sentient animals, they're zombified Beast people. All of them.
- Outliving One's Offspring: As the backstory reveals after Rhino spend some significant amount of time talking to the Rat village community. It turns out Vivian isn't Sekuru's only child - Sekuru have a son as well, who led a band of rodent warriors to investigate the mutagen outbreak. They return, having being turned into monsters, before they're killed.
- Rat Men: The underground community of rodent-people who takes Rhino in are a benevolent, non-hostile example, with Vivian the caretaker nursing Rhino back to health in the early levels.
- Rhino Rampage: In which you are the one doing the rampaging.
- Shoryuken: An early power upgrade allows Rhino to pull this off on enemies, accompanied by a massive aura of orange energy that shoots right to the top of the screen. Mooks finished off in this manner tends to fall apart in bloody chunks all over the place.
- Spikes of Doom: Unlike gears, falling into spikes is fatal.
- Step into the Blinding Fight: Because of the game's environment, there's a lot of fights taking place amidst the shadows, especially within indoor areas where you can only identify Rhino and enemy mooks based on their silhouettes.
- Throw a Barrel at It: The game have Exploding Barrels in various places, which Rhino can grab and hurl with explosive effects. Besides taking down mooks, throwing barrels is also the only way to break down walls or obstacles in certain areas so that Rhino can access the next location.
- Waking Up Elsewhere: Twice for Rhino - the game begins with him regaining consciousness in a train filled with dead bodies, and later he passes out again before waking up at Vivian's place, treated for his injuries after a two-day coma.
- Was Once a Man: The zombie-like freaks throughout the game used to be ordinary animal people, prior to the mutagen leak.
- Zombie Apocalypse: The backstory of the game.
