Video Game / Fury Unleashed

Fury Unleashed is a sidescrolling action-platformer Shoot 'Em Up with Rogue Like elements, released on Steam by Awesome Games Studio. It was initially released in Early Access before being fully released in May 9th 2020.

The storyline is that the titular Fury, a formerly popular comic book protagonist is fighting through their past adventures in an attempt to discover the history of their author John Kowalski and hopefully rile him from his slump. To that end, they battle through three trade-paperbacks, a May Inca Tec jungle romp, and Alternate History World War 2/Time Travel rampage through a secret Nazi research facility, and an assault on an alien starship.

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Tropes appearing in Fury Unleashed:

• 1-Up: The Golden Ankh item's description says "Summons a powerful being when the time comes". That powerful being is Fury himself and the item kicks in when Fury dies. Unfortunately if you don't find it as a legendary drop, it's very expensive to buy. There's also a catch, with your new life you must kill 30 enemies without getting hit or else the Grim Reaper will take away 30% of your ink points.
• '90s Anti-Hero: Fury is a archetypical nineties comic protagonist, being a generic action hero who blasts away bad guys with guns. One of the big issues with the character in-universe is that they're seen as an outdated relic of the past by comic book audiences.
• Action Girl: The female version of Fury is just as badass.
• Adjustable Censorship: Bloodless Mode, which removes the blood and replaces the Ludicrous Gibs with puffs of smoke.
• An Ice Person: Fury retains a single spell: Flash-Freeze, which well, freezes all enemies in the same panel as you. They can also obtain spaulders that freeze any enemy they dash past (which are more common than a similar item that lights them on fire), and frost-enchanted guns.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If you have full grenades, you can smash open grenade crates for a huge amount of Ink, ensuring that they're always useful somehow.
  • You unlock new comic books by killing all 3 world bosses associated with them. The game tracks which ones you have and haven't killed so you don't have to fight a random one each time, and potentially never get to the next issue.
  • The first time you're trapped in Mr. Doodle's Dark World, you just have your starter equipment which means an unarmoured Fury with a basic gun (though Fury's grenades will have improved damage to be viable here). After you die, the Gunlord comes to aid you with a free gun and portals (Dr Bloodstein, Gunlord and Gundar only) become available. Die again and Gundar helps out by giving armor or repair work. Die again and eventually the Grim Reaper itself shows up and can transfer you back in time to do one stage from any world. So it may be best to keep dying until the Grim Reaper's portal appears because after beating Mr. Doodle the story arc is permanently over.
  • The "kill the next ten enemies with melee" challenges do not apply to bosses. They also will not be spoiled by an enemy blowing itself up.
• Armor Points: Armor is Damage Reduction of by a certain percentage of damage until its destroyed. It's shown as a shield with a number next to your health bar.
• Automatic Crossbows: One of the latest weapons that Fury can unlock are a pair of pistol-sized crossbows, with some versions having multiple rounds and a decent rate of fire.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Some of Fury's more exotic weapons have great damage and rate of fire like the Plasma Gun but they are greatly hindered by also having a Painfully Slow Projectile.
• Big Bad: Mr. Doodle was the one behind all the mayhem happening in Fury's comic universe as he blames you for The Creator's burnout and so he's going to try and kill you personally.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Spiders and wasps in the Amazon.
• Boss Room: Even if you don't have the Compass artifact, you can usually guess which rooms may have an Optional Boss simply by the shape on the map. Boss rooms in this game need to be sufficiently large as they will almost always have some platforms to jump on as well as environmental hazards to limit your mobility.
• Brought Down to Badass: As per the intro, although they still retain one spell.
• Bottomless Magazines:
  • Well no, but you have an infinite amount of magazines.
  • Invoked with the Unique SMG "Infinity," which has a 1,000 round mag.
• Character Customization: Hair color (including beard, if they have one), beard style (including clean-shaven), sex, hairstyle, and war-paint. There are also custom heads, which include a robot head and a gas mask.
• Clothes Make The Super Man: Fury can find several pieces of enchanted armor.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Bosses and even elites are immune to Fury's stomps. Instead Fury just bounces off and the enemy takes no damage. Bosses are also immune to freeze though not incineration or poison.
• Creator Breakdown: In-Universe. Fury's author is going through severe burnout from all the reviews that say his earlier work was miles better, which is why we're going through Fury's previous adventures.
• Critical Hit: With the right skills, Fury can inflict a critical hit 50% of the time and each those would do over 200% damage! Allocating skill points towards improving critical hit% and critical damage is extremely important since the Final Boss is a Damage-Sponge Boss with a large amount of firepower.
• Damage Reduction: Besides your Armor Points, Fury can get damage reduction as a random bonus from paying the Order of the Eternal Ink and also by wearing Barbarian Armor which can innately reduce damage by 5% to 15% depending on its quality.
• Dark World: If you don't defeat Mr Doodle immediately after the Alien Final Boss, then you are trapped in the sketchpad of your author. This is a colourless world that's set in a medieval fantasy castle. Unfortunately for Fury, reality is different. There's only ⚫️ ink, so no health drops or golden ink and the only friendlies that can show up in the dimensional gates are the Gunlord, Dr Bloodstein and Gundar the Undead Armorer. This greatly limits what you can have in this world and there's no true escape until you defeat Mr Doodle (though the Grim Reaper is capable of sending you back once to one of the 3 Books).
• Deal with the Devil: Great Power with Annoying Drawback subtype for signing with the Devil here. Reading the fine print in his contracts shows what debuff (it will always be a reduction of maximum health, the amount varies depending on your deal) you suffer in exchange for the buff. The best deals if you play from Book 1 to the Sketch Pad are kill 2 enemies to get an increase in maximum health if you find that in Book 1 or regain 3 Armor Points when you kill a boss. Other decent deals are gain +2 health from health drops and earn extra Golden Ink whenever you get some though both these become useless in the Sketch Pad.
• Dem Bones: The first area has Aztec skeleton wizards.
• Dual Boss: Some bosses are actually a pair such as the Core Chamber from Book 3. These have only half the health of more standard bosses and when one dies it releases a stream of Golden Ink for Fury. Unfortunately the surviving boss will then get a new and more dangerous attack pattern.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: Outside of the limited resources for you, the Dark World is quite easy. There's a limited number of environmental hazards and fewer enemies. Even the Mini Bosses outside of Beezlebub are easier. But Mr. Doodle is a nightmare to face with his various powerful attack patterns including one where he encases himself in an indestructible force field and regenerates while his drones attack.
• Elemental Weapon: Fire, poison, and ice enchantments. Grenades can also have Life Drain.
• Elite Mooks: Connoted by a red Battle Aura and a skull in the bottom center of their health bar. They take more shots to kill and hit harder. They are also immune to Fury's stomp.
• Equipment-Based Progression: Downplayed. The game has Fury gain levels to earn skill points. But eventually you reach a plateau where it takes an extremely large amount of Ink to gain a level while your skills take increasingly more points to improve. However your equipment finds and purchases will keep improving as you move through the different worlds, making getting new gear a greater importance.
• Evil All Along: Mr Doodle, that friendly stranger acting as Mission Control and giving you the details of what's been happening with John Kowalski, he's actually setting you up to have your comic world destroyed.
• Faceless Mooks: Skeletons, bugs, and gasmask-wearing SS troopers.
• Flunky Boss: It's rare here but some bosses including the Final Boss will sometimes bring in some minions to attack you. This can work to your advantage as killing enough of those enemies can recharge your special power.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Two examples. Vlad the Peaceful is a vampire who trades weapon upgrades for a quick nip of Fury's blood, and Gundar the Undead Armorer is a Draugr (zombie viking) who repairs armor in exchange for golden ink.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Improved damage over the Katana, and has a 10% chance to block all damage.
• Gatling Good: A minigun is an exceptionally rare legendary find/purchase (unless you're lucky, many players find only after unlocking all the weapons that's how rare it can be). Besides the basic minigun which is already a strong weapon, there are special weapon variants such as the Impulse Minigun which has even More Dakka than the standard.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Other than the flying skeleton carrying a glaive or teleporting skeletons with swords, humanoid enemies attack Fury in melee with a punch (a few will swing their gun at Fury).
• Goomba Stomp: Fury can land on an enemy's head during a jump. This is a One-Hit Kill on any non-Boss, non-Elite enemy that isn't a Nazi tank, a turret and naturally immobile enemies (like the man-eating plants).
• Guns Akimbo: Almost all of your guns have different variations and if they're a single-handed weapon, one version is a twin set of guns for each of Fury's hands. This doubles the firepower that Fury can pour on a target though the accuracy does go down a bit as the shots may scatter a little with the 2nd gun. Dual pistols advantage is also one reason why the pistol version of unlocked weapons are on a more advanced tier. Example, the blaster rifle is available in Book 1 but it takes Book 3 to unlock the blaster pistol.
• The Immune: Fury is immune to status effects except from one of Mr. Doodle's magic attack which encases you in shadow and slowly drains your health. However after dying and fighting Mr. Doodle again, Fury is immune to that drain.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Averted. A katana is the hero's basic weapon, and is outperformed in some way by all the others: damage by the Unholy Sword and Mace, the Holy Sword increases the chance of red ink, and the Flaming Axe, while 2 points less powerful, lights enemies on fire. Heck, even the Frying Pan of Doom has the chance to deflect damage.
• Kill Streak: Called a "Combo." Adds a Deflector Shield, bonus red and black ink drops, and unlocks bonus level portals and combo chests. Of course, get hit when you have a streak going loses the streak.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In-Universe. The currency of the game is printer's ink. Black ink for character upgrades, gold ink to buy stuff from the Author and pay the Doctor, and red ink is a health pickup.
• Life Drain: A possible enchantment for grenades. However, it simply garuntees the enemy will drop red ink, rather than directly stealing their life-force.
• Mage Marksman: Fury uses a lot of enchanted weaponry and isn't shabby with a spell or five either.
• Man-Eating Plant: Featured in book 1.
• Mecha: Both the Nazis and the aliens have a World Boss that's piloting a heavily armed mech. Expect a Bullet Hell when fighting these.
• New Game Plus: Downplayed. While there is some Post-End Game Content, Fury's story is over and cannot be revisited. So any missable story-based event that wasn't discovered won't be encountered if you play the game again. Your only choice then is to reset all your progress and replay as a Fury just starting out.
• No Hero Discount: Averted in the Dark World of the your author's sketchpad. Your friendly vendors help you by letting you select anything from their available stock and it's free! Unfortunately, they're sending it to you via an unstable portal so you can only make one choice per portal.
• No Swastikas: Book 2 uses a black skull instead. Still a nazi symbol, but not *that* one.
• Odd Friendship: Fury wasn't the most mainstream of comics and so he's got an odd assortment of allies such as Inkmaster, Mistress of Fate, Gunlord, Blademaster, Dr Bloodstein, Dracula the Peaceful, Gundar the Undead Armorer, Commander X and the Order of the Eternal Ink. Even the Grim Reaper is rather fond of ol' Fury.
• Optional Boss: Unless an optional boss's room just happens to be the only way forward, the only bosses that need to be fought are the World Bosses, the three minibosses in the sketchpad and Mr. Doodle. Everyone else can be avoided if you're currently too weak.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: On rare occasions, there may be rooms full of treasure chests or nodes but with no enemies. The treasures inside these rooms will have a generous handful of Golden Ink each.
• Point of No Return: If you haven't unlocked all the hidden weapons through the Inkmaster and Mistress of Fate, then you should keep getting killed before you finish Stage 3 of Book 3. Once Mr Doodle reveals that he's actually your enemy, you will be stuck in that colourless comic book world until you defeat him. This voids any way to leave, dying means you'll be fighting in that world again and the game prevents you from selecting a different comic to enter. Unless your Fury is capable of defeating Mr Doodle then you're better off going no further than dying to the Alien Final Boss of Book 3 and then building up Fury further. Once you unlocked all your weapons and can go after Mr. Doodle inside the sketchpad, it's best to keep failing against him until the Grim Reaper decides to help you.
• Poison Is Corrosive: Poison works equally well on skeletons and robots as it does people and bugs.
• Post Modern Magick: Enchanted guns, and alchemical potions that apply elemental effects to your guns temporarily
• The Power of Love: In Mr. Doodle's world, Fury can only proceed all the way after reading the fan letters to John Kowalski. Not only does the love from Fury's fans break the barriers keeping Fury from continuing, they also make him immune to Mr Doodle's life drain. After beating Mr. Doodle, John has a message for his fans that because of their support he will eventually get back to writing more Fury comics.
• Power Source: Whatever Fury's current power, not only does it have a Cool Down between usage but it's also fueled by killing enemies. So you can't simply wait for a second use.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: The sole difference between male and female Fury is that female Fury has no beard option.
• Randomly Generated Loot: It's possible to get a rocket launcher that handles like an assault rifle, a poisonous 3-shot shotgun, or a flaming sniper rifle.
• Ray Gun: There are plenty of Energy Weapons for Fury to use and while Lasers, Tesla and Plasma guns are generally believable - there's also a bunch of other weapons that are exotic headscratchers like the Hypergun and Blaster. Even the Rail Gun doesn't act as a ballistic weapon, it instead fires a powerful energy beam (the Rail Gun perhaps may be an energy weapon in the way that X-COM: Terror from the Deep's gauss weapons are, those magnetically fire a charged particle beam rather than a shell of solid metal).
• Religion is Magic: The Order of Eternal Ink offers Blessings in exchange for a tithe of golden ink, with the more money you drop on them resulting in better blessings..
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Averted. Unlike most games, the revolver packs mediocre damage and rate of fire and relies on the player having good aim in a game that emphasizes pray and spray. It can still be a good weapon if you find some of the variant revolvers (like the twin revolvers) that also have special features such as ignite. Otherwise they're lower-tier guns.
• RPG Elements: Ink takes the place of XP, which is tallied up at the end of a run into skill points. Weapons have different stats and enchantments, eg a Poisonous assault rifle or a Flaming shotgun.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: They have the same range as many other guns (although they do more damage up-close, naturally). They also usually come with a Damage Over Time enchant. To balance this, they usually have one or two shots and mediocre reload.
• Serrated Blade of Pain: The Unholy Sword item is a sword made out of skulls and bones with serrated sections on the blade.
• Shout-Out:
  • The tagline for the first level is "In the jungle, no-one can hear you yell"
  • One of the alternate looks for Fury is a skeleton in a spacesuit and clearly a nod to Cosmic Ghost Rider. Another alternate look is Fury as a robot that looks very similar to a Necron Deathmark.
• Smart Bomb: Fury's default Flash Freeze spell will freeze all regular enemies in the room and if you have picked the skill, Fury's current special ability (including Flash Freeze) will make all enemy projectiles disappear, making it useful against enemies that can do a Bullet Hell.
• Sniper Rifle: The opposite of the shotgun: a single-round gun that is laser-accurate no matter the diystance and usually has an ice enchant. It also over-penetrates, losing half its damage with each enemy punctured.
• Starter Equipment: Fury starts out with an SMG pistol. Completing the Gunlord's challenges (which is inevitably "kill 30 enemies with this gun") allows you to choose a mundane version of that weapon in the Character Customization screen. You can choose, beyond the default, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, or a bazooka. He also starts out with a Katana as his melee weapon (completing the Blademaster's challenges only gets the Katana new skins of Mace, Axe and Baseball Bat), although he can get two Unholy Swords and another katana, with their own secondary enchantments as well.
• Status Effects: Fire, poison, and ice. Fire and poison do Damage Over Time, and ice causes an enemy to take extra melee damage and stand still.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Book 2 is about time-travelling neo-nazis going back in time to give the original nazis a leg-up, and Fury has to stop them.
• Sword and Gun: Fury wields any one-handed guns alongside their current melee weapon. He can also instantly switch between his gun(s), no matter how bulky, and his sword (or mace, or battleaxe).
• Tank Goodness: The nazis have one as a Heavily Armored Mook which fires a powerful laser beam and it's one of the few non-Elite/non-Boss enemies that won't be One Hit Killed by one of Fury's stomp. The Nazis also have various sci-fi tanks as enemy Bosses like the Acid Tank.
• Technicolor Toxin: Poison weapons and potions are vibrantly green and csuses afflicted enemies to have a Sickly Green Glow.
• The Undead: Aztec skeleton wizards, ghosts, and liches in Issue 1.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Inverted, they have a surprisingly long range and they cause a lot of damage by setting enemies on fire and they penetrate enemies to hit more than one. This makes them one of the most useful weapons for Fury
• Virtual Paper Doll: Fury can be customized in a variety of ways via unlockable customization options; aside from being male or female you can turn them into skeletons or robots as well as download even more options via the Steam Workshop.
• With This Herring: An SMG, a sword, three grenades, a magical trinket of some description, and the clothes on your back. You have to find armor.
• World's Best Warrior: Fury himself. There's a reason he's the one to get the call for fighting Aztec gods, nazis armed with tech from his era and aliens.