Video Game / HROT

Taking Gas Mask Mooks to another level.

HROT (which means "spike" in Czech) is a retro-inspired First-Person Shooter heavily inspired by the original Quake (with a healthy dose of Chasm: The Rift), set in Soviet-era Prague. The game runs on a custom homebuilt engine made specifically for it and is developed and published by Spytihněv (a single-man operation) and was released on Steam via the Early Access program in January of 2021. The game came out of Early Access and saw its full release on May 16th, 2023.

The story is set in Czechoslovakia following a major industrial disaster in 1986 (though the incident goes unnamed within the game, its rather obvious from the date and context clues that it is the Chernobyl disaster). The player take the role of a civil defense volunteer who emerges from a bunker underneath the city to find the country has been taken over by an army of strange men (and even stranger creatures) in gas masks and protective gear. Fulfil your patriotic duty to the State and blast the invaders with your Soviet-era weaponry.

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Those tropes were dark and terrifying and so is the game:

• Air-Vent Passageway: At many points in the game, the protagonist enters air vents to get to places. There could be many crawlable vents per level.
• A Winner Is You: Clearing each of the game's episodes nets you a meal recipe; Beef Stroganoff for clearing Kiss Me Gustav, Cauliflower brain for Degustation and Eggs in Aspic for The Gastroscopy.
• All Just a Dream: "E3M2: Hospital" opens with the strong implication that the previous level, E3M1: "War with the Newts", was either a hallucination or dream; the player awakens in a hospital without any gear & a book next to their bed with the title "War with the Newts", identical to the title of E3M1. Then it begins to insinuate that the whole game up to this point may have been the product of your fevered mind...
• Animate Inanimate Object: A few of the bosses are inanimate objects that somehow come to life and attack you, including a statue of a gorilla in a playground, a bulldozer, and a charlie horse in a gym.
• Armor As Hit Points: The player can acquire a variety of Czech/Soviet-themed armour pickups; 1 & 5 Koruna coins (10 & 20 AP respectively), Gold (10 AP)^note Exclusive to "E3M1: War with the Newts", Medals (30 AP), Wifebeaters (50 AP) & Clean Briefs (60 AP).
• Artificial Brilliance: Downplayed. As much as the AI wouldn't be quite on par with Unreal, the enemies do display a higher number of movement abilities compared to the shooters of the style this game emulates. They can use ladders to chase you down if you ever think of hitting them from the high ground yourself, some of them can jump, & the earlier versions of the game even had the enemies be able to swim before the later updates gave them Super Drowning Skills. Their pathfinding can also be on point at times.
• Bag of Spilling: In a similar vein of classic shooters around the era of Doom, each episode has the player start out with a sickle and pistol, and the game has an optional "blank slate" mode that enforces this onto every single level, much like Intruder mode in DUSK.
  • Regardless of the blank slate setting, E3M2:Hospital starts has the player start out completely stripped out of their weapons except for their kick - having just awoken in a hospital after a dream - and they have to either slip or fight through a Pathologic to get their pistol, and unlock a gate leading to a sickle through a room with an Infested Rider. E3M4:George of Podiebrad also has the player lose all of their weapons after they fall onto the catacombs, though they eventually get their lost weapons back.
• Bears Are Bad News: "E2M1: Točník Castle" has the player attacked by a couple of hostile bears towards the end of the level. They are quite tough, requiring several full shotgun blasts to kill. The Final Boss, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, starts off riding a bear, with his next phase having dismount the bear & fight you on foot, while his former mount continues to chase you.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The dog-sized Skull Spider enemies, which appear in "E1M6: Vysehrad Castle", "E1M7: Underground Stream" & "E2M3: Velhartice". E1M7 also features an Overgrown Skull Spider as that level's final boss.
• Big Red Button: Used as switches in a few places, but a special one under glass labelled "AZ-5" is the level exit point on most maps.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: One of the weapons in your arsenal is a 15th-century Hussite gun. It's not quite as strong as the rocket launcher, but does kill most regular enemies in 1 shot, however, ammo for it is extremely rare.
  • As of the 0.3.5 update, the Hussite Handgun has now replaced the rocket launcher, becoming much more common & utilizing standard explosive ammo drops while still being a muzzle-loading relic from the 1400s. The old Hussite Handgun was replaced with the Hussite Crossbow.
• Came Back Wrong: The Final Boss of Episode 1 is "Gottwald" - the former President of Communist Czechoslovakia, Klement Gottwald, back from the dead & with the lower half of his body replaced by spider legs.
• Cast from Hit Points: The Lightning Gun & Ball Lightning Launcher both consume Electricity as ammo, which the player can be most reliably obtained by shocking themselves by opening electrical closets or standing on electrified rails, sacrificing some health for the additional ammo. Partially averted in that electricity can also be obtained from more traditional car battery pickups.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: The warning "Do Not Enter The Tower" is scrawled in blood, with a freshly drained Smaskou nearby, just before the end of the Mausoleum level. Naturally, the tower is where you need to go.
• Crate Expectations: Wooden crates with diagonal boards appear in the very first level.
• Creepy Cemetery: E2M3 takes place in Velhartice Cemetery, now populated by gas-masked mutants & the undead.
• Deadly Doctor: Appropriately, the signature foes of "E3M2: Hospital", are the Pathologists; burly medical personnel staffing the place. Up close, they'll try to stab you with a syringe or will fling buzzsaw blades from a distance.
• Dem Bones: The Walking Corpses - hostile skeletons appear in "E2M3: Velhartice". They behave similarly to the zombies from Quake, throwing rocks at the player & walking with a painfully slow gait.
• Denser and Wackier: Despite its depressingly bleak aesthetic, the game gets progressively sillier as it goes on. From episode one where you have to inexplicably fight living objects as minibosses, to episode two in which you face off against killer chickens and a waddling statue, to episode three where you fight mansized newts and Mooks riding bumper cars as dance club music plays. And that is saying nothing to the sheer absurdity of each episode's Final Boss.
• Distracted by the Sexy: A rare case of the game interface getting distracted. In "E2M6: Dobrosov Castle", the player will come across crudely scrawled graffiti of a naked lady. Upon clearing the level, one of the end-of-level camera shots is a still close-up of the graffiti centred directly on her exposed chest.
• Elite Mooks: The Skapucí ("Hooded") appear similar to the regular Smaskou, except they wear black hooded trenchcoats instead of brown uniforms & fire their vz. 58 rifles in bursts rather than single-shot. They can also Teleport Spam around you & take somewhat more damage to bring down.
• Evil Cripple: The Infested Riders, introduced in "E2M3: Velhartice"; legless, gas-masked men in wheelchairs. They possess above-average health & can attack by either leaping at the player or firing a rapid volley of projectiles at them, the latter of which can kill extremely quickly.
• Excuse Plot: In keeping with games of the 90s, there's no real explanation as to why any of this is happening or what's going on. From the context, you can determine that your character is slamming AZ-5 buttons to prevent nuclear explosions (as shown at the end of E3M1 where your character fails to reach the button in time & a nuclear missile gets launched), & the ending may imply that all this is happening because a time-travelling Vladimir Putin ate one of the gears from the Prague Orlaj (astronomical clock tower), which according to local legend would lead to the nation's doom unless a hero born on New Year's night shows up to save it.
• Exploding Barrels: Shooting metal barrels make them explode, damaging everything nearby.
• Expy: Quite a few of the enemies are directly inspired by monsters from Quake.
  • The Kejdovec ("Slurry") is Fat Bastard in riot gear wielding a riot club & a grenade-launching pistol, behaving similarly to the Ogres from Quake.
  • The Konfident, a large floating head that spits glowing darts at the player, is very similar to the Scrags.
  • The Final Boss of Episode 1, "Gottwald", particularly his new spiderlike legs, looks very similar to the Vores.
  • The Hussite Crossbow, added to replace the Hussite Handgun as the novelty ancient weapon, is a dead ringer for the Ethereal Crossbow from Heretic, right down to firing glowing green bolts.
• Fission Mailed: The "Mission Complete" screen for "E3M1: War with the Newts" adds a question mark to the end of its title, since it ends with the player failing to prevent a nuclear missile from launching & detonating above the city they just fought through.
• Flying Face: The Konfidents are floating heads that fire blinding projectiles. The boss of Episode 2 is the disembodied, giant head of president Gustav Husák.
• Gas Mask Mooks: Most of the humanoid enemies encountered in the first episode wear either gas masks or protective hazmat suits. Even the Hellish Horse enemies wear masks.
• Guns Akimbo: The Pistol can be duel-wielded if a second one is found.
• Gun Twirling: The player character likes to twirl guns after firing.
• Hellish Horse: Šemík the Horse & Gimps; large, aggressive horses that dart around the arena at full gallop. The former wear gas masks & can leap high into the air, while the latter wear bondage masks & are ridden by shotgun-wielding Headsmen, who will engage the player on foot if their steeds fall. Both are tough, fast, unpredictable, extremely creepy, & use hit-and-run tactics that can often catch the player by surprise.
• Homage: Is a Soviet-era Czech-themed one to Quake, with some additional influences from Chasm: The Rift (such as progressing by shooting fans to access air vents & shooting electrical boxes to open doors).
• Hyperactive Metabolism: The game's main healing items consist of various Czech & Soviet-era foodstuffs; Liver Dumplings (2 HP), Tasty Canned Poultry (5 HP)^note Labelled "Canned Blood & Fat" (an old Soviet-era Czech product meant as a soup base) in older versions, Kifli (10 HP), packets of Semi-Skimmed Milk (15 HP), German Meat Salads (25 HP), Medkits (25 HP) & hampers of "Soup, Main Course, Cake" (50 HP).
• Jump Scare: Episode 2 has few such moments, most notably when picking up that one key in E2M7:The Granny's Valley.
• King Mook: The Overgrown Skull Spider, the boss of "E1M7: Underground Stream" this is to the Skull Spiders.
• Lean and Mean: The shotgun-toting Hazmat Suits ^note Called "Likvidators" in older versions, have inhumanly long, spindly limbs. They're also quite fast and can kill you in only a few shots.
• Living Statue: In E2M7, the Granny statue comes alive after the aluminum key is picked up.
• Locomotive Level: Episode 2 has a secret level like this, accessible by going down a tunnel nearby the normal exit unlocked by shooting an electrical panel in the ceiling of the staircase leading to it. It is also one of the shortest levels in the game.
• Look Both Ways: The second arena fight in E3M6: Bubny takes place within the train station with trains passing by every now and then. The player can use the trains to their advantage but also have to be mindful to not get run over all the same.
• Mook Maker: E3M1 has Spawns, water tanks that continuously spit out more Newts until they're destroyed.
• Monster Closet: There are a several places where walls lower to reveal small rooms with enemies hiding inside them.
• Nintendo Hard: The game's overall combat difficulty is about on par with most 90's era shooters, however, health, armour, and ammo are noticeably harder to find than games like Doom or Quake, which can add significantly to the overall difficulty. Rather than the harder Build Engine games such as Blood or Shadow Warrior, finding secrets for extra health and ammo is almost essential for smooth progress.
• Playing Possum: One of the pain animations of the Hazmat Suit enemies has them get seemingly knocked down for a little while, only to quickly stand back up again.
• Pocket Protector: One of the games' armour pickups are medals, based on an old Eastern European joke about Soviet World War 2 veterans having so many medals on their chest they'd be bulletproof.
• Precious Puppy: "E3M4: George of Podiebrad" features the Prague Ratters: Doberman pups that the player can rescue from cages found in the level. Their presence proves indispensable when the player finds themselves stripped of their weapons upon entering the catacombs, killing the rats infesting the area. The player can find three Ratters in E3M4, with a fourth found in "E3MS: Rathaus".
• Quick Melee: You can perform a kick. In addition to knocking back enemies and interacting with the environment you can also kick grenades back at the enemies that threw them at you.
• Real Is Brown: Almost everything is some shade of brown, as the game is heavily inspired by the first Quake game and set in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia.
• Rewarding Vandalism: Some objects in the environment drop pickups when destroyed.
• Sentry Gun: The ceiling-mounted Turrets.
• Sequential Boss: The Final Boss fight has a whooping 6 phases in total.
  • Phase 1 is a Trick Boss fight against Igor, a robot mech that is invincible to all attacks the player can throw at it... besides trying to walk down a flight of stairs.
  • Phase 2 introduces the true final boss - the Supreme Commander-in-Chief^note who seems to be either Vladimir Putin (who admittedly would have been alive in 1986) or a Czech politician like Gustáv Husák dressed like Putin, who comes out riding a bear & wielding a rocket launcher.
  • Phase 3 has the SCiC dismount his bear & fighting the player on foot, with the bear continuing to chase them.
  • Phase 4 sees the SCiC split into three clones of himself.
  • Phase 5 finally has the SCiC mount a pterodactyl & fights you from it, with regular enemies spawning indefinitely until you beat him.
  • Ultimately, Phase 6 has you crawl down the SCiC's throat to destroy his heart, à la the Time Judge final boss in Chasm: The Rift.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: "E3M4: George of Podiebrad" features a Shield-Bearing Mini-Boss in the form of The Hussite King, which comes with a crossbow alongside a shield, using the latter in response of getting attacked.
• Shmuck Bait: At one point in "E2M1: Točník Castle", the player finds a painting of a ghostly woman saying "Trust others, but be wary of whom you trust." If they turn their back on the painting, the White Lady emerges from it & starts throwing fireballs at them.
• Secret Level: Every episode has a level that can be accessed through obscure means and is not mandatory.
• Short-Range Shotgun: The Soviet Shotgun has a very wide shot spread, being ineffective past about 15 feet or so. Like its Quake & Doom inspiration, the Brno Super Shotgun has an even wider spread & shorter range, only really being effective at point-blank range (but it absolutely destroys anything at that range).
• Shout-Out: To the famous Soviet cartoon Nu, Pogodi! & the Elektronika Game & Watch clone based on the show, which is a Game Within a Game in E1M3.
  • The player exits levels by hitting a Big Red Button, much like how Duke would in Duke Nukem 3D. However, instead of setting off a nuclear warhead like Duke, the button's Cyrillic "AZ-5" label denotes it as a SCRAM switch, which prevents just such a detonation. Well, except for E3M1.
  • True to throwback 90s shooters, the quick melee attack is a kick; a dead ringer for Duke's Mighty Boot, with a bit of The Postal Dude's Quick Kick for flavour.
  • Riding the mining train in "E2M2: Uranium Mine" earns the achievement "On A Rail".
  • The Jump Scare after picking up a certain key in "E2M7: The Granny's Valley" may have been inspired by the infamous Vanity Plate of the Russian TV Studio VID.
  • After defeating Episode 2's final boss in "E2M8: The Degustation" a small room with a mop opens up next to the room containing the exit button. Hopping on the mop & cleaning the whole arena spotless earns the achievement "Viscera Cleanup".
  • "E3M1: War With the Newts" is one too, well, War with the Newts. The level also features several Wolfenstein 3-D references:
    • The level begins with the player in a cell, having just lured in & murdered a guard to facilitate their escape.
    • Outside of the player's cell, one of the other cells has a sign next to it which reads "Blazkowicz". Another sign near the cell block entrance reads "Achtung!".
    • A spinning top can be found close to the stores, and those familiar with Inception can take it as a hint towards the nature of the level.
    • A couple of secrets in the level contain piles of gold that the player can collect for 10 armour points apiece.
  • The final level's Trick Boss, Igor is a bipedal mech that's Immune to Bullets but becomes helpless if he tries to walk downstairs, much like ED-209. The fight after that one happens in a Stadium, like in the final level of Duke Nukem 3D's third episode.
• Staircase Tumble: The first boss in the E 3 M 7 will tumble when it needs to navigate stairs.
• Super Drowning Skills: Excluding Bečva, all enemies who fall into water deeper than their heads will die immediately. This is an Anti Frustration Feature added because previously enemies that fell into swimmable water could shoot at the player. In contrast, the player was restricted in their ability to shoot back due to the water.
• Suspiciously Cracked Wall: Much like Blood, certain secrets are hidden behind cracked walls that can be blown open with explosives.
• Tank Goodness: A Czechoslovakian LT vz.35 MBT is fought as a boss at the end of "E2M4: Factory Farm". It can only be damaged by attacking its turret.
• Translation Convention: All signs & posters are in Czech. Using the interact key on them will give you English subtitles.
• Trick Boss: The seeming final boss turns out to be a tribute to ED-209, in that it looks intimidating and is seemingly Immune to Bullets but is defeated by being unable to walk downstairs. Then the real multi-phase final boss appears.
• Unique Enemy: The animated Loader enemies only appear once in the first episode, but doesn't have a boss health bar. It also appears in the 3rd level of the 2nd episode, so it seems to be used as a miniboss similar to the horses.
  • The Newts are only encountered in the level "E3M1: War With the Newts". Given the level in question is implied to be a fever dream, their absence from that point in the campaign forward makes sense.
• Unorthodox Reload: Picking up a second pistol changes the reload animation to having the player tossing the guns in the air, flipping them.
• Vent Physics: A few ventilators will propel the player upward when standing above them.
• Waking Up Elsewhere: "E3M1: War of the Newts" ends with the player at ground zero of an accidental nuclear launch. "E3M2: Hospital" begins with them falling out of bed in the titular hospital.

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