She's doing all of this for love.
"Let's start from the top. Name's Caroline, 27 Years old, Arms Enthusiast, Full time Mercenary, and Girlfriend to a wonderful man named Athens Fedder. Been hopin' to propose for awhile now, but unfortunately work's been a bit slow, meaning rings aren't exactly in my price range. Thankfully, some Warlock Twat named Crommune has acquired a rather hefty bounty on his head, and killing him was in the job description. Apparently he's good chums with a bunch of gits who run some kind of illegal science gig called the USC, and he was last seen heading to a base they cobbled together above the earth! So the plan's simple; break in, kill the target, collect my pay, and get home in three days, just in time for date night! So... Let's get this Bloodbath Started!"
—The game's opening cutscene
Viscerafest is a Retraux First-Person Shooter developed by Acid Man Games and Fire Plant Games, published by 1C Entertainment, and released in early access in May of 2021, with its second chapter releasing in 2022. The plot is as simple as the intro quote suggests: In an undetermined point in the future, a very normal woman named Caroline needs some extra cash to buy a ring so she can propose to her boyfriend. An illegal science ring has set itself up over Earth, and it's been pulled together by an alien named Crommune and his warhawk buddies. Between him and you is a gigantic space station packed to the brim with monsters and hostile aliens. Seems simple, right?
Well, it seems like Caroline has jumped into something a little more complicated than what she bargained for... Of course, that would force her to have to care, which Crommune and his cronies may find is harder to get out of her than you might think.
Viscerafest is a lightning-fast game based in small part on games like Duke Nukem 3D or Blood (and also one modern influence), where lots of things can be interacted with, the weapons are explosive and powerful, but ammo is limited and your opponent is just as deadly as you are. Caroline will have to run, shoot, bunnyhop, and punch her way through army after army of aliens. And maybe... just maybe... save the world... maybe?
Viscerafest contains examples of the following tropes:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: In the vein similar to Rise of the Triad, the weapon pickup messages are written like this.YOU BAGGED A BUNKER BUSTER.
- Adorable Abomination: Some of Caroline's art gives off this impression. Some. The rest... not so much.
- Alien Blood: As Caroline mainly rips aliens to shreds, the entire color gamut is possible.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: The BBQ Burner and the Warhound are capable of penetrating shields, making them useful for disposing of Hell Birds as well as dealing direct damage to Dr. Mortice.
- Blood Knight: Caroline loves her job to the point that when Dr. Mortice offers to pay her off (which would let her buy that ring that's the motivation for her taking on the job in the first place) she turns him down because "she doesn't take handouts".
- Bond One-Liner: Caroline is another proud member of the talkative First-Person Shooter protagonist club.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: The Fragmented Folly level of Chapter 1 has Caroline find an officer's decapitated head to use on a retinal scanner.
- Boss-Arena Idiocy: The fight against Dr. Mortice features EMP barrels that will stun him and disable his shields if you detonate them near his mech.
- Bottomless Magazines: You have finite ammunition that isn't exactly in high supply but you never need to reload.
- Bounty Hunter: Caroline's official job description, taking on a bounty on a warlord in hopes to earn enough for the ring.
- Easter Egg: There are some hidden references to other games that usually get a quip from Caroline.
- Samuel Hayden's corpse can be found in Disposable Danger. The same level also has a hidden decapitated Duke Nukem head.
- In one of the levels in Chapter 2 it's possible to find a fortune cookie with the message "You want a little Wang?"Caroline:: No thanks, I got one at home.
- Expressive Health Bar: The HUD has a Doom-inspired portrait of Caroline on the lower left, with bloodiness level reflecting her condition.
- Explosive Barrels: Wouldn't be a Nineties-inspired shooter without them.
- Feathered Fiend: A common enemy is an anthropomorphic, muscle-bound avian alien that serves as one of the game's melee mooks.
- First-Person Ghost: Despite the 2.5D aesthetics, (optionally) averted. You can get to see Caroline's pixelated legs when looking straight down.
- Fragile Speedster: Caroline is incredibly agile even by Boomer Shooter protagonist standards thanks to her dash as well as bunnyhopping letting her accelerate to ludicrous speeds but is also incredibly fragile.
- Funny Background Event: The title screen has a Nomad on the left, looking at the audience while sporting the "....you're seeing this shit?" kind of expression, which is itself a reference to the cover art for the original Doom
◊. - Guns Akimbo: Caroline wields the Shredders this way.
- Happily Married: Well, Caroline's trying, but proposal rings are expensive these days.
- Harder Than Hard: There are in fact three difficulties above the designated "Hard" mode.
It's that kind of game. - Hearts Are Health: Gibbed organic lifeforms (hostile and non-hostile) drop hearts that provide Caroline's primary method of healing. As in, the beating organ.
- Humanoid Abomination: Caroline is a little... off, to put it frankly. While she can look like a normal human thanks to a hologram glamor, her eyes are a bit larger than normal and look more like cat's eyes than normal human's, her smile goes literally ear to ear, she can eat the dead to gain back health (and it's implied from the art that she's doing it with octopus tentacles that pop out of her mouth), and half her face has been stripped of skin, leaving only the muscle underneath. Thankfully, the artstyle keeps it more cartoony than horrifying. The story implies that she's likely a parasitic creature whose humanoid appearance was taken from the woman that was her host.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The game has several sets of difficulty titles, randomly picked every time a new game menu entered. One of such sets is themed after relationship statuses.
- Interspecies Romance: Sure, calling Caroline human might be a stretch, but have you seen her fiancé?
- Ludicrous Gibs: The game isn't called Viscerafest for nothing. It also plays into the primary way you regain health.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The USC is trying to keep a Sealed Evil in a Can from actually busting out of it's confines, and Caroline has been unwittingly aiding it by killing them to get to Crommune.
- Nintendo Hard: The game does not hold your hand. Aside from the fact that Caroline is very fragile (forcing her to be on the move constantly) ammo for even the basic pistol is restricted, meaning that a spray and pray approach is heavily discouraged.
- Quick Melee: With the scarcity of the ammo, Caroline would end up relying on this quite a bit. Useful for gibbing enemies without wasting ammo, it's quite powerful and it has deceptively long range for a punch, being able to hit from a handful of feet away. It can also be charged for to turn it into a lunging punch.
- Perilous Marriage Proposal: Caroline's goal is to get enough money to buy a ring to propose to her boyfriend. Unfortunately the job takes a turn for the weird.
- Purple Is Powerful: Caroline has purple (or pink-ish purple) hair fashioned into a pony tail and she's a very violent and powerful One Woman Army.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Whenever her usually blue left eye turns red, Caroline is absolutely not to be trifled with.
- Rise to the Challenge: The penultimate section of Disposable Danger from Chapter 1 has Caroline climb up as the lava is rising.
- Save Token: Saving requires collecting and using consumable Save Beacons. The player can either use them on the spot - understandable consider how these tend to be placed or save them for later if they're feeling extra ballsy.
- Shout-Out: It wouldn't be a Boomer Shooter without it!
- It's most obvious in the form of Caroline's many one-liners, which are mostly directly lifted from Blood. Another Blood influence is Caroline's primary source of healing, which are beating hearts taken from gibbed enemies just like Caleb.
- The Chapter 2 update adds death splash pages, which reference Dark Souls and Capstone Entertainment.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: Comes in two varieties:
- The Bunker Buster is the standard shotgun useful for taking down mid-tier enemies.
- The Deus Mortis is a quad-barreled monstrosity that's ludicrously strong but ammo is a lot more rare. As such it's best saved for the tougher foes.
- Slasher Smile: Caroline's default expression, which is enhanced by her unnaturally large mouth and rows of jagged teeth.
- Spanner in the Works: It seems like everything the Warhawks are trying to accomplish get completely sabotaged by Caroline. Unfortunately, as the story progresses it becomes vague as to whether or not that would be the right thing to do, right up until C1L5, where it veers straight into Nice Job Breaking It, Hero
- Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: The game not only gives you a massive stockpile of ammo before you confront the boss of the chapter but will also autosave and explicitly tell you that you'll be facing a boss.
- Take That!: In Disposable Danger, one can find the decapitated head of Duke Nukem. Caroline lets out a quip referencing a rather infamous line from Duke Nukem Forever.
- Technicolor Eyes: Caroline has heterochromatic eyes that are bright greenish-blue and red. Chapter I ends with a being who has the exact same eyes showing up.
- Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Athens is an alien who can't be more than 5 feet tall, since Caroline towers over him.
- Two-Faced: Caroline is missing skin on the left side of her face. When not on the job she covers it up with a hologram.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Caroline can come across some unarmed aliens that resemble Quarians who can't do much beyond pleading before Caroline might eviscerate them for extra health.
- Video Game Dashing: One of Caroline's movement abilities, limited on a short cooldown.
