YMMV / Paint the Town Red

• Accidental Aesop: Although you can fight with your bare hands and by kicking opponents until they die or otherwise stop moving, the game encourages you to fight dirty in order to survive and win. Use whatever you can find to win, gang up on enemies, use the environment against your enemies and don't be afraid to hide in unreachable areas so your enemies fight each other to a point where you can finish them off. Honor and nobility are respectful things but they aren't worth anything if your survival is on the line.
• Archive Panic: There are, as of February 2022, over 8,000 custom levels on Steam Workshop for this game, offering up hundreds if not thousands of hours of additional content. That said, like most games with an internal level editor, only a small fraction of these are worth checking out.
• Awesome Music: The original soundtrack by Total War composer Jeff van Dyck that replaced the royalty-free placeholder music the game used to have features some pretty kickass tracks with a surprising amount of variety.
  • The Disco theme sounds like something out of Hotline Miami.
  • The Pirate's Cove theme will make you feel like Errol Flynn.
  • The Final Boss theme in Beneath perfectly embodies the feeling of an epic showdown in an infernal arena.
• Broken Base: Some fans hate the inclusion of the Pursuer for limiting exploration by effectively forcing a time limit on every level, while others appreciate it for creating tension and encouraging speedy gameplay.
  • The January 2020 update tries to placate both camps; the Pursuer is no longer guaranteed to spawn, and you'll be warned at the start of the level if it will.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Basically the selling point of the game.
  • In Beneath, Swatting away Pursuers with the special weapons in "Blood and Fire" is immensely satisfying.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • The only safe-ish way to clear (or rather, survive) any level with the "Hard Shooter" modifier is to take refuge in a back room and blast enemies in the face when they crest the doorway, peeking out only to grab a fresh gun. It is possible to dodge bullets past a certain range by strafing, since bullets in this game are a fair bit slower than in most shooters and enemies don't lead their shots, which would be great if not for the fact that you're up against dozens of trigger-happy jerks in very tight quarters where you can't dodge their gunfire.
  • Many players only play as the Brawler in Beneath, chiefly because of the class's larger starting health pool and damage. While the other classes may move faster and offer some cool and interesting powers, they're also at a high risk of getting one-shotted by enemies like the Crystal Crab.
    • This may change with the addition of multiplayer to the mode, as classes that are better suited to support like the Vanguard become viable with a tanky Brawler/Mauler taking and giving the brunt of the damage.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Any enemy with an automatic firearm or a revolver will be this in the "Hard Shooter" modifier or in user-made levels that feature guns. Stand in their line of sight for more than a second and you'll get ventilated without mercy.
  • Beneath includes some tough enemy types to assert its credentials as the Nintendo Hard experience a Rogue Like needs to be.
    • The Crystal Crabs have a nasty hitscan laser attack with ridiculously good tracking, making dodging it without taking cover a matter of luck more than anything else. Sure, they die quickly if you attack their legs, but the hitboxes for those are kinda iffy and you'll more often than not hit their Nigh-Invulnerable bodies instead if you don't crouch and position yourself correctly. Even better, it isn't uncommon to walk into a room and have four or more of them pop up and mow you down with lasers. Forget the eldritch horrors beneath, chances are most of your deaths will be to these things.
    • The Giant Mages can bombard you with magic missiles and have the ability to rip open space itself to summon more enemies. Even getting up close is sketchy, because their melee attacks hurt and they can knock you away with a magic explosion (which on Blood and Fire, can end your run in an instant if you get blown into the lava). That alone wouldn't be a huge deal; what really gives them clout as Demonic Spiders is that if any Minions are around, they'll grant the Giant Mage an impenetrable shield, letting the latter attack you with impunity until the Minions are dead. May the Elder Gods help you if this happens in a hallway, and the Minions are on the other side. Your only reprieve is that they don't have a whole lot of health. Kill them quick and save yourself the hassle.
    • The Chargers on the Islands don't even have to be facing you nor moving to send you flying. Since you face them on tiny floating islands surrounded by bottomless pits, getting punted by one of these is an almost guaranteed death.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The katana. It will insta-kill most enemies if you aim for their heads or torsos, and it has remarkable durability to boot. Its size and shape also allow you to kill multiple enemies with a single slash if you aim at their legs. You have to beat the Katana Boss to get it in the main game, though.
  • The shotgun also counts. As mentioned in the main article, the shotgun can mow down entire crowds of enemies with a single shot, limited only by its low ammo count. There's only one available in the main game however, and it's hidden out of sight.
    • Since Beneath has some degree of Power Creep, the new double-barreled shotgun has taken its place as the room-clearing beast in that game mode.
  • In Beneath:
    • The Black Katana is basically the standard katana but better in every way. It'll cut down anything short of an Elder God in one or two swings, including the aforementioned Demonic Spiders, and with its excellent durability one could potentially last you an entire level. What's more, if you unlock it as a random weapon spawn, you won't have to search far to find another one laying about if yours breaks.
    • The Laser Katana ups the ante by being unbreakable. Getting it in a Beneath playthrough is so obtuse^note When in the Construct, wait until you get notified of the Pursuer's arrival; kill the Katana Boss wielding this weapon that appears, and if you defeat The Trickster with his Laser Katana the weapon will spawn next to your pod. you're highly unlikely to find it by chance, but if you do get it you can plow through the rest of the playthrough without using anything else. It will also shorten the length and difficulty of The End's boss fight by deactivating four of the six Shard Lord pillars when you start of the battle.
    • If you manage to come across it early enough in Beneath, the Wealth upgrade will net you so much money you'll be able to buy almost any upgrade you come across, and still have enough money left over for health and energy. Chances are good your character will have much better stats with Wealth than any run without.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • As a general rule, any enemy with a shield is guaranteed to be more than a little annoying to deal with. While shields are breakable, hitting a shield rapidly degrades your weapons, and even though you can break the wielder's guard with a fully charged kick, you'll only get a brief window to attack before they put their guard back up again. Thankfully, the few shield bearers you fight in the main game aren't armed with particularly dangerous weapons and are vulnerable to being knocked over and disarmed, though some of the versions people have made in custom levels verge on full-on Demonic Spiders.
  • In Beneath:
    • The Minions. They die in 1 or 2 hits, and they only move about as fast as the emaciated, hobbled old men they are. Their laser attack, however, will force you to either circle strafe around them or get behind cover to avoid taking massive damage. This can get really annoying when you're trying to fight other enemies. What's more, if a Giant Mage is around, nearby Minions will cast a protective barrier around it, preventing you from attacking the former until you hunt all of the latter down.
    • Bore Worms love to pop up behind you and bite you in the ass, and then burrow back into the ground before you can react.
    • Hydras qualify chiefly because blunt weapons do jack against them due to their Healing Factor; you'll need a bladed weapon to cut off their heads, or else you'll just be wasting your weapons wailing away at them. While their attacks can be pretty damaging, Hydras are so slow you can easily outrun them - except when they're blocking a vital hallway.
    • The spiders in the Ruins are tiny targets that lunge around, throwing off your aim. Plus, they scream.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • User-created mobs with extremely high health and no accompanying buffs to dismemberment may occasionally survive being decapitated. The sight of a guy you just beheaded with a katana getting back up to continue kicking your ass is either funny or scary, depending on whether or not you're expecting it.
  • On a similar note, enemies can sometimes survive getting blasted through the head, leading to walking horrors like this unlucky bastard.
  • While more common in user-made maps than in the main game, you'll sometimes hear female brawlers with male voices or vice-versa. This can lead to some uncomfortable laughs when you take out a user-made stripper character on a custom level and hear her let out a loud, deep guttural man-growl.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Pursuer, bar none. "Beneath" may be plenty tense, given its unforgiving Rogue Like nature, but receiving the notification that one is patrolling the level will push you to find the exit ASAP; 'cause once it starts chasing you, that exit is the only way to escape it. The music will cut out, the screen will start turning red, and you'll hear a heartbeat that'll start thumping faster as it approaches. None of this is helped by how the Pursuer can phase through walls, constantly accelerates as it chases you, and if it catches you, game over. Fittingly, the quest to capture one is probably the tensest encounter in the game.
• That One Attack: The lunging attack that any Brawler or boss has access to once their health is low enough. Not only does it have huge reach, it comes with almost no warning. While your run-of-the-mill Brawler probably won't do too much damage, being at the receiving end of a lunge from the Katana Boss or the Solitary Prisoner can end your run in an instant.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: While most of the modifiers available for the Scenarios and custom levels make the game considerably easier (Weak Enemies makes all of your attacks a One-Hit Kill, for example), a couple will increase the difficulty, most notably Weak Player, Everyone Hates Me and Hard Shooter. Hard Shooter in particular is a complete Genre Shift from a brawler into a frantic shooter with relentlessly aggressive enemy AI with mercilessly precise aim, all the while you still lack a way to heal, so you'll likely camp out in a room hoping the enemies wipe each other out as much as possible before they come for you. If you're a real glutton for punishment, you could then add those other modifiers on top. Like all other modifiers, though, there's no achievement for completing levels in these modes.
• That One Boss:
  • Out of all the "Boss" enemies, the Katana Boss is easily the toughest one to deal with. The guy has the durability of Wolverine, and hits about as hard. To give an example of how tough he is, it's possible to go into the sandbox mode, take a shotgun, and shoot him until he's down to his goddamn skeleton. Even after that, it'll still take about 2 more shotguns' worth of ammo to take him out. What's more, the Disco level has precious few bladed weapons to use against him, so you better get ready to hurl a lot of glasses. This status extends to the "Shooter" modifiers as well - while the other Scenario bosses fall quickly to gunfire, he can sustain three whole assault rifles' worth of shots, and he's almost always armed with a powerful gun that can drop you in seconds. The Disco is arguably the hardest Scenario to clear in "Hard Shooter" specifically because of him.
  • The Deceiver is the most dangerous of the Shard Lords, by virtue of its ability to teleport, create copies of itself, and for being able to do truly absurd amounts of damage with every attack. Its melee strike alone can kill even a Brawler character with upgraded health in 3 hits or less. It's also the only enemy in the whole game you cannot escape from by simply booking it out of there - it will harass you to the end of the level by teleporting to your location every time you break line of sight.
  • The Crawler is a giant, beefed up Crystal Crab that can shoot up to five lasers at a time. Unless you get up close or get behind something, getting hit by any one of those lasers is all but guaranteed to drop you instantly.
  • The Trickster is a grueling three phase fight generally considered even harder than the final boss, and just getting to him is a major Guide Dang It!. He is capable of switching movesets from the main Scenarios on the fly, alternating between dual-wielded Black Katana spin attacks, boxing gloves like the Boxer, and even using probably the most broken weapon combination from the main game, a riot shield and a pump action shotgun, against you. And that's just the first phase. In his second phase, he fills the arena with water while shooting you with a cannon from a rock in the center, turning the battle into a brutally unforgiving platforming challenge where a single misstep can instantly kill you. Thankfully, the third phase is more like the first one, but regardless, if you can kill the Trickster you'll have your work cut out for you.
• That One Level:
  • Between all the main Scenarios so far, the Pirate Cove can be considered the hardest. Some of the enemies start with very powerful weapons, and there are environmental hazards like water, which insta-kills you if you accidentally fall in. That said, it's still pretty tame when compared to what's in store in Beneath and the Arena.
  • Caves III doesn't introduce any new enemies, so it tries to compensate by just drowning you in foes. What could make this level an absolute nightmare is when it decides to fill rooms with hordes of Crystal Crabs and Minions.
  • The Crystal Caverns aren't especially challenging combat-wise, but the omnipresent monochromatic, shiny blues throughout and the weird jutting angles of the crystals can make the Caverns really difficult to navigate.
  • The Islands and Blood and Fire qualify for consisting of lots of small platforms surrounded by Bottomless Pits, and for having enemies that are all too happy to knock you off of them.
  • Of the three Arena challenges, the third one is by far the hardest. The theme here is "shields", which are annoying enough to deal with even when you have weapons that can quickly break them, but the final wave ups the ante to insane levels by pitting you against an entire Roman testudo formation with little more than a few bladed weapons and a bunch of T-bone steaks to defend yourself with.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Blocking. Even with a weapon in hand blocking merely reduces damage, so trying to block a swing from a katana with a beer bottle will probably kill you regardless. Furthermore, this game lacks anything resembling a parry mechanic, so blocking attacks doesn't even stun enemies. Unless you're backed into a corner or have a shield, it's almost always a better idea to simply sprint or jump away from incoming attacks.

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