Review - Brush Burial: Gutter World

Brush Burial: Gutter World officially releases today! Hats off to Knife Demon Software for getting this game out, as there's truly nothing I've played like it (more on that later). I was lucky enough to have gotten a review code for this game, and I'm excited to share my thoughts now that it's out.

In Brush Burial: Gutter World, you are time, violence, and sex appeal manifest.

The game's initial screen greets the player with a level of candor the likes of which will set the tone for the rest of the endeavor.

And you know what? It's right. It's spot-fucking-on. This game is the antithesis of everything I am as a gamer. Stealth is more often than not something I opt to avoid, as it either goes against the way that I'm engaging with a game and the loadout that I've built, or it fails to do so and ends up being an alternative approach to combat that lessens the intended difficulty of the game significantly. On top of that, I don't play many games that have stealth as the main way to perform any tasks, because I prefer facing my enemies head on.

With all that said, Brush Burial: Gutter World is about more than just sneaking around and getting a quick kill. You play as Fennel, a devil trying to make ends meet as an assassin in various cities that feel discarded by the rest of the world. From top to bottom, the environments of this game give off an air of poverty, struggle, and compassion in ways that sometimes mirror our own lives. I'm not saying that we're all a bunch of caked-up demon women with sharp tails and cool outfits (kudos if you are), but that the problems demonstrated in this game are more human than anything.

The tutorial lets you get your bearings with the game's systems before getting the ball rolling. You can climb up almost any surface with your tail, shooting you through the air like greased up monkey bars. You can pilfer items from shelves, gain a mysterious resource that the game tells you to figure out the use of (no, I'm not going to tell you either), take and use marital and improvised weapons, and talk to most of the NPCs. On top of these, you can slow down time with a focus ability, adding a bit more precision to your actions. Everything you do in this game has to be calculated in order for you to succeed; you can't barge into a room and make use of a faulty line of sight to get away with dispatching every enemy in the area, and you might even be able to negotiate your way out of a few scrapes if the right guard wants some grog. Every kill is earned through beautiful assassinations and takedowns on your targets. Every level is designed to be replayed no matter the outcome. In Brush Burial: Gutter World, you are time, violence, and sex appeal manifest.

It's a wonderful dichotomy that manipulates the player and forces you to remember the screen that preludes all of this.

Each level is deceptively large, virtual jungle gyms with a myriad of approach options, all of which are distinct from one another. Take Chug Mart for instance, a convenience store sitting at the edge of the world. This level emphasizes the handful of ways to get to the main objective of this game. While death may not be unavoidable for both the player and the NPCs, direct combat is. Stealing a Hellionaire Medallion after assassinating an enemy practically unlocks another path to complete the stages in this game.

Every NPC in this stage can be spoken to unless you're caught trespassing, and that alone fleshes out the world here a ton. In front of Chug Mart there's an NPC who says he's heading off to the Snag, and after Fennel says she's from there, he offers to tell her family how she's doing. Complete stranger, mind you. It's touching.

Hellionaires will be your most common enemy, but even these armed brutes are suffering the woes of life. Some of them seem to just be collecting a check, while others hold up the system that puts them at the top and requires others to wear a big, shiny gold badge that lets them know you're a part of the club. It shows that these aggressive bouncers are probably in the same spot that Fennel is – overworked, pissed off, trying to make ends meet. The difference here though is that their job seems to be pretty stable unless they kick the bucket.

Regarding the presentation, this game is such a unique case for me, as I haven't spent a lot of time in the PSX indie space. I quickly fell in love with the splotchy pixels that gave everything breadth. I found myself paying attention to the details on motorcycles, cloth patterns, the types of leaves on trees. So much of this game's visuals are mesmerizing in a way that contrasts the hasty nature of itself.

The sound design is dynamic and always tense. It feels like there's never a real moment for a break, even before going out on a mission. Soft chords will rest in your ears while the sounds of rats scurrying, slugs crawling, and the breeze scratching through the air all serves to make you anxious and uncomfortable. It begs for impatience from you, for a desire to go as fast as you can with the ultimate sense of urgency, but in order to succeed you have to hear that song and turn that haste into precision. It's a wonderful dichotomy that manipulates the player and forces you to remember the screen that preludes all of this.

To close things out, I want to talk about the combat and general feel of everything. Further outing myself as someone who felt like he was learning how to walk, I'm not used to playing games on keyboard and mouse still. Perhaps this is something that I've simply thought about too much in the time that I've played this game, but I've gone back and forth on whether or not there should even be any controller support for this game. On one hand, it would be a huge boost in accessibility for the small handful of people that are like me and have a hard time using a keyboard for anything that isn't typing. On the other hand, being forced to understand the keyboard layout more intimately created a clear line of improvement that I noticed while I played the game.

In terms of combat itself, it feels great, but even takedowns come with their own small learning curve. Assassination animations are clearly based on which angle you take to go in for the kill, some lasting longer than others for what I assume is an invisible health bar or some other thing, as I did notice that wounded enemies were taken down a lot faster. Enemies are armed with swords, guns, and axes, each of which can be picked up and used, but are by no means a way out of taking enemies down. They all come with limited uses in some form, so you're better off getting off a slash or two, pocketing the weapon, then going in for a takedown. In groups of enemies, it's important to disrupt their attack timings and find the perfect window of opportunity to cinch that quick kill before moving on to the next Hellionaire. I had a lot of fun throwing items at them and getting a short stun that let me get behind them while using my focus to slow things down and get the right angle.

NPC aggression is depicted both visually and auditorily, with an off-putting static and that gets louder and louder until tension breaks and the track changes. Everything's fast and dangerous now, everyone knows you're here. It's thrilling and anxiety inducing in way that makes you want to remember every detail that you can store in your mental map before it all goes to shit, and you have to run it back.

Brush Burial: Gutter World is a game that makes me check myself before I even think about pressing play, and I appreciate the humbling experience this is. Mastery is something to be earned, and every life taken, every door unlocked, and every completed contract felt that way.

Brush Burial: Gutter World is out on Steam now!

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