The creator of Dusk & Iron Lung has created a gruesome, but surprisingly hilarious horror game about beating killers cultists using lead pipes and 2x4s

I'm always up for a David Szymanski game. The Dusk and Iron Lung developer has a real knack for making games that feels good. No matter the genre, his games are always full of anarchic humor and have great sound design. Butcher's Creek by Szymanski feels like a winner. It's a first-person horror game that focuses on melee combat. You face off against torture cultists set in rural Appalachia.

It's like so many indies that it's reviving an idea or genre that the big dogs Nintendon’t anymore. Selaco, an indie celebration Monolith's F.E.A.R. is Butcher's Creek's take on the studio's second horror hit, Condemned : Criminal Origins. Condemned has you playing as an FBI agent who is accused of murder. You have to fight off hobos using improvised weapons, and you are also threatened by paranormal entities.

Butcher's Creek swaps Condemned's idealized, Fox News-style inner city rundown for some classico rural solitude. You play as a Scum Bag who has come to the boonies to find VHS snuff movies and gory Polaroids to sell to the highest bidding? For his own edification or amusement? Billy Butcher's Creek is soon up against a gang that's not nice.

The sense of horror and the sense of humor are in stark contrast. The atmosphere is oppressive and thick: rustling forests at night and stark torture rooms in run-down, repurposed interiors of industrial buildings that remind me a lot of Silent Hill 2 and Manhunt. GoldSrc Source cusp graphical accuracy is enhanced by a fuzzy camera screen effect. This is similar to how Unrecord impressed us with its bodycam presentation. Maybe the best way to achieve videogame realism would be to make your screen worse. There are many things to consider.

The atmosphere of the cult grew and grew until I came across some of their workplace correspondence. These guys exchange loose leaf notes, much like interoffice emails. You can read about all their little squabbles, complaints, and squabbles. Gary, a psycho axe killer, writes: "Like, why are we all wearing the same outfits?" When you're hacking off limbs and working up a good sweat, wearing surgical gloves and a hood is really uncomfortable. Another note extols the benefits of finally working with "The Port City Manhood Masher", with the Masher responding with a curt request to remain professional.

I also enjoyed the melee battles, but I think they could be improved before the game's release in January. I wish the cult members were more aggressive. They would often hesitate or hang back, which left me with too much breathing space. I found that the old Elder Scrolls Shuffle of "step forwards, attack, then step back" worked better than parrying. The feeling of combining a melee into a Duke Nukem Kick into another melee was always fantastic. And the intro sequence in the demo may be the easiest part.

I'm pretty sold: I felt stressed out and unnerved while playing Butcher's Creek's Demo. The game relieves this tension with its humor and that "fuck yeah" feel of winning a melee fight. You can check out Butcher's Creek's demo and wishlist it on Steam.