Boy oh boy. The unfortunately titled Immortal Redneck is a roguelike dungeon crawler set in Egypt. You play as the titular Redneck, a snarky Good Ol’ Boy who’s found himself mysteriously mummified in the middle of three pyramids in the desert.
The gameplay is fairly straightforward – play through each level of the three pyramids, beat the bosses, and discover more about your character’s unique situation. If you’re a fan of roguelikes, you will most likely enjoy this game. I, sadly, am not the biggest fan. So this was admittedly a bit of a struggle for me.
Upon starting up the game on the Switch, your default view is set to use the tilt controls for your camera. This was an immediate big “NO” for me. Besides the fact that the motion controls on the Switch are reliable once in a fortnight (remember those Zelda shrines, everyone?), it only took a minute or two of attempting to use this feature before becoming quickly nauseated/annoyed. I do get why the feature exists – make the chaotic action quicker, maybe more accurate, in theory. Props to Crema for making the attempt though, and thanks even more for mercifully giving us the option to turn it off.
When you enter your first pyramid, you are given a brief tutorial and you are taught to use your first three weapons: a pistol, a shotgun, and dynamite. As you go through each room, the doors lock and enemies spawn. You must destroy each enemy in order for the doors to re-open. As you progress through each floor, the enemies increase in difficulty but tend to drop more valuable loot. Oh, and there are pots and vases everywhere in the rooms. Break them all you want, you’ll receive no ammo or coin (to be fair, the game does tell you this).
When you die, regardless of how much progress you’ve made, you must start from the beginning of the pyramid again. You do have a few moments while you’re outside to build your stats before your next attempt. There is a skill tree available where you can purchase upgrades to help you progress faster through the pyramids, giving you more powerful starting weapons, for example, or allowing you to acquire health when you kill an enemy. Also, when you enter the pyramid again, any gold that you had on hand is taken away. So it’s a good idea to get as many power-ups as possible before going back in because it’s all going to be taken anyway.
The enemies can be very frustrating, especially when you’re just starting out with little to no upgrades. Their targeting is terrifyingly accurate, almost to an unfair degree. As fast as your character is, these baddies always seem to be able to get a decent bead on you. Speaking of speed, your character moves at a fairly rapid pace and can climb on nearly anything. At first, you might doubt that you can reach certain areas, but be sure to give it a go anyway. Also, there’s no fall damage, which is always a huge bonus.
One of the biggest annoyances in Immortal Redneck for me was the lava located in some of the rooms. This annoyed me because lava does damage to you, but you might not think so straight away, so you could aimlessly walk into it and take a fair bit of damage. This gets trickier as you progress, with harmful items becoming harder to spot on certain floors. Be sure to keep an eye out for these, especially the spikes later in the game, which were nearly impossible for me to spot even when I knew they were there.
All told, Immortal Redneck was not for me. But it might be for you. If you like first-person shooters, roguelikes, dungeon crawlers, and you can get over the inane redneck banter, then, by all means, don’t let this review stop you. Go out right now and buy this game. If you don’t like any of the above mentioned, best give this one a wide berth.
Immortal Redneck is available on PS4, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Steam for PC for €19.95.
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