Service with a Shotgun

SERVICE WITH A SHOTGUN is a game with a neat premise (visual novel + wave shooter = delightful contrast) that gets a little too manic with experimenting with new mechanics instead of building off existing ones. For example: the game begins with the ability to purchase traps and blockers to coral the zombie horde into killzones; by the second chapter that gets abandoned. By the third chapter, it kinda returns by as a gacha and you have to hope you pull the blockers you need? And by the fourth, it gets abandoned again and you get a skill tree system to upgrade your gun which is the one and only way to take on the zombie horde. Also, the game briefly turns into a poor man's NEON WHITE. Any one of these systems would have been fine for the entire game - the constant switch-up is just... a little odd. Speaking of weird choices: the narrative goes from you filling in the shoes of a stressed-out shopkeeper in the post-apocalyptic wasteland to becoming the deadliest speedrunning boom shoot parkour expert who is the only one who can save the one scientist in the entire world with the cure for the zombie virus. And like. Okay? Sure, that's a fun place to take the story, I guess? And yet! I was never bored. Even when I questioned some of the half-baked gameplay design and absolutely wild plot twists: those thoughts never stuck around long enough to really annoy me (game's pretty short!) and ultimately I was having fun with the silly plot and characters!

A wild but fun story :) Thanks for the game! Also it helped me read faster so kudos

very good game, spoiler alert you can move around and use a shotgun in chapter 4

Got it for $5 and it was short but also had more in it than I expected. Achievements are pretty easy to 100%, just keep in mind that if you restart a chapter it also deletes progress you may have made into future chapters. (if you have completed 4 chapters and restart chapter 2, chapters 3 and 4 will be gone) There's also a difficulty slider for another replay if you found it too easy.

Breakdown: Graphics: 8.5/10 - Nice Pixel animation with some varied 3d mixed in. The design and atmosphere was fantastic from start to finish. Story: 8/10 - Pretty straight forward with a few choices that don't really change anything, but the story almost has a clerks in fallout vibe that makes you fall in love with all the characters. Gameplay: 8/10 - Visual novel, where you talk to npc's on front screen and then shoot zombies and build defenses by moving left or right while managing it all. There's a few surprise moments I don't want to spoil where the game goes literally off the rails. It's nothing that's ground breaking, but for a short sweet visual novel it carries itself well. Overall: 8/10 - Charming would be the word. You can tell the developer put a lot of love into the game from the graphics, story to the music. The end song is catchy and really makes you feel like you sat through a short animated movie. I highly recommend grabbing this one and playing through it in a day or over a few nights and support the developer. Looking forward to more from them and hope that one day we may get a sequel or revisit these characters.

This Visual Novel is HEAT!!!