Total Chaos Against Apathy

Very slick, very fast. Easy to learn, hard to master. Its a hacknslash on a slipnslide, but its blood instead of water. As you bounce around the arenas like a ping pong x pin ball that's been injected with enough fentanyl to kill a horse all you can seem to think is how much ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fun you're having. Simplicity breeds creativity and the limited control scheme all while having 3 separate weapons to freely use shows that off. I haven't seen a game without a strafe key control this smoothly. Every hit feels like a hot knife through a lead brick, every throw like a SAW movie style skee-ball machine, and every slam like a reflex test at the doctor who thinks you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ his wife. The hindering control scheme quickly turns into a challenge to adapt to and overcome with the eventual goal of skill being rewarded in a natural way that keeps you coming back leading the player to rewarding themselves. - Signed, the CHAMPION OF SLOPE ROOM

Total Chaos Against Apathy manages to transpose the 2d beat em up formula to a 3d action arcade game. The lack of evasive options outside of a superjoy, the use of tank control to limit your ability to run around enemies and the consistent and predictable hitstun puts the entire focus of the combat on positioning, spacing and crowd control. Enemies come at you fast and can easily surround you, requiring you to herd them together or use your superjoy proactively to maintain control. The presence of a ranking system together with a chain based scoring system frames the entire experience. Chaining together kills and cashing them out lets you work toward extends but it also steadily increases the difficulty until it reaches a breaking point where you aren't able to keep up anymore. Dying severely decreases the rank giving you breathing room and letting you start to build again in a really elegant and dynamic push and pull system; more importantly, however, makes extra lives an active resource you can use instead of simple assurance. The great pacing elevates the whole system with 13 arenas full of high octane chaos where you try to die slower than your enemies, interspersed with shorter stages focused on scoring or that work as breathing room without ever letting down on difficulty or becoming uninteresting. Enemies are also varied, are introduced pacing and work really well in large compositions that constantly try to outflank you and force you to use every mechanic to your advantage. All 3 of the weapons are well thought out and varied, focusing on various aspect of the combat system, be it throws for crowd control, spacing for high damaging attacks or the use of burst to mantain control of the battlefield. The arcade framework and the need to 1CC the game to complete frames the entire game, making every aspect of it shine and work together in a cohesive manner with a focus on fundamentals and mastery. The main drawbacks of the indie's scene rise of popularity in the mainstream is that it has changed from a grass root artistic movement to an industry that, maybe understandably, puts more and more focus on market and mass appeal. This has come to the detriment of the amateur soul that should be the key quality of indies or doujin games. You can see this soul in TCAA, an action game with an arcade framework, a rank system, tank control and a focus on 1cc is something that can only be made at the indie scale and it's an unique experience exactly because of this. A clear passion project that it's undeniably true to the developer vision and its elevated because of this. Tank controls are awesome.

This games rocks what the ♥♥♥♥

genuinely incredible

incredible amounts of sauce on display

Incredibly slick combat and visual style. The camera work is really good and it flows in a way that compliments the snappy animations. Your character is like... roller skating around in this game, which is really neat and takes some getting used to. But it really breaks up the tendency to "backpeddle all the time" that I find myself doing in some games. You can throw a centaur. All three weapons feel pretty different but they all have moves that feal really good when you land them. Well worth the price!

you can throw people at other people

Genuinely please play this. We need more games like this, made out of pure love and ambition. Also the music is good as hell!

This is a placeholder positive review, since I know I like the game, but can't properly put it into words just yet. I will update this review when I've formulated my thoughts! But yes, buy it, play it. It's good.

cool game