I’m glad I played Receiver. Its a small game that borders on extreme frustration and almost unplayable rogue-like levels. Its a game that demands you memorize intricate mechanics and execute them through muscle memory alone. Its a game that I in the end, didn’t enjoy, but ended up having a tremendous amount of respect towards.

Receiver was a game made in seven days as part of a indie game design challenge. As a result Receiver’s art style is simple, buildings, enemies and weapons exist without any textures. This doesn’t harm the game however, as the art style, despite its simplistic approach works together with its dark and noir like atmosphere.   As you make your way trough the game’s randomly generated world, you’ll encounter only two types of enemies: robotic turrets and flying drones that quickly home in on your position. Despite the simple enemy design, each one is capable of killing the player in one hit, making it essential to slowly make your way through the game and carefully use your position and weapon to take out enemies. Enemies, being metal, do not go down easily and unless you have incredibly accurate aim, take several successful shots to take down.

As you make your way through each level, you are tasked with finding 11 individual cassette tapes, each of which provide more detail about the world and your place in it. Without spoiling anything, listening to the plot as it slowly unfolds is one of the more interesting aspects of the game and provides incentive to keep moving forward and in many cases, restarting.

The bread and butter of the game though is its gun mechanics. Although you only obtain three weapons in the game, each of these weapons has been meticulously built to function like a real world fire arm. Gone are the days of simply hitting “R” to reload, but reloading, preparing and firing each gun requires a succession of keyboard commands as clips are filled with bullets, inserted into the gun, the gun is cocked and then ready to be fired. Each weapon handles completely differently from one another and along with the mechanics, each new playthough starts the player with a random weapon, amount of ammo and location.

This is what makes the game so tense and so frustrating at the same time. Having complete knowledge of your weapon at all times, being aware of your ammo count and knowing how to handle each enemy with each weapon are the keys to succeeding. I played through and died so many time, that after a certain point, reloading, acquiring my target and firing. I was able to recognize that the heart and soul of the game lies in the gun mechanics more than the actual shooting itself. I experienced a rare moment of excitement as I quickly took out two turrets with well placed shots before quickly reloading and taking out a third flying drone. My victory was short lived as soon as I walked around the corner, being quickly taken care of by a high placed turret.

Receiver is a game that in the end, I didn’t really find an enjoyable and fun experience but an interesting one. Basing the mechanics around the gun itself rather than the gunplay is an interesting choice and something that deserves notice in a market obsessed with mindlessly gunning down enemies. However, the flawed hit detection and unforgiving difficulty didn’t make this an experience that I wanted to come back to once I finished.

Receiver was an interesting experience that I hope gets fleshed out in a full featured game one day as its main mechanic is something that I feel deserves a look at by everyone in the industry. As of now though, Receiver can be played for free through the Humble Store. By clicking on the link below, the next six hours will net you a free copy of Receiver on your own. While there is little to no hesistation to recommend it for the normal price of $4.99 (5,000 won), you absolutely cannot afford to miss out for the price of absolutely nothing .

Link to Humble Store: https://www.humblebundle.com/store

Remember as of this publishing, the offer only last for the next six hours!