Hands-on Preview – Anger Foot
WayTooManyGames attended this year’s edition of Brazil Indie Games (BIG) Festival, which had a sizeable amount of playable demos and announcement from overseas devs and publishers. Devolver Digital had a strong presence in the show with playable demos for their upcoming 2023-24 titles. If there was one game that caught our attention right from the getgo, that game was Anger Foot.
Anger Foot was announced a while ago, coming from the same developers behind other absurdist Devolver releases, such as Broforce, Gorn and Genital Jousting. Taking the core concept of Hotline Miami (a gauntlet of small rooms packed with enemies, little health to manage, neon colors and ultraviolence), it improves upon it with a first-person perspective, and an emphasis on using your feet to deal with enemies.
The perks of not skipping leg day.
Yep, kicking foes is the main gist behind this game, and while there are guns scattered throughout levels (and you will use them, don’t get me wrong), they didn’t feel as useful, and most importantly, as cool as just slamming a door with your foot and killing whoever was behind it. The demo was short, very hard, but very fun. I got to play a couple of levels before losing all of my health and being forced to go back to the beginning of the demo, with very small loading times in between.
The only issue I noticed from this demo wasn’t related to the game itself, but the hardware it was played on. Anger Foot was playable on a laptop clearly not up to par in terms of GPU capabilities, resulting in a 30fps performance for the most part. Considering the visuals and scope of the game in question, I doubt this will be hardware-demanding, thus I am not particularly worried about the end product itself.
You can still use guns, but I’m pretty sure your feet pack a bigger punch… or kick.
From what little I could see of Anger Foot, this is shaping up to become a very typical Devolver release, in the best of ways: small, but over-the-top. Cartoonish, but also ultra-violent. Easy to pick up and play, but hard to master. The core gameplay loop that made people love Hotline Miami (and Devolver) to begin with, but in a new perspective, in a new setting, with more absurdist crap being thrown onscreen. I hope a Switch port is being considered in the future, due to the game’s arcadey nature, but I can already tell I’m looking forward to this one.
Anger Foot is slated for a 2024 release. So far, only a PC version has been confirmed.