Cruel is a frantic run-and-gun shooter where you boot cultists out of windows in a cursed apartment block that wants you dead

GamesFPSCruel is a frantic run-and-gun shooter where you boot cultists out of windows in a cursed apartment block that wants you deadWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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CRUEL - Trailer - YouTubeWatch On

CRUEL - Trailer - YouTube

Feeding your dog an entire can of soda normally results in a very sick dog. In Cruel, however, filling your pooch with off-brand Dr Pepper gives you roguelike-style upgrades. In my first run of this frantic run-and-gun shooter, I netted a bonus that gave me extra ammo when deflecting bullets with a melee weapon. To this I responded “Hold on, you can deflect bullets?”

Kicking down the door to the next level, I swiped my axe at the first cultist to take a shot at me, and the projectile pinged off the metal axehead. “Oh wow, you can deflect bullets,” I said, before blasting the cultist’s head off with my revolver.

While it’s a fair description of your actions in the game, Cruel is running with the wrong adjective in its title. It should really be called Cool, because that’s what it is, and effortlessly so. It’s a grungy, riotously-paced shooter that has shades of Monolith’s classic gunfest Blood, as well as more recent titles like Anger Foot, where you tear through the dilapidated hallways of an apartment block that’s actively trying to kill you.

A round of Cruel starts in wickedly stylish fashion, with your character tossing their revolver into a chalk pentagram on a table, as a disembodied voice asks “Who do you want to kill?”. You’re prompted to type a response to this, and I won’t lie, a few different names ran through my head before I settled on responding “You.” “Wow, really,” the disembodied voice replied. “Well, that’s disturbing, but who am I to judge?”

(Image credit: James Dornan)

Cruel

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Finally, Cruel also features a neat risk/reward mechanic that folds into the game’s rogue-like structure. The soda cans you guzzle to regain health can also be fed to a dog at the end of each level to gain permanent upgrades, like larger magazines and fire that burns slower. There’s even a third way you can use these fizzy drinks, stockpiling them to unleash a devastating soda attack.

Mechanically, Cruel packs an awful lot into a deceptively small package, costing just £8.50 in the UK onSteam, and less than ten dollars in the US. For this it gives you ten levels to blast through, which might not sound like much given you can complete them in a matter of minutes. But since Cruel has a roguelike structure, the challenge ramps up pretty quickly, so it’ll take you a while to master. Speaking of which, it’s past five o’clock on a Friday, and Fido’s jonesing for some sugar.

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