Carnal is an FPS made in the spirit of the long-gone era of this genre’s fast-paced, key hunting days. To be more specific, it is heavily inspired by the original Quake in the low poly 3D art style they’re going for. It truly looks the part, to the point that I likely would have been wondering what Quake source port they used if the Unity engine logo didn’t pop up in the intro. We play as a nameless soldier of the Realm Defense Force sent in to combat the Sons of Ark forces that have invaded. The story here is so unimportant that you won’t even get that bit of setup unless you select it in the main menu. Choosing a new game will throw you right into the fray, and your first sight will be an enemy break dancing in front of a boombox. That sets the tone for what you can expect far better than any exposition.
As fresh as his dance moves are, you eventually have to put your shotgun to use and kick off a massive brawl in the streets. An interesting aspect of this game is that most of your weapons are hit-scan, meaning they will damage your foe as soon as you pull the trigger. Meanwhile, all their weapons shoot out slowish moving projectiles that you can dodge if you are skilled enough. If you’re familiar with these types of shooters, you’ll likely find Carnal pretty easy on the default Normal difficulty. Switching it to “Hardass,” on the other hand, makes it incredibly challenging. With how aggressive and predictable the AI is, it is easy to abuse your hit-scan to safely take them out from miles away. Even your shotgun is like a sniper rifle as it doesn’t lose accuracy with distance, yet the enemy’s attacks do. Massive wide open areas are Carnal’s favorite form of level design, which negatively impacts the gameplay on many occasions.
Another odd design decision is the slow movement speed of our character. It is enough to reliably dodge your way out of attacks, though the occasional long treks across the vast maps will make you wish for a sprint button or for an increase to your overall speed. I wouldn’t call the level designs bad, however. They range from mostly good to a few just being decent enough. While stretched out for the sake of it at many times, the dev did put a lot of small details and interactivity to make it feel like more than just walking through a barren landscape while shooting. You can turn off lights, flush toilets, use vending machines for a quick snack, and more. It captures the Build Engine’s feel of having a lived-in world with its simulation aspects. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the carnival level with rides you can actually get in.
While I’ve talked about the level design, the set-pieces are where Carnal really excel at. Darn near every level has multiple moments that had me say “oh damn!” or features other just as memorable scenarios. Funnily enough and completely accidentally, this turned out to be a pretty solid game for the spooky month of October. It has several moments of lowkey horror, like finding the warm glow of a CRT in an otherwise empty room or walking through a haunted school. You never know what to expect out of this game. One of my favorite moments occurred during a city level. I heard a rumbling noise and decided to go see what it was. After turning a corner, I did a 180 and ran back just as suddenly as I had entered. Behind me was now a T-rex with mounted rocket launchers that had just blasted apart the area where I was a few moments ago. I somehow ran into a second one soon after and had to fight out of a nearby building to stand a chance against the onslaught of explosives barreling my way.
I can randomly pick from one of the 17 levels and likely be able to recall just as interesting of an experience. The thing here is that levels don’t feel interconnected at all. It feels like a map pack, not a campaign. There is no sense of progression or theme to them. While I can recall the levels themselves, there is no chance I’ll remember which of the three Episodes they are in. Another oddity is the complete lack of saving. I don’t mean that you just can’t save in a level. You can’t save at all. Every level is unlocked from the get-go, and each one starts you off with every weapon but little in the way of ammo. Nothing carries over from one level to the next. It would be nice to at least have a badge next to a completed level, some type of scoring system, or anything. Once again, it all feels like a simple map pack due to the lack of any form of progression.
The funny part is that the fact that nothing carries over from level to level helps the experience. It gives you a strong incentive to explore and interact with these large levels. Every secret you find will be a joy because of this, and with the number of challenging boss fights in Carnal, you’ll be glad to have the extra ammo for the heavy-hitting weapons. Most of my pictures have me holding one of a trifecta of three weapons. The shotgun I use to mop up weaker foes, even from a distance, so it’s the workhorse of this game. The Assault Rifle can keep most enemies in a pained flinching state, making it useful for tougher opponents. And finally, we have the RPG. This bad boy has the explosion radius of a nuke and the damage output to match. It is devastating for clustered foes. This is very satisfying to use, especially with the enemies being quite prone to gibbing. As similar as the visuals are to Quake, your foes go down much quicker and have a better sense of impact due to that.
Now here’s where things start taking a turn for the worse when it comes to your arsenal of weapons. Your ultimate weapon is a RayGun that takes 50 Cells per shot. Arbitrarily, you can only carry 100 Cells at a time. The thing is, your Plasma Gun uses the same ammo. If you so much as accidentally fire a shot with it, you’ll no longer be able to fire your RayGun twice. With its relatively low damage output, the Plasma is a weapon you should use under no circumstances. It is much the same story with the Chaingun. You’ll find its damage output similar to the Assault Rifle, yet it burns through ammo like crazy. With everything but the Plasma Rifle and RPG having hit-scan projectiles with perfect accuracy, combat can start feeling samey as the real difference comes from behind-the-scenes numbers, and less on how you use weapons.
The varied roster of enemies keeps it from ever getting boring. From T-rexes to cleaver flinging dolls, they each have unique ways of taking you down, and all have attacks that can be dodged which is where skill comes in. Even your lowly grunt soldier can be pretty dangerous if you let them fire off their weapons. While their projectiles aren’t hit-scan, their bullets slowly making their way to your position can keep you pinned down and cut off the path to where you were moving to. Good luck avoiding a shotgun blast in a small room. If you’ve selected the Normal difficulty, if you meet your end, you start with an extra life and can find more throughout the level. You’ll just reanimate on the spot with full health as if nothing happened. There is no such luxury in Hardass mode, though, and your foes deal double damage.
I do have an issue with Carnal’s flying enemies that wield RPGs. They move at ridiculous speeds and fire off a shot every single second. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, but if they weren’t so prone to killing themselves with splash damage within a couple of seconds, they would flat-out be unfair. The football players have a similar issue of insane speed, though being ground-based, we can nail them with splash damage of our own. This is far from a polished title, yet I’ve only had a single issue where I couldn’t progress and had no crashes or performance issues. My issue occurred in the fourth map of the first episode, i.e., the carnival. It had this bizarre problem of our character’s hitbox being too large to fit through a door and reaching a switch necessary for progression. Frustrated by not being able to find a way around this, I restarted the level and it somehow didn’t occur again that time. If you are wondering, no, there isn’t any rocket jumping, sadly. Shooting a rocket at your feet will result in you speedrunning to the afterlife instead of skipping level sections.
Carnal has issues, no doubt, but it is fun and pretty creative all throughout. It is also being sold for a single US Dollar. That, quite frankly, is a steal. You get a ton of bang for the buck and even receive the amazing synth-based soundtrack for free. It is a chaotic feeling labor of love with a playtime of around 6 hours. This will be of particular interest to those who love to explore in their FPS games. With its slow movement speed and hit-scan weapons, the combat remains serviceable but nothing to write home about. Its strengths lie in its exploration and multiple terrific set-pieces scattered throughout the levels. Like a roller-coaster, Carnal has its highs and lows, but they make for a pretty entertaining ride in tandem.
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