This might be Goblin Slayer's favourite game.
The year is 1984. On a whim one evening you decide to break into the local museum's basement and see what sort of treasures it might hold. One dusty wooden chest catches your eye. You open it, and a mob of strange creatures leaps out!
This particular chest was secretly a prison for the malevolent CHOP GOBLINS! Lured inside by the promise of delicious cheese and trapped for untold eons, they are now loose to wreak havok on the world once more.
You know what must be done. Grabbing an antique dagger from a pile of dustry artifacts, you give chase!
This particular chest was secretly a prison for the malevolent CHOP GOBLINS! Lured inside by the promise of delicious cheese and trapped for untold eons, they are now loose to wreak havok on the world once more.
You know what must be done. Grabbing an antique dagger from a pile of dustry artifacts, you give chase!
— Briefing screen of the game's very first level.
The above sums up the premise of Chop Goblins, a bite-sized (being completable in 30 minutes is a selling point) First-Person Shooter made with the Unity engine by David Szymanski that got a surprise releasenote on December 12th of 2022. The Excuse Plot involves you blasting goblins through a variety of time periods, spanning the modern day, 19th Century, ancient times and the not too distant future.
Chop Goblins contains examples of:
- Achievement Mockery: There's an achievement for somehow dying on Sightseeing mode.
- Adjustable Censorship: Kids Mode makes the blood green and prevents the Chop Goblins from gibbing when killed.
- Bad Future: The final level is set in Terminator-esque grimy future in which the goblins already won, not like it stops you form shooting more of them and setting things right.
- Book Ends: The Remix Levels end with a harder version of the Museum level that the main game started with.
- Bottomless Magazines: There's no manual reloading in this game; the shotgun and stake-thrower can be fired until you run out of ammo for them, and the flintlock has to be reloaded after each shot anyway.
- Cats Are Mean: The Dracula's Castle level introduces the feline Nospurratus as an enemy type that's fast and surprisingly sturdy for their size.
- Challenge Run: The Remix levels are harder versions of the original levels, with a different order, more difficult enemy placement, and trickier level progression, more often forcing you to look for secrets to progress.
- Checkpoint Starvation: There is no mid-level saving whatsoever. Not like it should matter that much with how brief the levels (and the game as a whole) are.
- Damage-Sponge Boss: Dracula, the game's only "proper" boss, is mainly difficult via his sheer durability.
- Elite Mooks:
- The Chop Goblinators in the final level, the Bad Future, are a lot faster and a bit tougher than the regular green knife-throwing goblins, and throw projectiles much more rapidly, but otherwise have the same basic attack pattern.
- The Pink Goblins introduced in the Remix version of Dracula's castle are a much spongier version of the Brown Goblin.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: The cars in The Streets level may as well be Exploding Barrels in all but name, as even a single Flintlock shot blows these up. With one exception of the mid-boss of the same level, being a car hijacked by plenty of goblins.
- Equipment Upgrade: A speedloader for the Flintlock is hidden within The Streets level, which increases the gun's firing rate. The Dracula's castle level has the holy water upgrade for the Dagger. The Bad Future has an upgrade for the shotgun's damage.
- Excuse Plot: The Chop Goblins are on the loose. Blast them all throrough a few different time epochs.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Played for Laughs. In Greece, you can get a Wand of Corinthian in the first half of the level, which the game says is a "lore-unfriendly secret", and the first time doing this grants you the "Ludonarrative Dissonance" achievement.
- Giant Mook: The Big Choppers - first encountered in the Greece level - serve this role. They have a lot of health, are hard to stun and they throw a swarm of axes in a Bullet Hell style spread pattern, so dodging their attacks can be tricky on tighter areas. The Remix Levels introduce The Green Chopper, a weaker, but faster version of the aforementioned enemy.
- The Goomba: The brown colored Goblins are the weakest enemy type encountered and one of the few that don't have a ranged attack.
- Hand Cannon: The Flintlock has a surprisingly high damage output, one-shotting the common brown and green goblins and taking most other enemies in 2-3 shots, but it has a very low rate of fire which is slightly mitigated by the speedloader powerup in Level 2.
- Haunted Castle: The third level is this. It climaxes with you fighting a singing Dracula.
- Huge Holographic Head: The Cybergoblin is a giant Chop Goblin head projected out of some sort of computer. It dies to literally anything.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Most of the levels are named after various mythological creatures:Sightseeing: - Explore The Levels with No Enemies or UI
Imp: You're new to PC shooters or just want a chill experience
Fiend: The intended balance for a first playthrough
Goblin: You've played this game before - I Shall Taunt You:
- That's the entire shtick of the Chop Goblindas and it's weaponized to boot.
- Dracula also taunts the player through song.
- Lock and Key Puzzle: The Streets level has you find the wirecutters to access the subway, and the Castle level has you seek out three Stone Masks to access Dracula's lair.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Can happen to the Goblins if you obilerate them with a powerful shot.
- Nail 'Em: The game's Machine Gun stand-in is the Vlad Mk.II Impaler, which is a rapid firing stake gun. It's obtained on the Castle level, while those good at secret hunting can find it much earlier.
- Magic Staff: Obtained on the Greece level, The Staff of the Corinthains is the final weapon in the game and it unleashes powerful blasts.
- More Deadly Than the Male: The Chop Goblindas - introduced form the second level - are larger than their male counterparts and attack by winding up then hurling insults at the player. They're the only Hitscan enemy type in the game and are particularly annoying in the Remix Levels where they are often positioned to snipe their insults at you with meager cover.
- New Game Plus: Beating the game unlocks the "Once Again..." feature in the main menu, which lets you start the game with all of the weapons you ended the game with. Keep in mind however that scoring is disabled in this mode.
- Outside Ride: The Streets level has a mid-boss fight with a car with a handful of Goblins clinging onto it. At the subway within the same level you'd also witness a train pass by with a lot of Goblins clinging to it.
- Parrying Bullets: Your trusty dagger can reflect the goblins' cleavers at them.
- Quick Melee: The antique dagger you'd start with can be used alongside any other weapon with the Right Mouse Button or the Use Key.
- Shout-Out:
- The final level is very obviously inspired by The Terminator, complete with the music utilizing synths that evoke Brad Fiedel's score as well as introducing an enemy type aptly titled Hack Goblinators.
- Subtle one, but the game has you start out in a present (well, as much as The '80s can be considered present) day, then go through medieval times, then onto Ancient times to finally end up in the future. Reverse the order of the epochs, and you'd get the exact order traversed through in Daikatana of all things. The Greek levels even strongly resemble the Greek levels in Daikatana in terms of appearance and environment.
- The Chop Goblindas behave extremely similarly to the zombies in Chasm: The Rift, a game that David Szymanski is a known fan of. It also happens to be another time-traveling FPS with a similar order of epochs (present day, Ancient times (albeit Egypt instead of Greece), Medieval times, and a sci-fi future.)
- The achievement for killing an enemy with their own projectile is called Die by the Sword.
- The flintlock may be one to Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi, given that the speedloader for it is identical to the flintlock ammo pickups from that game.
- Sniper Pistol: The flintlock has decent damage and perfect accuracy and can be used as a long range sniper, giving it utility even after you get more advanced weapons such as the shotgun or stake-thrower.
- Springs, Springs Everywhere: The Greece level features jump pads, which are one of the only ways the player character can jump at all.
- Standard FPS Guns: A knife (that can be used alongside other weapons), a Flintlock that serves a Revolver role with its combination of power and slow firing rate, an Automatic Shotgun, a Nailgun (dressed as a Stake gun) and the Wand of the Corinthians that functionality-wise can be described as a bit of an Anti-Material rifle or Rocket Launcher.
- Time Travel: The game takes on this from the conclusion of the second level where you chase the Goblins through the portal and has you end up in the 1600s, inside Dracula's Castle of all places, only to later end up in Ancient Greece and then in an alternate future.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The Green Goblins love tossing cleavers at you. The Big Choppers throw axes. The Goblinators use laser cleavers for this purpose.
- Unique Enemy:
- One area in the Castle level has a few Green Goblins on their Flying Broomsticks that aren't encountered any further in the game. They do make a couple more appearances in the Remix Levels, including a handful of flying Goblinators at the beginning of The Future Remix level.
- The Future level has a room full of Chop Goblinators wearing headphones that work at the computers. They don't attack you and instead speak gibberish into the headphones, but can still be killed.
- Weapons Kitchen Sink: The game's roster of weapons includes an antique Dagger, a Flintlock pistol, a very modern repeating shotgun, a rapid firing stake gun and a wand of Ancient Lore.
- A Winner Is You: All you get after destroying the Cyber-Goblin at the end of The Future is a text that spells out that you've arrived back to 1984, things seemingly came back to normal..... and yet the chest that contained all of those bloody Goblins remains open.
- Zero-Effort Boss: The Cyber-Goblin has no means of attack and goes down in one shot, ending the Goblin menace for the foreseeable future. However, in the room immediately before him you do have to fight your way through a huge platoon of Giant Mook and Elite Mooks to get to him.
- Averted at the end of The Future Remix, where you rematch Dracula in the final room where the horde originally was, this time throwing axes as "Axeula."
