Fistful of Frags
started as a deathmatch mod for Half-Life 2 in 2007. It's an Old West-themed shooter, and period weaponry like revolvers and single-shot rifles reign supreme; all of the guns have limited magazine sizes, are inaccurate, painfully slow to reload and take a long time to chamber another round, but they're deadly powerful.
This selection of weapons gives the game a unique competitive experience - instead of depending on high volumes of lead to take down a target and regenerating health to survive, you must be accurate, composed, and wary of how many shots you have left. Additionally, instead of basing scores on the raw numbers of kills and deaths, players win by amassing the most notoriety. Fragging an enemy with a lower-tiered weapon will yield more notoriety points. Health does not regenerate. The only way to recover lost vitality is by drinking copious amounts of whiskey, which blurs your sight. None of the gamemodes have any real objectives besides pumping as many enemies with lead as possible. The two team deathmatch mode allows you to play as Vigilantes or Desperados, while the four team deathmatch also lets you play as Banditos and Rangers
On May 9th, 2014, Fistful of Frags was released for free as a stand-alone game on Steam using the Source Engine. The new release gained the attention of YouTubers, whose videos are likely responsible for the game's expanded player base.
Examples:
- Anti-Frustration Features: You are healed back to full health whenever you open a loot crate (or at least its golden version), making you less likely to die by an enemy who finds you there.
- Badass Longcoat: Worn by two of the playable teams.
- One of the teams' character model is a Badass in a Nice Suit.
- Bandito: One of the playable teams are this by name.
- Bar Brawl: There's a bar in a few maps. Expect to fight there often, since health pickups are plentiful.
- Boom, Headshot!: Awards a 2X damage multiplier for guns. A single headshot will often decide the outcome of a one-on-one gunfight, even if the weapon isn't strong enough to kill outright in one shot. Humorously causes the victim's hat to fly off.
- Booze-Based Buff: In place of first-aid kits or Regenerating Health, health is recovered by drinking whiskey to dull the pain. Averted in that your aim is disrupted for a few moments after indulging.
- Bottomless Magazines: Guns must be reloaded or replaced. However, you'll never run out of bullets to reload with.
- Cigar-Fuse Lighting: The player uses this while throwing dynamite around. Despite none of the character models being seen with a cigar at any other time.
- Cool Train: One of the maps has a train running through the middle. It's slow enough to jump on and carries a chest of powerful weaponry.
- The train doesn't have any other cars, though, nor does there appear to be anyone operating it. Its only discernible purpose is to carry this gold box at walking pace through a battlefield.
- Crate Expectations: All maps have a number of chests in them, colored blue, red, and gold in order of rarity. Opening one takes a few seconds, but it lets you select a weapon from the list to equip. These weapons scale higher in power with the rarity of the chest they're found in. They respawn on a timer.
- Critical Encumbrance Failure: Averted. Carrying more and more weapons will gradually slow the player down. There is still a threshold after which picking anything up makes movement speed dives steeply.
- Do Not Run with a Gun: Trying to hit any target further than an arm's length away while moving at full speed isn't worth the thought. Couple this with the generally slow fire rates the dated weapons have, and gunfights take a unique "shoot 'n' scoot" sort of format as players slow down or come to complete stops before making their shot.
- Flechette Storm: Knives can be thrown in a pinch.
- Grenade Hot Potato: Dynamite on the ground can be picked up and thrown back at the enemy. Helpfully, the dynamite flashes green, yellow and finally red to indicate how close to detonating it is.
- To give an enemy a nasty surprise, shoot the dynamite before he can pick it up. Or as it's leaving his hand.
- Exploding Barrels: There are small, red barrels of gunpowder in all of the maps. These barrels can be picked up (they're heavy) and thrown, and will explode if dealt sufficient damage.
- Ghost Town: Though all of the maps seem to be based on settled rural areas, you don't ever find anyone. Almost as though people were running from the nearly infinite number of virtually identical gun-toting murderers.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: An option in combat. A perk lets you wear Brass Knuckles that deal more damage and can knock guns out of an enemy's hands.
- Guns Akimbo: All of the one-handed guns can be dual-wielded with each other, whether doubling up one gun (explicitly encouraged for the SW Hammerless, which you start with two of, and the Sawed-Off Shotgun, which you can spawn with one of and buy another cheaply from crates) or pairing up two different types. A powerful tactic is to wound an enemy with a powerful revolver and finish them off with a faster-firing pistol in your offhand.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Your character's dominant hand is a gameplay mechanic, defaulting to right and able to spend points to make yourself left-handed or even ambidextrous. You can switch which hand you're holding a single-handed weapon in at the press of a button; using a gun in your non-dominant hand reduces accuracy slightly, but allows it to be mixed and matched with other one-handed guns. Making your character ambidextrous removes the accuracy penalty, but in turn prevents you from aiming one-handed guns even when used on their own.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Players can reliably hit targets their pistols without properly using their sights, and techniques like fanning a revolver's hammer or dual-wielding are entirely functional in medium ranges. The game will even encourage players to shoot dynamite in life-or-death gunfights to make it explode faster. On the other hand, every weapon becomes uselessly inaccurate if the character is moving at full speed. Accurate fire even in close ranges requires you to walk instead of run. Distant targets can't be hit unless you've come to a full stop. The rifles are so weak at hip-firing, the game doesn't bother drawing your cross hair when you use them. Keeping a bowstring drawn any longer than necessary makes the shot less accurate or powerful, with the implication that the player's arm is growing tired fighting with the bow.
- Limited Loadout: The game has a weight system, top speed determined by how many guns you're carrying. Slot 1 is dedicated to melee weapons, slots 2 and 3 to pistols depending on which hand you have them in, and slot 4 for two-handed weapons. It takes very little beyond what you can spawn with to go over your weight tolerance and end up slowed heavily; so much as trying to carry two two-handed weapons at once is almost guaranteed to force you over your limit.
- Machete Mayhem: A machete is an obtainable weapon from Red Chests, which allows you to move faster.
- No Experience Points for Medic: Attempting to heal teammates with the Portable Whiskey doesn't provide any notoriety points, and doesn't even register as a kill assist.
- Notice This: Guns on the ground have a brightly colored outline. Green-glowing guns are completely loaded, yellow guns have shots loaded but aren't topped up, and red guns are empty.
- Purposely Overpowered: The top-tier guns are all very strong, with the Walker being able to one-shot at long range and the Sharps Rifle actually having a scope that guarantees perfect accuracy, but their downside is that they are very slow to use and reload, give very few points per kill, and you can only get them from the hotly-contested golden chests.
- Quick Draw: One of the game modes from the original Game Mod, left out of the standalone release.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: A fully justified example, as the only true pistols in the game which aren't revolvers are derringers and the "Volcanic" lever-action handgun.
- Hand Cannon: The Colt Walker can kill in one shot to the head or chest at most applicable ranges. To compensate for this, it's slow to fire, kicks like a mule and takes twenty seconds to reload an empty cylinder.
- The Savage South: Averted. One of the maps is actually in a snowy landscape, though the battle may actually just be happening in the mountains.
- Short-Range Shotgun: All of the game's shotguns are just not effective beyond about 15 feet and won't be killing anyone in one blast if you aren't touching them with the barrel.
- Sawed-Off Shotgun: Available both from spawn and from chests, making it one of the easiest weapons to use Guns Akimbo, practicality be damned.
- Skill Scores and Perks: A variety of augmentations can be selected on spawn apart from weapons. You can equip heavier boots to kick harder, for instance. In a number of the objective-based game modes from the original release the player's notoriety could be used to purchase the more powerful weapons, instead of finding them in chests.
- Sniper Rifle: The Sharps Rifle is scary powerful. A single shot will kill a man at almost any range. Possibly justified as it's doubtful anyone wounded during a match is able to seek proper medical attention.
- The Wild West: The game's setting.
- Throw-Away Guns: The game as much as recommends picking loaded guns up (helpfully outlined in green or yellow) from the ground in longer gunfights, rather than trying to escape to reload. Extra weapons can be discarded.
- A perk lets you throw your gun at high velocities instead of drop it. It can deal damage and possibly kill enemies that it strikes.
