Infernales

I went into Infernales expecting almost nothing, and it delivered roughly that, which sounds harsher than I mean it. VGstudio built a bare-bones first-person shooter around a premise that is genuinely charming in a trashy, B-movie kind of way: you are a priest who wound up in hell through divine bureaucratic error, and you intend to shoot your way back out. There is no lore document, no cutscene monologue, no world-building padding. You load in, demons appear, you shoot them. The clarity of that contract is one of the few things the game gets unambiguously right. The core loop rests on three things: a small arsenal of weapons, waves of hellish enemies, and a bullet-time mechanic that lets you slow the action to land cleaner shots or dodge incoming attacks. On paper, that time-dilation ability has real potential. In practice, it is implemented just barely well enough to feel useful without ever feeling spectacular. The weapon variety is limited enough that you will have cycled through your options within the first twenty minutes. Enemy types follow a similar pattern: numerous, persistent, and not particularly imaginative. The game leans hard on volume rather than design, and that wears thin faster than the short runtime would suggest it should. The soundtrack is where Infernales earns a small, specific kind of affection from me. The 24-track score spans big beat, electropunk, dubstep, and hard rock, all produced under the Devil Dragon Tatoo moniker, and it hits with a conviction the rest of the game rarely matches. When the music is thumping and the slow-motion kicks in, there is a fleeting window where Infernales feels like the chaotic little arcade shooter it wants to be. Chase that window if you are curious about this one, because it does not stay open long. Steam reception sits at mixed, with fewer than half of reviewers recommending it. That is an honest score. The game suffers from rough edges that feel less like intentional minimalism and more like limited development resources: basic environmental detail, no meaningful progression between areas, and a moment-to-moment feel that rarely rises above functional. It is not broken, but it is also not a game that earns its own sequels on quality alone. As a curiosity from VGstudio's small catalog, or as background-noise demon-blasting while your brain is elsewhere, it has a narrow but real use case.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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