Tomato Way 2

I have a genuine affection for games built by a single person with a vision so strange that you can almost hear them arguing with themselves in the design doc. Tomato Way 2 is exactly that kind of project. It is a first-person action-RPG hybrid built in Unity, released in 2018 by solo developer Vladislav Castillo Gonzalez, and it functions as a prequel to the original Tomato Way. You play as Sgt. Malo, later known as Padre, a character piecing together what happened to him after a shadowy experiment. The lore is delivered with a kind of gleeful self-awareness that almost earns it. Almost. The structure here is curious. The game opens with a semi-open world zone before folding into a more linear path once that first area wraps up. In theory, that opening space gives you room to roam, discover bizarre boss encounters, and get acquainted with the combat toolkit: revolvers, aura-based powers, and what the developer sincerely describes as a highly functional foot. There is also a separate arena mode that strips out the story entirely and asks you to survive waves of enemies. On paper, these are interesting bones. In practice, the open zone is populated with repetitive enemies that offer so little resistance, and so little variety, that most players end up jogging past them rather than engaging. The instinct to avoid combat rather than lean into it is not a great sign for an action game. Combat itself is the biggest stumbling block. You trade the same hits in the same rhythm against the same creature types, and neither the revolver nor the aura powers do much to shake up that loop. The original Tomato Way had rough edges too, but it wore them as a kind of lo-fi horror charm. The sequel arrives with noticeably improved visuals and animation, which is genuinely appreciated, yet those same improvements highlight how much the underlying systems still need work. Bugs surface with enough regularity to interrupt what momentum the game does build. Criticism from the small community that has played it lands in a consistent place: the sequel reached higher and stumbled further as a result. And yet. There is something here for a specific kind of player. The atmosphere is genuinely strange in a way that feels handmade rather than calculated. The psychedelic character designs have a lo-fi conviction that I find hard to dismiss entirely. The dark humor lands occasionally, and the overall mood carries that particular Eastern European indie surrealism that I find quietly compelling when it is working. If you played the first game and came away charmed by its roughness, you will recognize the same authorial fingerprints. If this is your first encounter with the series, the experience will be rockier, and the Steam community around it remains very small, which means troubleshooting is a solo expedition. For fans of intentionally weird, micro-budget indie horror-action who understand what they are signing up for, there is a curio here worth a session or two. For everyone else, the mechanical shortcomings are real and the playtime is short enough that frustration can outpace curiosity.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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