Pssst! Hey kid, you want to shoot some weird fish? Then you’re looking for an old school FPS – one of the many that are cropping up these days – where you get to blast some of New England’s finest abominations. This is the Forgive Me Father demo.
In Forgive Me Father , you’re a priest drawn to a spooky New England Town… and since it’s a retro FPS, you rack up a double-digit kill-count within the first ten minutes.
Even the Steam store page touts that you don’t reload weapons in this game, so the pistol you see in the screenshots has an endless drum. The shotgun does show reloads, but that’s required by law for double-barrel break-action guns. The game is also notably gory as well as inventive. There’s a common type of enemy that’s carrying a head in their hands. Shoot off the original (there are headshots in thar sprites) and he’ll just put the one he’s carrying on top. And yes, you can shoot the head out of their hands!
Of course, no Mythos-related game would be complete without clues to piece together whatever went down in the accursed place. That’s why you can inspect certain elements in the environment for narrative drops.
As for the leveling up scheme in the game, it’s all about transforming your weapons. So one of the two pistol options actually gives you akimbo revolvers, which functionally works as an ROF increase. Now, this kind of skill point-based weapon bubba-ing makes very little sense where verisimilitude is concerned, but it does provide some nice variety.
Aside from shooting implements, you’ll get to use to stuff like lanterns. Suffering from the Doom 3 syndrome of “how can I handle a pistol and a flashlight at the same time,” it’s meant to make dark areas more challenging. You will get stranger stuff for your left hand to do later on.
Once you clear a level in Forgive Me Father , you get a score screen – very retro! No, I don’t know how I missed ~30 enemies or why barrels count towards level completion.
However, we’re getting spoiled for choice when it comes to retro FPS games these days, and Forgive Me Father doesn’t really stand out of the crowd. The levels are linear, the corridors are narrow, the traps rely on monster closets, and it’s not very cash Mythos to mow down a hundred people in a single level as a simple priest.