David Szymanski has created a fair share of shorter horror themed titles by this point. He started with some really cool story-driven titles. Achieved huge success with fantastic classic FPS DUSK and continues to work on another big project currently in Early Access – the Thief inspired Gloomwood. And in the meantime has decided to experiment with smaller action adventure games, starting with the adventure Iron Lung and short but very entertaining Chop Goblins. Which were followed with Squirrel Stapler, The Pony Factory and now Butcher’s Creek. And these titles are all kinda…. okay.
Butcher’s Creek is a very short first person action game with melee combat that will take you around 2 hours to complete at max. It is clearly inspired by Condemned: Criminal Origins in terms of its base combat and mood, with a slight hint of Manhunt on top. And if you always wanted to play a short creepy and somewhat disgusting purely action focused version of Condemned – this is the game for you. There’s no real story, apart from the setup and some written notes here and there. They don’t form a story as much as just create a mood. The only mechanic apart from unlocking progress with key items (mainly keys) and melee combat is the ability to take pictures. Which is used to refill health if you take a picture of something gruesome, but that mechanic doesn’t really go deep. And that’s it, really.
The combat is alright, although both you and enemies can hit through walls, at least at the moment. There’s a good variety to weapons and a few enemy types. The locations aren’t too bad and have a few unexpected surprises. And the music is a pretty good mix of experimental metal and dark ambient noise that’s perfectly designed to keep you tense even when there are no enemies around. Interestingly, part of this music was previously released under the name “Impact Hammer” that can be found on Bandcamp.
But it does feel like yet another title in this series of short experiments, that ends up feeling just “alright”. Like – you finish it and go “oh, okay, I guess that was the game”. And it doesn’t feel more interesting or exciting than that, something that the developer used to achieve much easier with his story driven titles or even Iron Lung. Butcher’s Creek is fine, but also somewhat underwhelming and it feels like it lacks something special about it. But I didn’t mind playing it at all.