A game by Transhuman Design for PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, originally released in 2016.
Butcher is a sidescrolling shooter inspired by the gritty action games of the early 90’s – Doom in particular – but offering far more blood and guts than those games ever did, all presented in heaps of chunky pixels. You take on the role of a cyborg who is tasked with wiping out the last remnants of humanity (despite being partially human himself), but doing so is no easy task, and players can expect to be butchered quite often along this 20-level festival of carnage.
As the game’s title screen states, “The easiest mode is ‘HARD’”. For players who slept through “Hurt me plenty”, the game also offers Harder and Hardest modes, which reduce the player’s health and the availability of medkits and armor pickups, and there’s an unlockable Impossible mode if you can track down enough of the game’s hidden skulls. Players who don’t derive pleasure frequent deaths and full level replays have no business here; only those steeped in the embers of Ultra-Violence need apply.
UPDATE: About two months after the game's release, the developers created a DLC pack (called W.I.M.P.) that adds a new Casual Mode granting players four times the health and doubling the value of pickups. For those who have found themselves exclaiming "Hey, not so rough!", this pack is for you.
