Rating of
3/5
Run, Gun for a Little Fun
Chris Kavan - wrote on 12/22/24
As I enter Steam games for this site, I often stumble across games that make me go "hmmmm, maybe I'll check this one out just because" and Maniac, from Transhuman Design/Skystone Games was one such game - plus it was cheap. From what I can tell Skystone Games was founded by Diablo creator David Brevik and essentially helps small indie creators release games. They have a handful of games on Steam besides Maniac - Hellcard, Undying and Land Above Sea Below to name a few. Maniac caught my eye simply because it reminded me of the pure chaos of running around and destroying things - like Grand Theft Auto boiled down to just the Wanted level of mayhem. I knew it wasn't going to win any awards but for time-wasting stress relief, it certainly does the trick.
Looks and Stuff: If you want a game about running around killing people and blowing things up, you can't have it be too realistic and brutal. Thus Maniac is very colorful and almost painfully cheerful in its animated presentation. The city you run around in has several distinct areas, from a wide-open park to a race track to a harbor district to the downtown to a desert and an airport. You start off with nothing but your melee weapon (though you can unlock better starting weapons as you play - each character has their own from a traditional shotgun to a rocket launcher to a flame thrower) and as you beat down people/steal cars/run over people - you will draw heat form normal cops to SWAT to Army - each wave you manage to survive brings more and more chaos - spike strips, armored vehicles, helicopters, road blocks - and your goal, simple as it is, is just to survive. The game has a few voiced lines, lots of guns and explosions and I encountered no bugs along the way.
Story: This is not a story-focused game at all. You control one of several characters (a clown, a John-Wick clone, an angry teenage girl, etc) and essentially run/drive around a city where you unleash hell. The longer you survive and the more people you mow down, the more heat you draw in the form of cops, army and eventually even aliens. If you survive long enough, a nuke is dropped and that is "the end" as it were. Most sessions will last around 5-10 minutes - but the more abilities and such you unlock, the longer you can last (if you so choose).
Gameplay: Your goal is to spawn, kill, collect money, survive as long as you can, spend said money on upgrades - rinse, repeat. You start off with just a single character (a clown) but can unlock many more by doing some in-game things - killing enough of a certain character usually - in a single round. And each character has their own unique abilities, weapons and such as well. All characters share a few things - unlocks that give you more health, armor, driving stats - but you have to play as each character, earn money to unlock them - they are not shared between them. Also, certain achievements (if you want to go for them) are tired to characters - like the hotdog costume man burning down hotdog stands with his flamethrower or the John Wick-clone running over ATMs - as a couple examples. The game also features a few unique vehicles scattered about (a golf cart, a race car, a bumper car and others) you can find if you are diligent enough. You can even procure the flying vehicles - but this is easier said than done. But no matter who you play as the goal is always the same - run around the level, up your wanted level and survive until the city drops a nuke on you but you'll most likely die time and time and time again before unlocking enough upgrades and actually trying to take the game seriously to get to that point.
Replay value: This is a stress relieving shoot 'em up so and sessions are meant to be short and sweet. With unlocking multiple characters and multiple abilities, you'll get more out of it the longer you do play. Honestly, achievements are secondary to just running around but they are also there if you want them.
Final Verdict: This is a game for releasing tension in that you don't need to take it seriously (despite the violence) - just run around and shoot/blow shit up.
Presentation: 3/5
Story: 1/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Replay: 5/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
Time Played: 9 hrs.
Cheevos: 73% (48/65)
