Paint the Town Red (video game)

Paint the Town Red is a 2021 first-person combat video game, developed and published by South East Games. Initially released as an early access title in 2015, the full version became available on Steam in 2021, with versions also released for Xbox and Nintendo Switch. Developed on the Unity Engine, with the use of voxels, players are placed in various locations where the goal is to kill all other non-playable characters, reminiscent of last man standing. Weapons and items around the levels are used to inflict damage on NPCs, with them also able to attack the player in return.

The title generally received positive reviews, particularly for the combat system and the use of voxels, while it received criticism for its lengthy progression time and unbalanced difficulty without the use of in-game customisable modifiers.

Paint the Town Red places the player in various locations dependent on the level, including a bar or disco. The game is in first-person perspective, with all non-playable characters the targets of toggleable weapons, along with punching and kicking. Punches include a basic attack and the ability to uppercut, which have a random chance of occurring.^[4]

There are multiple game modes that players can choose from, these include the following:^[5]

• Scenarios: Sandbox style mode, which includes customisable modifiers to change match experiences.^[6] Modifiers include the ability to play with a top-down view camera perspective, having NPCs fight alongside players and multiple special combat attacks.^[5]
• Arena: Features no specific scenarios or custom modifiers. Set in a colosseum, players have to defeat waves of enemies, with each featuring alternative weapons and traps, and Scenarios bosses appearing as the mode progresses.^[5]
• Beneath: Has a story, described by Way Too Many Games as "roguelite". One of four available classes is chosen by the player, these including Warlock, Spectre, Brawler and Vanguard, and the player must kill NPCs known as Ancient Gods. Each class offers different abilities and stats, with upgrades becoming available as the mode progresses. The mode offers six available areas, with each having several levels between them.^[5]

There is a level editor which includes a texture pack creator and music pack creator. This gives customisation options to the player, such as level layout and design, colours and internal furnishing, including options not seen in regular levels. The texture pack creator allows for textures to be applied to level creations, these originating from the player's own files. The same is true for the music pack creator. Complete packs can be uploaded to Steam Workshop.^[4]

Paint the Town Red was initially developed in 2014 as part of a game jam for 7dfps, which was completed in six days, with the game then uploaded to Itch.io, where its popularity subsequently surged. The use of voxels were not originally considered by the developers, whose primary focus was an art style. However, they found voxels contrasted well with the blocky design of the in-game characters, along with how they react when attacked and their physics. Voxels also allowed the game to "live up to its name", whereby the environment ends up covered in blood by the end of a level.^[2] According to the developer diary, all "concepts of an explicit story" were removed from the game, in favour of a simpler level progression system.^[7] This popularity continued to increase as the game entered early access, with several price increases taking place during continued development. As the team only consisted of one programmer, artist and composer, there was difficulty in maintaining routine updates on Steam whilst simultaneously developing versions for console.^[2]

In an interview with Shacknews, programmer Matthew Carr confirmed that implementing multiplayer and cross-platform play onto the console version was beyond the scope of what the team could achieve, due to netcode working differently per console and potential bugs requiring more work than could be handled. However, they remained open to exploring options to include multiplayer and cross-play in the future, such as on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Porting to the Switch was a significant challenge for the developers due to the limitations the systems memory, with particular emphasis on voxel optimisation which uses a lot of memory and offloading CPU to memory cache. There were also challenges upscaling to 1080p on Xbox.^[2]

Paint the Town Red has a score of 77 out of 100 from four reviews on the gaming aggregate website Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[8] The game has a score of 67/100 on OpenCritic.^[9]

William Worrall, writing for TechRaptor, gave praise to the use of voxels, explaining that whenever someone is "hit", that "specific part of their body" reacts accordingly. However, Worrall found Paint the Town Red to be unbalanced, as "without modifiers", "a single enemy wielding a bladed weapon or broken bottle can wipe a third of your health in a single hit". Ultimately scoring it 5 out of 10.^[15] Dread Central writer Samuel Guglielmo also expressed enjoyment of the combat system, but proposed that a healing system would benefit the game, opening up more styles of play. Guglielmo was especially positive toward Beneath mode, believing everybody would find something they enjoy, regardless of play style and due to fewer enemies, this mode better suits the combat system. He recommended the PC version over the console version as the latter lacked user-generated content, scoring the game 4 out of 5 stars.^[11] Xbox Tavern writer AJ Small compared the gameplay to the church melee scene from Kingsman: The Secret Service and the prison fight scenes from The Raid 2: Berandal.^[16]

Reviewing the Nintendo Switch version of the game, Damiano Gerli of GameCritics commented on the "bare minimum content that one might expect from an RPG-lite experience", highlighting the lengthy time it takes to unlock special moves, stat level-ups and new equipment purchase options. Gerli also criticised the features not present in the Switch version, that allow for "an almost infinite level of variety" on the PC version, comparing the game to a "tech demo" and giving a score of 5.5 out of 10.^[12] John Pruitt made note of the creatively of the controls in his review of the Xbox edition for Gaming Cypher. However, described a game bug that caused his character to clip through the floor, triggering a game over.^[14]

• Official website