Immortal Redneck combines the speed and precision of timeless PC first-person shooters with the current trend of randomly generated, macro-development-focused dungeon crawler RPGs. The player character is the Redneck, a crass caricature of American male bravado and ignorance, who gets himself killed when he crashes a speeding go-kart while vacationing in the Egyptian desert. His body is recovered by figures with jackal heads who wrap him in bandages and heals his wounds, recreating him into an immortal mummy. Awakening in a desert valley which he is magically prohibited from leaving, the Redneck can find nothing else to do but ascend to the top of three pyramids. Each pyramid is filled with monsters who attack on sight, though death is no escape—the Redneck always wakes up again in the heart of the valley, taunted by the three pyramids. Using looted gold, the Redneck makes offerings to a magical tree that improve his abilities, slowly giving him more of a fighting chance against each pyramid’s defenders. Wielding an arsenal of guns, explosives, and magical artifacts, the Redneck hopes that by fighting his way to the top of all three pyramids, he may find a way to escape his desert prison.
The Redneck’s goal in each of the three pyramids is to climb up to the seventh floor, defeating two bosses and every other monster he encounters along the way. Each floor contains many rooms and by exploring them all the Redneck discovers the staircases that lead to the next floor. The contents of each room add some variety to this task. Most rooms are combat-focused, their doors locking behind the Redneck and not reopening until he has killed every monster inside them. The monsters make this task easier by charging at the Redneck as soon as the doors seal, though sometimes he must carefully search a room to find a single monster that has managed to wander away from the group. A trill from a magical flute announces when every monster has been killed and the doors are unlocked. Other rooms are less deadly but may still challenge the Redneck with a gauntlet of blades, fire, and tricky platforms.
Each pyramid floor is assembled from randomly arranged, preconstructed rooms. Though the precise layout of a floor is likely to be one the Redneck hasn’t encountered before, the contents of individual rooms will always be the same.
The static construction of individual rooms is both a weakness and a strength. The random nature of each pyramid is undermined when the Redneck encounters the same rooms on his second visit to a pyramid that he saw on his first. Yet knowing the contents of a room from previous experience gives the Redneck a significant advantage. Knowing which enemies dwell in a room, where spike and fire traps are secured in its surfaces, and the locations of chests filled with valuables adds to the sense of the Redneck’s growing mastery over the pyramids.
Rooms come in a variety of sizes. Some are small, emphasizing close-quarters combat and the agility to slip through narrow gaps between enemies. Medium sized rooms give the Redneck more space to move around but he must keep an eye out for enemies with powerful ranged weapons. The largest rooms introduce light platforming elements, requiring the Redneck to hop between precarious ledges to reach isolated enemy clusters and distant exits.
Platforming and a first-person perspective is usually a noxious combination but Immortal Redneck manages to be enjoyable. The player character feels light and moves with impressive swiftness and precision. His jumps are long and floaty without feeling unnatural, gifting me with plenty of time to finetune his landing. I never have a problem getting him to jump where I want him to, aided significantly by a smart grasping mechanic where the Redneck will pull himself onto any nearby ledge he touches.
It’s fortunate that the Redneck feels so good to steer since a notable portion of playtime is spent running back and forth across empty pyramid floors. It’s a good idea to completely explore a floor before climbing to the next one in order to maximize the loot the Redneck claims. The trouble is enemies do not respawn after a room has been cleared and there is no fast travel system to carry the Redneck across long distances. Having to run from one end of a floor to another, through rooms that have already been cleared, across platforming obstacles that have already been passed, in order to reach a distant staircase becomes the penance the Redneck must pay for thoroughness.
To keep these long treks from becoming a total bore, the individual pyramids employ unique visuals. The first pyramid establishes the setting. It presents the appearance of an ancient Egyptian temple preserved in its prime. Walls are built from bright sandstone blocks festooned with maroon tapestries and brightly painted pillars. Fountains of cool, clear water surrounded by large leaf plants appear in many rooms, giving the space a feeling of life and abundance.
The second and third pyramids hint at the darker forces which imprison the Redneck. The second pyramid is grungier. Its walls are built from harsh iron bricks and pistons can be seen through gaps in the wall powering mysterious machinery. The third pyramid develops fully into science fiction, its black walls lit by strands of neon light that make the space feel more like the cold interior of a sinister UFO. The distinct visuals of each pyramid help them to stand apart, making their component rooms feel unique even as they recycle many of the same ideas and sometimes even entire room layouts.
Each pyramid is crawling with a variety of monsters who seem to grow from the desert sand strewn across every floor. They come in several broad designs. Small, bipedal critters charge in packs at the Redneck, snapping at him with their cobra heads. Lean humanoids with jackal heads fire flaming arrows from high ledges. Hulking mummies with single red eyes glaring out from behind ornately woven bandages trudge slowly after the Redneck, looking to swing their heavy clubs into his skull.
Any of these enemies can be defeated with any weapon the Redneck may carry but success in the long run depends on having the right tool for the right job. He can carry up to three weapons at a time. Fast-firing automatic guns may have weak output but they excel at clearing out the packs of cobra biters and other swarming melee monsters. Weapons that are slower to fire but accurate at long range, like pistols and throwing knives, are excellent for counter-sniping ranged enemies. For the burly enemies, slow weapons with explosive firepower can make quick work of their huge hit point pools which will eat up precious ammunition from other weapons. Having each kind of tool on hand and switching quickly between them to handle whatever enemy is currently assaulting the Redneck is vital to surviving even the most basic combat rooms.
The Redneck begins each pyramid run with a preselected loadout which tends to be fairly well balanced between speed, precision, and power. Chests and rare drops from enemies will sometimes give him the option to exchange one of his weapons for another. A second item may also drop from these sources: scrolls.
Scrolls are singularly able to muck up a successful run. Picking one up bestows the Redneck with a randomly chosen effect. A majority are positive. Big Pouch increases the amount of ammunition the Redneck may carry. Good Guy summons a magical drone that floats above the Redneck’s head and automatically fires at nearby enemies. Negative effects also exist, like Emergency Landing which adds a fall damage effect, and Coward which increases the damage the Redneck takes when struck from behind.
The trouble with scrolls is, while the negative effects are less common than the positive ones, the negative effects are much more impactful. There is nothing more important to the Redneck’s success than having different types of weapons on hand to handle any situation he might encounter. There are multiple negative scroll effects that destroy the weapons the Redneck carries, restrict the number he may carry, or even outright replace them all with new, random ones. There are even a few “positive” effects that can cause this to happen. Receiving any one of these can instantly turn a successful run into a losing one.
Scrolls are the worst implemented system in Immortal Redneck. They are more trouble than they are worth. There is not a single positive effect the Redneck may receive that offsets the risk of receiving a Sorry Not Sorry, Pacifism, or Loose Hands negative effect. I stubbornly continue to direct the Redneck to pick up every scroll he encounters but I am unable to dispel the feeling that he might ascend all three pyramids much faster if I adopt a policy of ignoring them when they drop.
A more effective method than scrolls to power up the player character is to permanently increase his statistics. With every monster killed and every chest plundered, the Redneck fills his pockets with coins which spill from their forms onto the ground. When he returns to the valley following a successful or failed pyramid run, he takes all the coins he claimed back with him. These coins may be spent to magically compel a tree to grow.
When the Redneck first visits the tree, it is a seedling growing near the center of the three pyramids. Examining it opens a menu showing a single node labeled Attack Upgrade. Purchasing this node causes the tree to grow, revealing three new nodes that affect other aspects of the Redneck, like his defense and ammunition capacity. Purchasing these nodes causes still more nodes to appear. The more nodes purchased, the bigger the tree grows, stretching into a literal skill tree that represents the Redneck’s expanding abilities.
The Redneck’s most important core attributes are stored in nodes along the tree’s trunk. These may be upgraded many times for increased effect at escalating cost. The first time the Redneck visits the tree he likely has enough money to purchase the Attack Upgrade several times. Purchasing a later tier of the node may take every coin the Redneck loots on their next visit to a pyramid.
This upgrading system establishes the core of Immortal Redneck’s comforting gameplay loop. On his initial visit to the first pyramid, the Redneck is inevitably overpowered by its defenders. His weapons take several shots to kill all but the weakest monsters. His health pool is limited and his physical defense is weak, causing hits from even minor enemies to be costly. Clearing just a handful of rooms is an accomplishment.
The Redneck manages to scrape together a few hundred coins from that unsuccessful attempt. With these he purchases a few upgrades, and on the next attempt he does a little better. He clears a few more rooms, and maybe even makes it to the next floor, where the monsters are stronger and the monetary rewards are higher. On the next attempt, he does even better. Soon, his strength and my skill improves enough that he can battle his way to the top of the first pyramid, and the whole process starts all over again in the second pyramid.
Some nodes within the tree have effects other than statistical improvements for the Redneck. They instead unlock favors from various Egyptian gods which the Redneck may choose before entering a pyramid. A chosen god’s favor has a radical effect on the Redneck’s abilities.
Each god essentially grants the Redneck a character class. Seth, the God of Storms, lets the Redneck periodically attack everything in the room with a field of electricity, damages enemies who touch him, and grants him a pistol whose shots arc between targets and a flamethrower that fires electric flames. A Redneck favored by Seth is fundamentally a powerful mage let loose in a first-person shooter, but power comes at a price—he loses a significant percentage of his total defense. Every god’s favor carries similar statistical advantages and disadvantages.
Choosing a god’s favor should create an opportunity to adopt different playstyles by exploiting their unique advantages and working around their weaknesses. The reality is some gods’ favors are so much better than others that there’s little reason to choose many of them. The standout is Apis, whose favor lets the Redneck carry an extra weapon, activate on-demand invincibility, and grants a boost to defense. This is intended to be offset by Apis’s favor removing the ability to double jump. The Redneck doesn’t even know how to double jump at the start—it must be purchased from the skill tree first—and is never actually required to reach the top of a pyramid. Even with bonuses added to a god’s favor that hasn’t been used in a while, there is little reason to use any favor but Apis’.
Most of the monsters the Redneck fights in the pyramids may be defeated with straightforward tactics. They have limited attack patterns and even the toughest ones will die in a few hits to the Redneck’s weapons. Defeating them is less about skill and more about accumulating enough damage upgrades for the Redneck to take them down with a reasonable amount of effort.
Bosses are another matter. The Redneck fights two in each pyramid and all emphasize skillful movement away from projectiles and through obstacles. Weryt the Disturber slams the floor with his fists, sending a shockwave filled with sand at the Redneck who must quickly jump up isolated platforms to clear it. Temsep the Bone Breaker fills the room with spinning lasers which the Redneck must jump through to reach small openings in his impenetrable shield. Each boss challenges the Redneck to survive on skill rather than brute strength. Clearing any one of them is a significant accomplishment.
I think I have made it clear by now that Immortal Redneck is not interested in being sensitive to the cultures it represents. It unquestioningly and unironically indulges in racist tropes like aliens building the Egyptian Pyramids. The Redneck is a white conqueror who presumes his duty is to pacify a foreign culture he constantly disrespects and denigrates. He uses violence to achieve his goals, even adopting some of the weapons and customs of the culture he seeks to conquer and using them with greater ability than the people who created them. None of these are positive representations.
Even the way the conflicting cultures are represented is unbalanced. Egyptian culture becomes an abstraction. I only recognize it as Egyptian because of familiar elements—the pyramids, the Eye of Ra inscribed on tapestries, the names of the various gods who provide the Redneck their favor. It is never specifically identified or respected as something real. It is merely a thing to be shot at. The evolving level design, the encounters with the bosses, and the final event of the story implies that they’re all aliens. Egyptian culture isn’t allowed to exist even as a villainized “other.”
In contrast to the cruel treatment of Egyptian ideas represented here, the Redneck himself is an affectionate parody of his namesake. He loves guns, violence, explosions, beer, and the United States of America. When he picks up a weapon he marvels at its power and ingenuity. When he picks up a bad scroll, he vulgarly expresses his loud displeasure. I feel the same way. This creates a sympathetic bond between us. As much as I would detest a Redneck in real life, there is something attractive about him here. Against my will, I root for him. There are, at least, no Confederate battle flags to be found here.
My support is in vain because Immortal Redneck ends with no real finality. I feel no hesitation in revealing that when the Redneck reaches the top of the third and most difficult pyramid, he is not rewarded with his freedom. Instead he is allowed entrance into a fourth pyramid, buried beneath the valley, whose floors continue into infinity.
The Redneck seems fated to spend eternity fighting his way through pyramids. His accomplishments earn him some respect from his jailers. He does not earn his freedom. He seems resigned to his situation, if not pleased with it, and being trapped in the valley seems like a paradoxically appropriate punishment for such a loathsome character. Everyone wins except for the invisible Egyptians whose culture is pillaged and warped to create the Redneck’s prison.
Immortal Redneck’s biggest problem is a few poorly balanced systems; scrolls and god favors have so many obvious flaws that my judgment is to avoid interacting with them as much as possible. Systems that are poorly balanced and may also be completely avoided shouldn’t exist at all. These factors have little impact on my overall enjoyment of Immortal Redneck. As a first-person shooter, it feels good to play. The Redneck is a nimble and accurate player character. If he falls from a platform or misses a shot, it is my fault and not a blunder that may be blamed on a poorly functioning engine. The familiar loop of raiding a pyramid, spending money earned there on upgrades, then raiding again to hopefully progress further is an appealing one. Only its portrayal of contrasting cultures gives me pause. Anyone interested will have to decide for themselves if an American empowered to fight an alien civilization modeled after Ancient Egypt is troubling to them. Immortal Redneck has many flaws. I ultimately still have a great time with it.