Cruelty Squad is a tactical first-person shooter developed and published by Consumer Softproducts, a Finnish indie studio managed by artist Ville Kallio, on the Steam distribution platform. It was released into Early Access on Steam on January 4th, 2021. It later fully released on June 15th of the same year.
Contents
- 1 Premise
- 2 Characters
- 3 Gameplay
- 4 Development
- 4.1 Pre-Cruelty Squad work
- 5 External Links
Premise[]
The futuristic world of Cruelty Squad is a gaudy, psychedelic nightmare of bio-augmentation and capitalism. Death isn't the end, as the fleshy denizens can simply opt to pay to have their bodies reconstructed from within the "Death Matrix" should they find themselves splattered. That is, as long as they have the cash.
In this dystopian cyberpunk society, megacorporations have a disproportionate amount of influence over the police and the government affairs. Technological advances allow people to be resurrected after death, rendering much of humanity immortal and cheapening the perceived value of life. Indiscriminate killings are commonplace, and armed security is a fixture of virtually every populated area Human and animal organs are sold on the stock market, and invasive biological implants and augmented organs are used by security forces and assassins to aid in combat.
As the game opens, The Handler calls The Protagonist after the latter has lost his most recent job to let him know about a new employment opportunity with the titular Cruelty Squad, a wetwork security company working under the umbrella of a large conglomerate specializing in corporate contract killings. He suggests that The Protagonist will be a good fit, but warns that they must take on a more "corporate mindset" for it to work. Will you make the Corporate Arch Demoness proud or succumb to bitter tears of failure?
What follows is a series of Missions given by The Handler to The Protagonist to fulfill. Throughout the game, the Protagonist was tasked to kill a number of people who have drawn the ire of conglomerate "higher-ups"; which include anti-corporate politicians, cultists, rogue police officers, delinquent employees, rival CEOs, and many other weirdos. Meanwhile The Protagonist steadily gains capital, augments his own body, and loses himself in an upward spiral of violence, finances, fish, and control.
Characters[]
See Characters
Gameplay[]
See Game Mechanics
Cruelty Squad features a heavily stylized first-person gameplay style. The player's view is locked to the player character's vision, movement is performed using mostly standard FPS controls, and the primary focus of the gameplay is on utilizing firearms in combat and puzzles. The player chooses their weaponry and equipment before starting each of the 19 missions present in the game, and then must traverse open, sandbox-style levels to locate and neutralize targets. Every mission assigns one or many targets for the player to eliminate before they may exit and complete the level. However, all of these ideas are skewed and made intentionally awkward; for example, reloading a weapon is not a single button press but instead requires holding a button down, dragging the gun off-screen to reload, and then pulling it back up. Learning these idiosyncrasies is key to mastering the game.
More broadly, Cruelty Squad can be considered an immersive sim complete with open-ended map design that encourages exploration, multiple in-universe minigames, stealth options, minimalist dialogue, item collection, and esoteric secrets. Every mission has multiple viable approaches and routes. To gain a tactical advantage, the player must carefully plan out their equipment loadout, as well as selecting between non-lethal and lethal options. The player can choose to spend a mission fishing, speedily hunting targets, playing with slot machines, chatting with Civilians, harvesting organs, or any other task that comes to mind. The game also includes a wide range of bizarre and unconventional weapons, including the flechette shotgun, silenced 10mm pistol, radiation emitter, tranquilizer dart gun, DNA scrambler, corrosive gas launcher, and many others. Health lost during combat can be regained by using certain equipment, consuming cooked giblets, or even eating corpses should the player die enough times on a level ("Power In Misery", the easiest difficulty level). While there is no penalty for killing civilians during a mission, silent and non-lethal solutions are also possible outside of the necessary killing of targets. Outside of and during missions, the player can trade human organs and fish on a dynamic stock market for money, or explore their headquarters.
Even more broadly, Cruelty Squad is a game which embraces zany game-breaking as a mode of progression. As the main game ends, finding secrets and engaging with the bizarre parameters of the game's universe exposes the game's inner content, opening it fully to the player. It is in the context of exploiting every aspect of the game that many of the character dialogues and each of the endings seem most connected to player's actions.
Development[]
Cruelty Squad was produced within the Godot game engine. It was released on Steam on 15 June 2021.
Pre-Cruelty Squad work[]
Prior to the development of Cruelty Squad, lead developer and artist Ville Kallio created and exhibited multiple artistic works consisting of comics and video art, as well as installations and standalone artworks for galleries. Notable museums he has exhibited include the Futura in Prague, and the SIC Gallery in Helsinki, Finland. Many of these previous artworks contain allusions to video games, as well as many ideas that would later become parts of Cruelty Squad. Kallio has said that his gallery work "never really felt like more than just a weird hobby" and that it was like "a black hole with no future", stating that going into game development felt sensible since his previous work had been heavily inspired by video games.
Other than gallery pieces, Kallio has produced many video projects before the release of Cruelty Squad, such as "Adversalife" and "Venmo Combat" which was also a component of a multimedia art exhibition hosted at the SIC Gallery in Helsinki, Finland. Additionally, he worked on comics such as Hyper Prison-Industrial and Corridorspace.
External Links[]
- Cruelty Squad on Steam.
