THRASHER is thoroughly weird and it's out now as the follow up to THUMPER

I'm not entirely sure what I thought of THRASHER but it's certainly a unique experience and it's officially out now with Linux / Steam Deck support. Note: a key was provided to GamingOnLinux.

For people who played the game THUMPER, this comes from the artist & composer behind it. Not a game I've actually played before, so I went in entirely cold on it. But what I do know, is that they're very different games. Where THUMPER is a rhythm game, THRASHER is an arcade-style smasher that sees you go through some very strange worlds to defeat a bunch of unusual looking otherworldly boss creatures.

The whole thing is just thoroughly odd. I like bizarre stuff though, and this is very much out there. You control a floaty space eel, and the idea is to smash through various moving objects as quickly as you possibly can to progress. Your time left is your score and so you need to be fast. It's all about the leaderboards here to beat your own time, and times from others across the world. Going into it the game feels like some sort of hypnotic psychedelic-infused version of the classic Snake almost, it's really hard to describe. Make the eel move around, smash through objects, while avoiding hazards that take away precious seconds you need or destroy them if you have time. That's really it on the basics.

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The boss battles are very much the same as the normal stages, just tweaked a little with you smashing into an orb at the end of extra boss-battle rounds to then have your eel fly directly into their face to hurt them. If anything, the boss battles are a bit anticlimactic as the game ends up feeling rather samey as you go through.

But, it does expand and open up just a bit as you progress through it with it introducing power-ups, so it's worth it if you stick through it enough to see through the first bunch of realms as there's 27 stages across 9 very different realms to play. You don't necessarily have to be amazing at it to keep beating your times either, as it will allow you to progress regardless.

It definitely feels like a game should be more of a fit for VR, and considering it's supported in VR and was first released for VR, that makes a lot of sense. Although it still works fine as a flatscreen game with either mouse or gamepad, and all ways of controlling it do feel a little bit different.

Overall, it's properly unique. I'm struggling to clearly note down how I feel about it. Visually distinct from anything else, with audio to make it feel a little out of this world. If you like the idea of something firmly different to everything else releasing right now, perhaps give it a go. And as a bonus, it only takes a few hours to complete it.

Not quite the strangest game I've played this year (Tingus Goose wins that) but pretty close to it. I just wished there was something more to it. A lot of it was simply too easy, because it wants you to rush to beat those times and everything surrounds that.