Chop Goblins

Developer: David Szymanski | Publisher: David Szymanski | Release Date: 2022 | Genre: First-Person Shooter / Action / Indie | Website: N/A | Purchase: Steam

There are plenty of retro-style first-person shooters promising sprawling campaigns, dozens of weapons, secrets around every corner, and enough levels to keep players busy for hours. Chop Goblins goes in the opposite direction. Developer David Szymanski, best known for DUSK, openly describes it as a “microshooter”: a complete FPS designed to be finished in a single sitting, with five compact levels, five main weapons, and absolutely no interest in padding the runtime.

The premise is every bit as ridiculous as the title. After breaking into a museum and opening a mysterious chest in the basement, the player accidentally releases the titular Chop Goblins. These tiny maniacs promptly escape and begin rampaging through time itself in search of cheese, forcing the player to chase them through a modern city, 1800s Transylvania, ancient Greece, and the not-too-distant future.

That is about as much story as the game needs. Short introductory screens provide context before each level, but the real focus is running through compact maps and blasting anything green that starts waving a blade in your direction. The humour is deliberately absurd, with the goblins themselves shouting nonsense while charging into combat and the overall tone feeling closer to a ridiculous late-night B-movie than a serious shooter.

The game controls like a classic fast-paced FPS. Movement is quick, aiming is straightforward, and there is no attempt to slow things down with elaborate progression systems or cinematic interruptions. You simply move, shoot, pick up health and ammunition, search for secrets, and keep going.

Unlike many modern shooters, there are no regenerating shields or automatic health recovery. Damage sticks until a pickup is found, which makes careless play surprisingly dangerous despite the tiny campaign. Ammo can also become scarce if players rely too heavily on one weapon, encouraging frequent switching between whatever is available. This resource management becomes particularly important on greater difficulties.

The arsenal is small but varied. There are five primary weapons, ranging from an antique flintlock to the Mk. II Impaler “Vlad,” an automatic stake gun.) There is also a shotgun-style Street Sweeper, a magical Wand of Corinthians, and a fast melee dagger that can be used between shots. The dagger is especially useful because it can be swung while reloading, making it possible to keep attacking even when a firearm temporarily runs dry.

A later free update also added alternate weapon options, including the Scattergun and Six Shooter, which can replace some of the standard weapons when enabled. These additions make subsequent runs feel a little different without changing the basic structure of the campaign.

The shooting feels appropriately punchy. Goblins react quickly to hits, explosive objects can wipe out groups, and the faster weapons chew through crowds with satisfying efficiency. The game encourages aggressive play and punishes players who stand still or allow themselves to be surrounded.

The biggest limitation is enemy variety. The game promises an assortment of enemies and minibosses, and each level introduces at least something new, but the roster is still small enough that repetition becomes obvious almost immediately. Different goblins may attack with projectiles, rush more aggressively, or absorb additional damage, but most encounters still revolve around strafing around a group and shooting until everything stops moving.

This would have been a bigger problem in a longer game. Fortunately, Chop Goblins is so short that the limited roster never has enough time to become genuinely tedious. The entire campaign is designed around speed and escalation, and by the time the player has seen everything, the game is already approaching its conclusion.

The five levels are where most of the variety comes from. Each takes place in a different time period and has its own visual identity, from urban environments to Dracula-inspired Transylvania, classical Greek architecture, and futuristic locations. The constant changes in scenery keep the half-hour campaign moving quickly and prevent the game from feeling like five variations of the same corridor.

Level design is compact but encourages exploration. Secrets are hidden off the obvious route, while explosive barrels, fuel containers, and other environmental hazards can be used against enemies. There are no sprawling key hunts or massive labyrinths, but there is enough room to poke around and improve a score.

One important thing to note is that there are no mid-level checkpoints. Dying sends the player back to the beginning of the current stage. On the standard difficulties, this is rarely disastrous because the levels are short, but tougher modes can make a late death considerably more irritating.

The difficulty settings do a reasonable job of accommodating different skill levels. Lower settings let players tear through the campaign with very little resistance, while higher ones make health and ammunition management significantly more important. The final level is noticeably tougher than what comes before, particularly when the screen begins filling with stronger enemies and projectiles.

Bosses are limited, with Dracula standing out as the only proper boss encounter in the campaign. His appearance is deliberately absurd and fits the game’s humour perfectly, but players hoping for a different major enemy at the end of every stage will be disappointed. 

Replay value comes primarily from scoring rather than content quantity. Steam leaderboards, secrets, achievements, and the sheer brevity of the game make it easy to replay immediately after finishing. The game also received free Remix Levels after launch, which rearrange enemy spawns, weapon progression, and other aspects of the five stages to provide alternate versions of the campaign.

These additions help enormously because Chop Goblins would otherwise be difficult to justify replaying once every secret had been found. The standard campaign can genuinely be completed in around thirty minutes, which is exactly what the developer advertises. This extreme brevity is both the game’s greatest strength and its biggest weakness. It is wonderfully refreshing to play something so concentrated. There is no filler, no skill tree, no crafting, and no twenty-minute tutorial before the first gun appears. On the other hand, anyone expecting a substantial FPS campaign will reach the credits just as the game seems to be hitting its stride.

Visually, Chop Goblins deliberately mimics the chunky low-poly shooters of the nineties. Textures are simple, models are crude, and the goblins themselves look intentionally ridiculous with oversized heads and wide grins. The strong lighting and different colour palettes used for each level do a lot to keep the presentation attractive despite the intentionally dated technology.

The retro visuals also help with readability. Enemies generally stand out clearly enough from the environments, and projectiles are easy to track during most encounters. The final futuristic level becomes busier than the rest, but never approaches the visual clutter of more elaborate modern shooters.

The soundtrack is much better than one might expect from such a tiny project. Fast electronic and synth-heavy tracks complement the ridiculous action and help each stage maintain momentum. The sound effects are equally satisfying, particularly the shotgun and stake gun, which both have enough impact to make firing them feel worthwhile.

Controls are simple and responsive with mouse and keyboard, while full controller support is also listed on Steam. (store.steampowered.com) There is no crouching or jumping to worry about in the original campaign design, so movement remains deliberately straightforward.

Overall, Chop Goblins is exactly what it claims to be: a short, action-packed microshooter with no filler. Its five levels fly by, the weapons are fun, the humour is ridiculous, and the scoring systems make replaying the campaign more worthwhile than the runtime initially suggests. The limited enemy variety and absence of a broader campaign inevitably hold it back from feeling substantial, but they are easier to forgive when the entire game is designed around being finished before repetition really sets in.