What do you get if you mix the original, fixed camera-angle Resident Evil 2 with a helping of Broken Roads Australian humour? The answer is Loggerhead, an intentionally ridiculous survival horror that you can take for a spin right now.
Have you only experienced Australia through Crocodile Dundee and Neighbours? Are you champing at the bit to explore Oz in Broken Roads? Then retro horror game Loggerhead is absolutely up your street.
Even if you’ve never seen a soap character give birth with their tights on, it’s an intriguing and very silly flashback to old-school tank control survival horror. And there’s a demo out right which absolutely deserves your time.
Resident Evil with a huge dose of Australian humour, Loggerhead sees protagonists Daryl and Tracy holidaying in 1980s Boggarogga Creek. Sure, there may have been a murder or sixty but, as Daryl explains in a wonderfully overacted cutscene, it’s cheap.
In what could be a cheeky nod to Resident Evil 2, the pair pull up at a petrol station and things go downhill from there. Pretty soon you’re smacking red-eyed zombies with a cricket bat, hunting for codes and regretting your choice of holiday destination.
It took me a minute or two to get used to the game’s tank controls but the demo is a real blast. The silly dialogue is absolutely gold and the John Carpenter-style soundtrack is the icing on the cake.
In fact, this is such a love letter to 80s horror, Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste included, it deserves to be played on a CRT TV. If solo-dev Affordable Cat shows Loggerhead off in public (E3 is right out), I hope they bring one with them.
The game doesn’t have a release date as yet but you can get the Loggerhead Prologue Demo from Steam. Based on what I’ve seen, this is absolutely one to watch.
If you’re after some other indie gems, here are the best indie games on PC. Or if Loggerhead’s old-school aesthetic has caught your eye, here the best retro games.
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