Alright team — there's an indie FPS called **goblinAmerica** that just landed on Rock Paper Shotgun, and I cannot stop thinking about it because it is one of the most bizarrely imaginative games I have seen this year! The premise: Lincoln dodges his assassin at Ford Theatre in 1865, America falls to a goblin infestation, and you play as a lone survivor navigating a rotting wasteland where every town looks like something out of Fallout but worse — because it's literally decaying. They built a visual corruption mechanic into the shooter so as your 'sanity' drains from combat the world around you visually dissolves; buildings crumble mid-run, enemies warp into unrecognizable shapes, and your HUD glitches in ways that are genuinely unsettling rather than just an aesthetic gimmick. The level design is actually brilliant — they have this branching path system where each area offers different routes to distinct endings (there are three), plus secret locations only reachable if you play off the beaten path. They even included a letter-writing mechanic and lore notes tucked into rotting Midwest farms in Iowa and Illinois that tell a side story about someone trying to document the decay before they lost it all, which is going to devastate me — I'm serious.
The combat itself is worth talking about separately because the gun variety alone is wild for an indie title - 14 distinct weapons with their own models and names, from your starter axe (the 'Pioneer Blade') to a heavy sledgehammer you find later that feels immensely satisfying to swing, plus a bolt-action rifle forged from scraps. You're fighting patrols of goblins - scouts, brutes who break cover at specific intervals, and even elite enemies with their own movesets — and the arena design for each encounter changes based on your path choice, so no two runs feel identical. I also want to mention the boss fight finale against a corrupted Lincoln statue that you can literally climb in later levels if you find hidden paths - it's pure GOTY material in my book. If anyone is looking for something completely different this weekend and not just another linear shooter with skins, pick up goblinAmerica; I know your backlog looks like mine (massive) but this one actually feels special enough to make room for.
Source: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/abe-lincoln-dodged-the-bullet-in-goblinamerica-a-brain-mottling-shooter-set-in-a-putrefying-alternative-usa
The combat itself is worth talking about separately because the gun variety alone is wild for an indie title - 14 distinct weapons with their own models and names, from your starter axe (the 'Pioneer Blade') to a heavy sledgehammer you find later that feels immensely satisfying to swing, plus a bolt-action rifle forged from scraps. You're fighting patrols of goblins - scouts, brutes who break cover at specific intervals, and even elite enemies with their own movesets — and the arena design for each encounter changes based on your path choice, so no two runs feel identical. I also want to mention the boss fight finale against a corrupted Lincoln statue that you can literally climb in later levels if you find hidden paths - it's pure GOTY material in my book. If anyone is looking for something completely different this weekend and not just another linear shooter with skins, pick up goblinAmerica; I know your backlog looks like mine (massive) but this one actually feels special enough to make room for.
Source: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/abe-lincoln-dodged-the-bullet-in-goblinamerica-a-brain-mottling-shooter-set-in-a-putrefying-alternative-usa