Abuse, 1997, Crack Dot Com, PC Price: free (the devs released the source code to the public)
The year is 2009. Nick Vrenna is jailed for a crime he didn’t commit, only to find that prison staff has been using the inmates for science experiments. A rage virus breaks out among the prison population during a riot, even mutating some of its victims into wild beasts. Nick blasts his way through the chaos, to prevent the rage virus from leaking into the water supply and spreading further.
Some folks hail Abuse as a 2D DOOM. It’s not hard to see why; there’s a very similar vibe to the visuals, the sounds, the storyline, and the overall atmosphere. There’s a lot of dark mood lighting and atmospheric noise, something you didn’t see often in a 2D game. And much like in DOOM, there’s a lot of secret areas, switch puzzles, and shooting monsters with rockets and laser guns.
Except here in Abuse, the controls are a little different. You control Nick’s movement with the keyboard, and aim and shoot using the mouse. (If you’ve ever tried ranged combat in Terraria, it’s a lot like that.) It’s intuitive and effective, and the game walks you through everything in a short tutorial level.
Your controls are simple, and there’s only a few simple assets, so the developers went in on the level design department instead. Switches, elevators, teleporters, and more are combined into one enemy ambush and elaborate death trap after another. In the devs’ hands, a turret can be used to punish you failing a puzzle, or it can be used to shred an incoming army of monsters, or it can be a timing challenge, or a miniboss, or a platform...
In fact, there’s also a full-featured level editor included with Abuse, and it’s a great glimpse under the hood of the game. There’s a ton of parameters to set for just about every enemy and object. There’s a bunch of logic gates (like AND and XOR), wires, and triggers too. You can see how it leads to the variety and intricacy of the level design. All manner of puzzles and platforming challenges and waves of enemies can be whipped up--the devs had a lot of great ideas, but there’s lots more to be discovered.
The game is not without its problems, of course. There’s only about six enemy types counting the turrets, 80% of the game or so has the same general appearance...even most of the weapons handle identically to each other. There’s points where you’ll just have to luck past, because they made the death traps a little too deadly. (Many of them involve enemies armed with the “fireball” weapon, which is often a one-hit kill. It feels like the devs accidentally made it too powerful...) There’s barely any story, and what little there is has nothing to do with the game--and the title has barely anything to do with anything! (This is because the game used to be about fighting a hive of aliens, but it was changed kinda late in development.) There’s a bug where turning down the music also turns down the sound effects.
Still, Abuse is a fun little forgotten gem! It’s free to download, it’s only a few hours long, and its atmosphere and gameplay still hold up well today. A little caveat there, though: I played the game (and took the above screenshots) using the updated SDL port. The original game runs at 320 x 200 resolution, and it had a bug where the music didn’t play. This created a tense, claustrophobic environment where you could hear the monsters growling, but not know where they were. Playing at an increased resolution ruins the immersion and secrecy, but it also breaks the gameplay sometimes, because some things are tied to being onscreen. (One late-game level is impossible at the above resolution, because there are bombs that go off too early.) Overall, Abuse is a great game, especially in short bursts. I just wish it had a more active modding/level making scene...it certainly provides the tools for it!