It hasn’t taken playing that many indie horror games to realize that original ideas have tended to feel like they’re in short supply. No matter what else I may think of Endoparasitic in terms of the way it plays, I’ll at least not insult it by lumping it in with the competition, as there’s no question that it delivers on distinguishing itself. 

With 3 of your limbs ripped from your body, you’ll need to slowly drag yourself around, continue to inject yourself with serum to keep the infection in your body at bay, and either evade or try to shoot roaming zombies. On paper it absolutely sounds like it has potential, for sure. With a gritty low-res look, and limited overall visibility, I’ll at least credit the game with having a claustrophobic feel, and since the roaming monsters don’t tend to make all that much noise there’s often little warning before you bump into them. Though to be honest since for the most part all of the game’s restricted corridors have you on a linear path, it isn’t like you can really avoid them either.

Where the experience falls apart is unfortunately a combination of the controls and its central concept. It’s obvious that if you’re limited to a single arm and your head on a torso that getting around will be rough, but the reach, grab, and pull mechanic for this works reasonably well. You won’t be breaking any speed records, and in general the angles and way your arm can often move defies human physiology, but I can choose to overlook that. Where the game lost me on all counts was an essential step, which is in loading your gun. First, with only one arm and laying on the floor, the notion that you could load each chamber of the gun bullet by bullet is preposterous to begin with… but even putting that aside the controls for doing this are cumbersome and not well explained AT ALL, making for a point where a game already struggling felt like its wheels came off completely. This just feels like a case where the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, pairing an idea and central play that are too simple, with too many missteps in its design fundamentals.