Zortch

Zortch is a single-player first-person shooter set in a sci-fi universe with horror elements and a heavy comedic undercurrent. The protagonist, Zortch Maxinum, is a short-order cook, amateur engineer and self-confessed professional slacker who books a cheap holiday and discovers, somewhat late, that the entire travel package was a front for aliens who capture humans to eat their brains. A mysterious voice helps her along the way; the rest is up to her, her trigger finger and her boot.

The game is built on a custom engine designed to run well on low-spec hardware, and the technical lightness lets it focus the design budget on combat density and weapon feel. Nine guns sit in the inventory — grenade launcher, TNT, tripmine, plasma pistol, double-barrelled shotgun, and a bizarre living lightning gun among them — alongside a melee kick. Combat is heavy throughout, six difficulty modes scale from very easy to extreme, and the encounter design leans into varied enemy combinations rather than incremental bullet sponges.

The enemy roster covers more than thirty types: giant green brain-sucking aliens and their inventions, spider mines, lizards with rocket launchers, raptors, pudding-like amoeboids pretending to be humanoid guards, and a 20-foot-tall flatworm cyborg bounty hunter, among others. Fifteen levels plus five dedicated boss stages spread the campaign across distinctive environments. Quality-of-life touches include an FOV slider, letterbox mode, and a custom violence setting that lets you swap blood for confetti or ketchup if the default register isn't to your taste.