I had never considered what it would be like if someone made a version of Hotline Miami where you play as a sneakerhead who only knows how to kick, but part of the beauty of indie games is that I didn’t have to cook that wild concept up at all. The fine freaks at Free Lives and Devolver Digital were more than happy to bring it to life, anyway. In a sea of recent frantic time trial FPS indie games like Ultrakill and Neon White, Anger Foot doesn’t falter for a second under the pressure. It brings unparalleled and unabashed vibes to the table and leaves no room for doubt – this filth-person-shooter is classic Devolver Digital, and one of the finest games the publisher has ever shepherded to release.
When I compare Anger Foot to iconic indie gem Hotline Miami, it isn’t just because of the twitch-precision, one-hit-kill, room-clearing adrenaline-maxing gameplay. It’s also because this game is nasty. You play a voiceless, green-skinned sneaker fanatic living in Shit City – a run-down, barely-functioning metropolis where everyone’s in a gang and the only rule is to “Do Crime.” You aren’t part of a gang, though; you just like collecting dope sneakers and storing them in your sneaker-room at home. When the leader of the Violence Gang rips the wall off your apartment and steals the priceless pairs of sneakers displayed on it, you’ve gotta fight through every decrepit inch of the city to get back what’s yours. It’s a bit like the plot of John Wick, when you think about it.
Of course, the way you exact vengeance is with your foot. Your tool set in Anger Foot is simple: one button kicks, another button shoots if you’ve picked up an enemy’s gun, and a third button throws that gun away once it’s empty. With those functions, a handy jump button, and a timer on your screen, you’re thrust into a bunch of bite-sized levels where your only goal is to get to the exit alive. There’s practically no tutorial to speak of in the game, and at first I thought that lack of guidance was a little weird.
With the timer ticking away on each level and a few of them proposing bonus challenges for me to finish in a certain time, I went into each encounter like it was a time trial. Eventually, I realised racing the clock wasn’t always worth prioritising. Some levels didn’t reward me for finishing in a certain time at all, and variables started popping up that made it clear I had way more options at my disposal than just speed.
Every 5 stars earned from beating levels or challenges gets you a new pair of sneakers, and each one comes with a unique ability that can enable completely different ways of play. When I unlocked the Detonators and saw that they make every door I kick blow up, I thought my speed-focused runs were about to get even faster. After a dozen deaths caused by me running face-first into an exploding door, I realised that the Detonators rewarded a stop-start style of play I hadn’t even considered up to that point. With new shoes, new enemies, and new challenge-types constantly coming at you, I was always enticed to mix up my play-style and even approach the same level multiple times in different ways to clear each challenge.
What I also appreciate about Anger Foot is that it gives you so much time to live and breath in this weird, gross, crime-fueled world it’s created. You aren’t just running, kicking, shooting, and kicking some more through each of the four main gangs territories. Every few levels, you get a chance to wander around a lively back alley or an unfinished apartment building half-filled with sewage. In those moments you can talk to NPCs hanging around and just see what bizarre, crime-loving shenanigans they’re up to. It’s a weirdly wholesome vibe, where someone will proudly tell you how they got mugged last week in the very stairwell they’re standing in, and right next to them is the person who mugged them. Even in the run-and-gun levels themselves, each room tells a story. It helps breathe so much life into the dozens of encounters you kick your way through, and made them feel like much more than just time-trials.
There’s so much more to love about Anger Foot. The hard, grungy bass-heavy music blasting in your ears at all times kicks every encounter up to 11. I fought a three-phase boss and it’s final phase was just a busted 1997 Lucida car. There’s weird, wonderful charm in every inch of this game – and heart-pounding combat that kept me sweating on my keyboard until the credits rolled. Anger Foot is gross, loud, and weird, and I love it.
