Penance
A downloadable Unspeakable Game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
You're the Damned One, a reptilian Fallen Holy Warrior, seeking for Penance to atone for your sins against your kind. You have been given a task: Go through the gates of Hell and destroy all the sin you can see.
You start with your sword and pistol, and you will find more weapons in the corners of Hell.
Show them your Holy Fury, and only then you shall be redeemed.
Penance is an oldschool style FPS with a campaign mode with hand made levels, and an endless mode with procedurally generated levels covered in gritty retro graphics. You play as anthropomorphic lizard templar dude (look I like lizards okay).
The campaign mode features five (or six if you count the very first one) hand made levels, and a bossfight.
The goal of the endless mode is simple: Cause enough carnage and earn points from each kill, collect keys each level to get through the portals, then show off your highscore to your friends.
The game has a Discord support, so people can see your score while playing and also which campaign level you are on. If you get high enough score, you will get the ending cutscene. Penance also has simple bunnyhopping that increases your speed, crouch-sliding and a rage mechanic, that when activated, gives you double damage to all weapons, except the sword does quadruple damage.
Default Controls:
- WASD - Movement
- Spacebar - Jump
- Left mouse button - Shoot
- Right mouse button - Zoom
- Scrollwheel and number keys - Change weapon
- Q - Activate rage when yellow bar is 100
Controls should be able to be remapped from game launcher.
I haven't tested controller with this game, it was created for mouse and keyboard in mind.
This game was simply made for fun, because it's something I felt like I wanted to play and I love oldschool style FPS games. It's probably not that difficult game for FPS players, but I am proud of this game and I find it fun and satisfying to play. Due to the overwhelming popularity I also made the campaign mode, which let me practice proper level design.
I used a lot of feedback I got from Ironscale and Castle Rodok to make this game, but also learned a lot of new things. I hope you have as much fun playing Penance as I had making it!
If you want to share your highscore with me, join my Matrix space group!
https://matrix.to/#/#aksdev-space:matrix.akselmo.dev
Music was made by Fredrik Thrysoe: https://fredrikthrysoe.wordpress.com/
You can buy the soundtrack here: https://fredrikthrysoe.bandcamp.com/album/penance-originial-game-soundtrack
Voice acting for final boss and narrator: https://twitter.com/GetGianni
Copyright 2023 Akseli Lahtinen. This game is not allowed to be hosted outside of itch.io. This page is the only official place where to download and/or buy this game.
Status | Released |
Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux |
Rating | Rated 4.2 out of 5 stars (88 total ratings) |
Author | Akselmo / Skale Games |
Genre | Shooter |
Made with | Unity |
Tags | First-Person, FPS, Furry, oldschool, Procedural Generation, PSX (PlayStation), Retro, unspeakable |
Average session | About a half-hour |
Languages | English |
Inputs | Keyboard, Mouse |
Accessibility | Configurable controls |
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Watch out for impostersMar 08, 2023
- One year of PenanceNov 15, 2020
- Penance is now available on Linux!Jun 14, 2020
- Penance is now on speedrun.com!Jun 04, 2020
- Penance is now available on Mac systems!May 17, 2020
- Penance Campaign Update is now out!Mar 06, 2020
- Penance Campaign update -teaserMar 05, 2020
- Penance Campaign modeFeb 07, 2020
Comments
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It has the same feeling as putting up some heavy metal CD in the stereo as loud as I could and then loading up Doom or Painkiller on the familty PC as a teenager. Lots of fun.
Exactly what I was going for then :D Glad you like it!
bhopping and music went so hard, campaign was perfect length, endless becomes an exercise in ammo management but I love it. still a banger game 2024 approved
Thanks! I am glad it is still fun. I hope to get new games out soon:tm: but, you know, life.
great scally game :3
I had big jolly good ol' fun :3
Nice one, this game is really good, gg
🧛🏻♂️ Still a badass game. 🧛🏻♂️
why what an asshole to steal your game, if you do port it to Steam I can toss a few bucks your way!
Sorry to hear someone stole your game and uploaded for sale on Steam. Hope Valve acts quickly and bans the heck out of that scum. Cheers.
Thanks, yeah, it was weird. The page has already been taken down at least.
Played this and was enjoying myself until 20 minutes in the game muted itself completely and 10 minutes later, no gun would shoot and the sword wouldn't swing.
Feels like a rough Dusk inspired game
It’s a bit rough yes, but it’s inspired by Quake, not Dusk. :)
Had a lot of fun with this game. Loved the old school feel to it!
Glad you liked it :)
Glad you liked it!
I really love the bleak atmosphere, maybe it's just the open map but it feels very lonely and windswept. Refreshing, to say the least, to have an interpretation of a hellscape like this.
I don't even mind the difficulty being a little low, the beautiful levels more than made up for it.
Thanks! This game was fun to make since it let me go fully weird with the level design. I'm glad you like them, although I would personally remake the first couple levels.
The first level felt really menacing in its sparseness… what would you change? I personally love the idea of a redux… secrets, more levels, more weapons?
If by first level you mean the blue level, I would change the floors to have more holes in them, like broken ice. Also I would help direct the player more, since it's a bit too much of a labyrinth at the moment and can be frustrating to play.
Ohhh, I was referring to the floating red platforms and lake of blood level... is that not the first level? It's been a minute since I last played.
Ah no, you're correct. I just usually referred the floating red platforms level as "Level 0."
The game was really damn fun, and the splatter caused by the stronger weapons was really great, but the final boss was a little lacking for me. It was just endless circle straifing and pelting it with bullets and rockets. But otherwise it was an excellent experience.
Thanks! Yeah I wasn't very happy with the bossfight either.
Wow, I've really been enjoying this game, its a great boomer shooter game and deserves to be on Steam. The combat is fun and the map/graphics are pretty solid. I enjoy the different color filter on every level, I've seen other games do this and it makes each level feel more unique.
The AI of the enemies is a little lacking at times but still pretty good. Also, for some reason the hotkey for Rage said "Z" in the controls menu even though its actually "Q". I realize some other people may be saying the player moves slow, but I doubt they are strafe jumping, because I can go pretty fast and I love it. The campaign boss fight was pretty lackluster, I think having the dragon flying, or moving faster would've made it a better fight.
I look forward to playing more of your games or seeing updates! :D
Thanks! Yeah I forgot to change the controls help menu text. And I agree with the dragon boss fight, I wanted to make it more grand but I didn't really have any skills or ideas how to make it better.
What I say is in genuine hope that it helps you improve your game design(please don't take it personally)
I can tell this is probably one of the first games you have made and it's not bad for someone even if they had experience, voice acting is better than certain triple A games and the story (despite being short) makes sense.
Gameplay issues:
the maps are too open which makes them long to traverse and gives far too much breathing room to the player.
from what I've seen the enemy types are all very similar aside from hitboxes, making them all have unique and memorable attack patterns will add more life to the combat
Technical issues:
Games not libre and not source available which makes it less appealing
Most enemies feel untextured
ps. if you are looking for a game engine that will give your games better performance you might wanna look into godot. Also godot will never make you pay them even if you earn over 100k a year ;).
Thanks for the feedback!
copy and pasting from my rating and hoping the dev still responds :
movement and combat is 10/10. there's a few things that stop me from giving 5 stars, the enemy AI leaves some to be desired. I.E the radius the player has to be in before the enemies see you is very small so the player can just snipe them from far off or when the enemies are following you and they reach a gap the player can jump over the enemies just run towards the gap.
also there's a glitch where if you shoot the final boss it can animation lock him easily destroying half of his healthbar with a full magazine.
other than that absolutely 10/10 please make more games like this
Thanks for the feedback, glad you like the game. I will surely try make more games like this :)
damn this game is dope, i'd totally pay full price for it if it releases on steam, it feels like stealing getting this from the ukraine bundle lol. only complaint is that the cursor in the menu is very buggy on linux, and 32:9 support would be nice
Thanks, I'm glad you like it!
I liked this game quite a bit! It's the most boomer shooter revolution era a FPS can be, it's pretty good and i see it has limitations that were overcome with style. I gotta say love the sound the yellow crosses make when you pick them up, specially when they're in a row. "Hoh-Hoh-Hoh-Hoh!"; I only have a few complaints: the player movement speed is a bit slow, of course the bunny hopping compensates it, i like it, altho i feel not only player speed but also projectiles could be faster, i see they're not hitscan but they can still be somewhat faster, of course, to compensate: enemy speed increase too, even down to the fire rate of ranged enemies, to keep the player always moving and in need of tight notion of their surroundings. Overall, fun game!
Thank you for the feedback! It's funny how much I get mixed results when it comes to game speed, some say it's too fast and some say it's too slow :D Anyway I am glad you liked the game!
after all this time... i still playing this game.. it fits really well with this song https://soundcloud.com/mrkittydm/selena
vibing while doing some parkour for hours killing demons with my sword enjoying the 16-bit style game. its perfect for relaxing and just feel good idk.
Thank you for the nice comment! This is why I make games, after all.
It's been a bit slow for me to work on newer titles because of life, but I hope you'll enjoy them as well, whenever they come out. :D
I can't believe you made this game free this is absolutely fun! Thank you so much!
No problem, glad you enjoy it! There's more games to come in future!
God damn this is good and gorgeous
Thanks!
neat
So glad I found this game! It's absolutely incredible and I will definitely be playing it over and over again!
Glad you enjoy it! :D
I already have 3 parts of this on my channel! its honestly in my top 3 favorite games(Alongside Super Mario 64 and Halo 4)! It's so addicting, and even tho I only made little progress so far(which is because i love to explore all of it) it keeps me coming back! Also the music is just amazing! As an audio producer, I can tell you this is the best soundtrack I've heard in a game on this site!
Thank you so much for your kind words!
I LOVEE this game i try to play it as often as i can and honestly im hooked
Thank you so much!
So weird, My mouse works in menus but not when I am in the level, I can only use the ASWD keys in game, have you heard of this issue? Thanks!
That's a new one.. Check your sensitivity settings just in case. Other than that I can't think of any reason :(
Hey I just got it working, its very strange tho. If I put the sense to 10 or above, it works, but 0-9 it disables mouse look all together, can still swing. I tried 1,2,3-9 and all failed, 10 and above works. I just dropped my mouse sense when using 10 in game and I got it working , but I did want to report that weird bug to you. I reinstalled drivers, the game, changed USB etc. only works above 10
That's really weird. Only reason I can think of is that the range of the sensitivity between 1-10 you can change is too low for your mouse DPI or something, and it barely moves at that point. I'm glad you got it working though! Sorry about the hassle.
What OS do you use?
its windows 10, not sure why it would do it but its running great now. Thanks for the quick response, I'm gonna put a playthrough up on the channel when I finish up. Thank you for your work!
And thank you for reporting this issue! :D
I don't usually play these kinds of old-school FPSs', but I really enjoyed this one! 10/10 would play as a gun wielding lizard again.
Thanks, happy you liked it!
Pit of Pain was one of my absolute favorite levels in an FPS last year, and every so often i go back to the game just to replay it! Really loved the campaign mode, killer throwback shooter that has stayed in my memory. Sorry I don't have more detailed feedback!!
Thank you so much!!
I did not complete the game, so please bear this in mind when you read this:
Story/Lore: Like many old school shooters, the plot is fairly straightforward and exists pretty much to give context (read: an excuse) for why you're running around slaying monsters and demons. There are words written on walls in Latin- I don't know Latin very well, so if there is lore to be learned, it serves more as a genius bonus than any earnest attempt at telling a story, as far as I'm concerned.
-Note: The Dev has stated that the Latin does come directly from the Bible, which fits the overall aesthetic well.
Graphical Design: To say the game looks muddy is a bit of an understatement. While I understand the aesthetic the developer is going for, many older games, such as Doom, had to convey as much information to the player as possible without explicitly pointing it out. Between the textures and the draw distance, it can be difficult to really see enemies unless you're going slow and paying attention, which for a run-and-gun is a detriment.
-Note: The Dev has stated they are more of a programmer than an artist, so it is within acceptable personal bounds for what is essentially a learner project.
Weaponry: The weapons honestly feel like they're lacking in various ways. You have a sword, a pistol, a shotgun, a tommy gun, a crossbow, and a grenade launcher (that I was able to acquire). You start with a sword and pistol, and will always start with one if you die. The sword swings quick, but it takes a few seconds for you to 'recover' before you can swing again. It is very much an emergency weapon. The pistol is a solid starter, decent ammo capacity, and with the zoom function, it will carry you when all other weapons are out of ammo. The shotgun is best used for close-quarters combat, but is terrible at long range, with a decent ammo capacity, there isn't really much more to be said. The thompson is a god tier weapon, with a good ammo capacity and fire rate, and will rinse through most enemies within five to seven bullets, depending on the enemy. The crossbow is a much slower weapon with, from what I could tell, a piercing effect. On the low end of the ammo cap, but well-balanced for its damage output. Very good when enemies are lined up. The grenade launcher, however, is a nightmare to use. It fires upward, which if you're aiming at an enemy means it's likely to go over them. In the short time I was able to use it, I missed every shot while getting my health drained by what looked like a soldier enemy, even when aiming down to accommodate this idiosyncrasy. Overall, the weapon design is solid and does its job fairly well.
Sound Design: While the soundtrack is good, between it and the muddy-sounding enemies, it can get disorienting trying to pinpoint what enemies you're facing. The idea of having consistent enemy noises to give you a hint as to what is around a corner is inspired, but the effect is lost due to a mixture of it being drowned out by the soundtrack and the overall sound quality. With some volume balancing, this issue can be resolved.
Level Design: The level design is fairly solid, despite looking muddy and samey at times, it's not easy to get lost in spite of a lack of distinct landmarks. (There are some, but they are fairly rare.) The first level has platforming that is very lenient, which is good considering a fall into the void is instant death.
Enemy Design: I have to say, the enemy design is very good and varied. Each enemy is distinct enough that you know what you're dealing with. Though every enemy goes down with a handful of shots, regardless of your weapon, each one does pose a threat. Especially the Soldiers, who will drain your health if you give them a chance. All of the enemies are fast, so kill them before they can kill you.
Gameplay: Though I haven't seen any explicit statement of the game being a run and gun, the overall design lends credence to the thought that you're meant to run around and blast enemies. However, I ended up playing the game more like a tactical shooter, zooming in on enemies and picking them off one by one. The run-and-gun approach will lead to enemies hounding after you, which can lead to chases where you're running backward desperately trying to kill your pursuers. For whatever reason, I could not get Rage to activate, so I can't touch upon that, unfortunately.
-Note: This game does feature some instant death pits that will likely make you rage quit should you fall into them.
Endless Mode: From what I understand, this mode was what the game initially was, and for a procedurally generated mode, it is fairly solid, even taking the above into account.
Overall: Let's face it, you're not here for a deep, story-driven game. You're here to slaughter the forces of hell.You aren't going to get the best, immersive game, but you're are going to get a reasonably run romp with a punishing enough difficulty that you won't just breeze through it. For what is essentially a learner project, all of the above factors taken into account, and for the low, low price of basically free, you have nothing to lose playing this. I personally am excited to see what future games this developer will make, and honestly, I'm hoping they can revisit this concept with a larger (presuming they had one before) budget and with refined assets.
It is my opinion that it would be well worth it to support the dev, and while I don't think this game is worth much in terms of price, I do believe that if you do spend money on this, you're not just buying a game, you're helping an up-and-coming game developer.
Final Score: 7/10, for a good concept with solid gameplay and boundless potential.
Thank you for the detailed feedback! This will help me in future titles.
Love the game! I just have a few suggestions:
First of all, I found a pretty easily fixable issue about movement. It seems like the player's movement vectors aren't being normalized, resulting in the player moving faster when running diagonally and even faster than that when jumping at the same time. I was able to abuse this to just skip through the Pit of Pain level without firing a single shot or taking a single hit from an enemy.
On the topic of the Pit of Pain level though, I found it to be rather unbalanced. Taking the left path from the start along the top (as I did) left me starved for ammo, and having to melee by the time I reached the bottom. Even when I used my shots as efficiently as possible (that is, only using the minimum number of shots per enemy) I still found myself critically low on ammo by that time. I think this could be fixed by making the level more linear, making it so the player can't take the left path and has to go to the right. While this might take away from the openness of it a little, I think it would improve gameplay as there are plenty of branches to the pit along the path to the right.
There are also some changes to the gameplay that I would like to suggest:
First, I would make it so that when the player shoots one enemy, the ones around it are alerted as well. It's easy to play the game as a stealth shooter rather than a run-and-gun DOOM or Quake style game, picking enemies off one-by-one.
Something else which I feel kind of slowed things down a bit was having to switch to a separate melee weapon. The sword felt a bit awkward as the only melee option, since it takes time to switch to it that could be spent shooting. I think that it would feel more natural if there was also something like a punch that you're able to perform while holding guns. It could deal low damage and be more focused on knockback (similar to Left 4 Dead), so that way there's something to fall back on if the player gets surrounded by enemies. Also, punching a demon to the ground before blowing its brains out with a shotgun is really satisfying!
I think the rage mechanic is a bit underutilized as well. I think that a system like that should feel as good as possible to play. Instead of just speeding the player's movement up, a solution could be to also increase the player's rate of fire. It could also lead to the player bringing out a chainsaw or something while giving a speed boost to annihilate enemies that stand in their way (but still be vulnerable to damage, especially from ranged weapons). I think that adding either of these would dramatically improve the rage mechanic.
Finally, I found the explosions to be a bit lackluster. The explosion radius is rather small, making it not as effective for large crowds as it could be. A solution to this (without making explosives overpowered) could be to have a "core" to the explosion as well as an outer boundary to it, kind of like a shockwave. The core could deal full damage, and the explosion could deal less damage the farther away from the core it is until it finally drops to zero at the outer boundary. This would make it so that shooting a pipe bomb into a crowd feels more effective, even if most of them don't drop dead on the spot.
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Regardless of the suggestions though, I had a great time playing this game, and can't wait to see more!
Thank you for the feedback! It'll help me with future titles.
Regarding this though:
It seems like the player's movement vectors aren't being normalized, resulting in the player moving faster when running diagonally and even faster than that when jumping at the same time.
This was intentional! :D I wanted to add some tricks for movement, such as the bhopping that makes player faster. I like fast movement paced FPS games myself so having these little things made the game more enjoyable to play to me.
This game is brilliant! Both Towers of Turmoil and Flesh of Forsaken are really strong levels in design. You are really onto something with this style of game. Please produce more stuff like this because this is solid.
Thank you so much for the kind words :)
My video on this baddass FSP horror game.
Is there a way to load your save?
Sorry the game doesn't have saving or loading, aside from saving your settings. If you stopped in mid campaign and want to continue, just select the map where you were left off from the level select.
Very fun, fast paced Quake-like!
Thanks, happy you like it :)
Hey, the game feels and looks amazing! Enough challenge but also very rewarding. I got stuck with the pistol on 00/80 bullets... how do I reload?
Actually, nevermind, I just realized 80 is the maximum ammount, and not what I have in stock lol... by the way, the soundtrack is dope!
Yep, no reloading in this game :D Thank you!
A really good twitch/Olympic-speed-running/heavy-metal shooter. A bit more Serious Sam than Quake or Doom, but I also like SS; running around wide rooms as dozens of enemies kite you and run face-first into your buckshot. And who doesn't like a fucking raptor gun-paladin?
Thank you! I've always believed world needs more reptiles with guns!
Awesome game!
Thanks!
This game is SICK!!!
Endless mode is a cherry on top
I LOVE YOU!!!
Why thank you! :'D
If you ever make a sequel a minimap or map would be nice
graphics and difficulty options would be welcome too
Is there any box art I can use it in my Steam library?
Yup, here you go!
This game is satisfyingly fast. Had a blast!
Thanks, glad to hear it!
Oh yeah I forgot to mention, really good sounds! Idk if the stuff was stock sound effects, but whatever you used was great!
Lots of it was from Sonniss free sound effect packs they release around GDC. Some of them were made by myself, for example rockets whooshing was literally just me blowing at the microphone lol.