Our Darker Purpose

Damn... This game is hard. Hard as a twin-stick shooter, hard as a rogue-like, and a different kind of hard compared to Isaac. There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s start.

Everything is unfair—way too unfair. I understand why the setting is a surreal school because this game feels like the worst kind of school bullying. Ever seen one? It’s like when an entire class makes it their sole purpose to stress not only you but your next five reincarnations. Now I’ll explain why I compared this game to being bullied: your character is very limited in what she can do.

She can shoot, BUT it has almost no range. Your starting shot covers only about 20-25% of a regular room, which is shorter than the lifespan of a "1-day" butterfly. And your projectiles are very small, and so far, I haven’t found any way to increase their size. They also don’t shoot straight but at a slight angle.

She can do a dodge roll. Very useful—I'd say the second most useful feature in the game—but you can’t dodge through projectiles or enemies.

She can use items, but good luck finding one that’s useful with such short cooldowns.

She can use apple juice, which by default heals you for 20 HP. You start with 3 (the max number can be raised to 8 and further increased by some items and level perks).

She can use chalk clouds. When you use it (which takes a full second to activate), it creates 3 chalk clouds that wander around for 2-3 seconds, dealing damage to enemies.

So far, it doesn’t seem so bad—but only because I haven’t explained what enemies can do yet. Let’s start with the basics:

1) They appear in big numbers.
2) They have more hit points than you.
3) They can shoot through obstacles.
4) They have infinite projectile range.
5) Those that do contact damage will lock onto you like there’s no tomorrow.

Now let’s talk about room layouts:

• Obstacles will always benefit enemy positioning.
• Rooms come in 3 sizes: broom closet, classroom, and P.E. hall. Smaller ones are better because they have fewer enemies in them.
• Light radius... yes, light radius—and by default, it’s worse than Curse of Darkness in Isaac. There are also under-lit floors—yes, just like in Slender games.
• Environmental hazards—there are a lot of them:
  • Tiny floor spikes.
  • Wood stoves that release homing flame trails.
  • Some weird resonance dummies that respond with a short shockwave when hit (hurting both you and enemies).
  • Rose thorns that stay burrowed for 3 seconds and resurface for another 3 seconds.
  • Stone statues with two stones gravitating around them.
  • Tentacles that confuse you by making you shoot in the opposite direction for a couple of seconds.
  • Signal fire columns that constantly shoot fire in 4 diagonal directions.
  • Spike balls that bounce around and destroy some obstacles.
  • Holes in the floor with long creepy arms sticking out—when you get close, “it” will make a round swipe motion.
  • Closets with living clothes that release clothing to bind you for 2 seconds.
• Floor gimmicks—there are actually some good ones (you’ll see these as words in parentheses when choosing levels):
  Good ones:
  • Gluttonous: Enemies have an increased chance to drop juice boxes on defeat.
  • Well-stocked: Enemies drop more money on defeat; more money is also found where it usually spawns, plus there’s a chance of a second vending machine appearing.
  • Landmarked: A ghost teacher may appear to lead you into secret rooms.
  • Sensitive: Everyone takes double damage.
  Bad ones:
  • Under-lit: Light radius is smaller.
  • Pitch black: You can’t see anything at all.
  • Papery: If regular bullet hell isn’t enough for you, here comes a constant flood of damaging paper.
  • Haunted: Obstacles explode and harm you.
  • On fire: Every obstacle is on fire; don’t leave money or juice boxes on the floor—they’ll catch fire if you leave the room.

Okay, I’m getting tired, so let’s imagine a typical room in ODP: You walk into the room and immediately get hit by a spiky ball in the face. You try to roll away but land straight onto floor spikes. Then you get hit by a champion cloud boy with his green cloud that confuses you. You use one juice box, then see about five fire trails closing in on you. You try to escape only to be hit by a globe, a chair, and body-tackled by some Kingpin-sized mofo in an ugly sweater—all while literal bullet hell is going on around you with obstacles everywhere, tiny light radius, and tiny bullets with no range.

This is why I compared this game to being bullied—you barely get a second to breathe! Sure, you can get some upgrades via donating boss crystals and "lesson perks," but they cost perk points—and you need three of them just to unlock hard mode later on! And then the game has the audacity to ask you to beat some bosses without taking damage or while they have X number of minions alive around them—or without using healing or dodge rolling! Now this is Grade Double-S bull IMO.

I haven’t even said anything meaningful about the bosses yet—but I’ll leave that for you to discover.