Bite-sized arcade FPS fun. I'll admit I didn't really "get" Chop Goblins until I'd finished it once. It's a short play. I went into it knowing full well it'd be over in 30 minutes or less. Then I finished it. Then I peeped the achievements and thought, "What the hell," and played it another two times, first on Once Again mode (essentially NG+) and then again on Goblin difficulty (Hard). I cleared out the remaining achievements in less than an hour.

As for the game itself, the asking price is very generous. There's always been a really annoying vocal subsection of capital-G "Gamers" that like to judge games based on the dollar-to-hours-of-content ratio, i.e. if a game is priced at $60, it should have more content than, say, a game priced at $20 or $30. These same critics will also bemoan any $60 title that isn't as polished as other $60 games such as the Last of Us, or Red Dead Redemption 2, or Skyrim. These "Gamers" will gravitate almost exclusively towards AAA-budget, prestige, or open world games (or roguelikes/lites). Their definitions of what a video game SHOULD be is exceedingly narrow. In my opinion, not every game needs to monopolize your time to such an extent that its length dwarfs every other actual facet of its design. The last AAA-budget/prestige/open world game I finished (besides Elden Ring) was Ghost of Tsushima. I played it on and off between other games for about a year. When I'd finally finished it, I couldn't really remember a lot of my early game experiences. I don't remember the names of the main story bosses, but I do remember some optional bosses hidden away behind the game's many wild goose chases. I remember the seasons changing between islands. The only things I remembered super well were the fun combat encounters and the multiplayer component (both incredibly good by the way). I bring this up because games like these are clearly technical marvels and some of the industry's biggest powerhouses churning out high quality, market-tested cinematic AAA experiences... but although you can sink tens or hundreds of hours into these games, I personally have never found the payoff that meaningful. These games often seem more like mountains when sometimes all anyone wants is a short hike.

Chop Goblins is a dangerously short game. The store page even tells you that you can beat it in 30 minutes, it literally underlines it. That means that a lot of people (evildoers) will likely play Chop Goblins once and request a refund through Steam. Anyone that puts in the legwork of buying and playing a $5 game just to refund it are weird. It'd be like complaining to the manager of a fast food place about their burgers and asking for a refund after you've already finished eating it. Who even cares at that point? It's five bucks. I don't know, I doubt that many people have even refunded this game. After all, Szymanski's quality speaks for itself. Not only is Dusk one of my favorite shooters, but Iron Lung (also released last year) also markets itself as a game that is under an hour long. I beat Chop Goblins this morning over a cup of coffee. 30 minutes is the Goldilocks Zone of pick-up-and-play game design to me.

Chop Goblins revels in its brevity. Each level feels fresh and fast. The only downtime comes after clearing a room full of the eponymous Goblins or the backtracking necessary to progress at some points. Every level introduces a new enemy and a new weapon (except for the last level) so there's always new things being thrown at the player. Some weapons can be unlocked early if the player expresses curiosity and scrutiny towards the environment. I actually discovered most of the secrets on my own (except for the Wand of the Corinthians in Level Four, which I did have to look up). At one point, a building explodes and a squad of Goblins going for a joyride in a hatchback blasts into a parking lot, a murderous automobile morphing the city streets into a bastardized bull run. While first-time players will panic and gun down the vehicle from a safe distance, less-cautious players can turn this setpiece into a tool: using the vehicle to launch themselves long and high distances to obtain extra coins, and even find Level Three's weapon (the Impaler) early.

It wasn't until my Goblin difficulty playthrough that I realized just how generous the items in this game were. Almost every room/arena comes with enough health/ammo to keep you healthy and trigger-happy every step of the way. The final level does introduce a steep difficulty spike, although the game ALSO expects you to be using your BFG analogue (the Wand of Corinthians) liberally at this point. The final room hands you an excess of health and ammo and way too many enemies, and players are expected to BFGspam their way to victory, in a sense. It's actually a really fun ending, but on my first playthrough I was a little underwhelmed and confused.

Some of my only complaints might be confined to the final level which, yes, does feel significantly harder than anything before; however, again, it's nothing unfair -- just don't be afraid to use your Wand. Although every level feels very distinct visually and design-wise, Level Five does feel very un-Chop-Goblins-like, starting in a generic post-apocalyptic asset-flip-esque environment (assumedly this is a stylistic choice), before descending into dark, neon hallways. This level doesn't sour the experience but it does feel remarkedly TOO claustrophobic in some parts. The new enemy introduced is just a stronger Green Goblin with more health, which throws laser axes now, and faster. Level Five feels more like a victory lap than a test of strength or endurance though, as one room allows players to kill a bunch of Goblins at work, their eyes glued to their workstations; this moment feels more like a freebie to rack up the score multiplier, and it's well appreciated. The final room is again a treat to experience now that I know how it's meant to be approached.

It's weird that the only boss in this game is Dracula.

Chop Goblins is small and simple, and hides its craftsmanship under that layer of simplicity and simpleness. Most elements of the game are there just enough to create unique and thoughtful gameplay experiences. Despite such a small weapon and enemy palette, each level tells its own story with its own gameplay and environment elements. Those tiny environment elements really do a lot of heavy lifting with making each level feel like a special experience.

It also genuinely surprised me how well balanced around weapon affordances the harder gamemodes were. Playing Goblin Mode with the original weapon progression versus playing it with secrets/Once Again Mode weapons is a totally different experience. The game you play between those two modes is so different it almost feels like two different gamemodes packaged into one game setting, with the actual dividing logic being the player's own prior knowledge or game choices.