Butcher's Creek is a short, sweet and brutal FPS video nasty from the maker of Dusk

Butcher's Creek should have been named Kill Streak. I mean, what else would you name a game about a man on a naked axe-murder rampage through a cult compound? Released just a few days ago, it's the sort of short, low-fi and pointedly horrible experience that its lone developer David Szymanski (Dusk, Iron Lung, Squirrel Stapler) is increasingly known for. Filthy, rusty, rough-edged horror adventures of movie length or less. Just long enough to get under your skin and have you turning them over in your head for a while.

Playing a bit like a budget-priced and condensed (but every bit as grimy) riff on Condemned: Criminal Origins, Butcher's Creek is a game that revels in slasher horror violence. Playing as a wandering uber-killer investigating reports of an Appalachian murder-cult, you're here to brutalize all in your path while collecting snuff videotapes (used to save the game) and enthusiastically building up your collection of polaroid murder photos, which, concerningly, also restores your health. You are not the good guy here. There are no good guys. A good guy would have prioritized getting dressed before going on a rampage.

See, shortly after getting tutorialized on the basics of CQC (including kicking people and whacking them around the head with a rusty pipe or any other solid piece of metal that comes to hand), the protagonist of Butcher's Creek is captured and stripped naked, and that's how you'll stay for the rest of the game, bare feet swinging into view every time you want to punt a burlap-masked assailant.

This adds the interesting Die Hard-esque twist of making broken glass on the ground a threat to your health, and encourages players to move carefully and with eyes fully peeled. It's all too easy to miss something dangerous, thanks to the game's intentionally low-fi VHS aesthetic, murky tunnels and paranoia-inducing soundscape, punctuated by the occasional enemy screaming profanity at you or (puzzlingly and amusingly) calling you a penis. They don't pick Appalachian murder-cultists for their eloquence, it seems.

Not to spoil too much more, there's a few smart nods to Szymanski's other works in Butcher's Creek. Is there some kind of contiguous and grimy horror-verse being built up here, or just shared themes? Is it just fan-service for those following his work? Does it even matter, when this game's focus is so squarely on being mad, red and nude offline? Butcher's Creek is out now on Steam for £7.22/$8.49, with a 15% launch discount.