Anger Foot found its secret sauce in creative, sometimes 'impossible' challenge objectives, but the devs admit the one where you have to go on a lizard-licking psychedelic trip and destroy a toilet came from the 'running out of ideas phase'

Anger Foot is an FPS that just feels good to play⁠—the guns, the movement, the titular instakill melee, those fundamentals would already make it an easy recommendation, but its varied bonus objectives are what really elevated the whole experience for me.

"They're broadly split into two categories," explained co-designer Robbie Fraser in a PC Gamer interview with members of developer Free Lives. "The second star you get on every level is usually a speedrun, foot-only, barefoot, or pacifist, and those are mainly to encourage players not to always optimize the fun out of the game, not to pick the most broken shoe and always play the same way."

Shoes are, fittingly, your different power-ups in Anger Foot, and that "most broken shoe" in my experience was either the boot that gives you a room-clearing charge attack, or the sneaker that activates Max Payne bullet time. It would be hard to justify ever touching the rest of the arsenal in the face of those two, but at the same time, the pursuit of perfect game balance can often lead devs to nerf the fun out of their own games before players have the chance to optimize it away.

The positive reinforcement of rewarding loadout experimentation instead injects so much variety into Anger Foot, while still letting some of the power-ups remain overpowered. In my review of the game last month, I singled out the saucy stilettos that swap the effects of throwing and shooting guns, so throwing one becomes an instant kill while bullets just daze enemies. Running a level back with "Hello, Nurse" heels on for a bonus objective completely changed how I approached it, and that held true for other mission/footwear combos too.

The shoe that activates Big Head Mode has some cheeky utility for headshot-centric challenge objectives, while I'm also quite fond of the "Size Threes" that turn you into a wee little Anger Foot hobbit while all enemies remain normal-sized⁠—also the subject of their own bonus objective on one stage.

But that creative arsenal restriction wasn't the end of what Free Lives managed with its bonus objectives: "The third star on every level is supposed to be something quite challenging or unique," Fraser continued. "We tried to look at each level and see what's the unique thing you could do, just on this level."

"We had a great time coming up with some slightly puzzling ones," added programmer Jem Smith. "Racking your brain about what combination of shoe and action you can use to solve some of these is quite at odds with how you normally play Anger Foot.

"Some of these challenges seem impossible or bizarre, and then you find a strategy. Sometimes it's just a case of finding the right shoe."

One early example is a platforming-centric rooftop level with a "no jumping" bonus objective, something that had me stumped until I unlocked those charge attack boots. Ditto for some impossible-seeming speed run times that require you to find hidden shortcuts or unlock endgame shoes.

"I love the pacifist runs," Fraser said of his favorite objective type. "They are some of the hardest ones, but they also require some of the most creative thinking."

And not just from the player, in this game where the very act of opening a door is lethal⁠—you kick each and every one, turning them into lethal projectiles. "There's this one pacifist run," Smith explained, "Robbie built a 6 by 5 grid maze of rooms in order to avoid killing one enemy."

On the subject of Anger Foot's weird bonus objectives, I had to ask about one of its most memorable: "Average Trance Party: Go on a trip and destroy a toilet." Eating a lizard off the wall in the level takes care of the tripping part, turning the screen into an eye-scorching rainbow kaleidoscope like when somebody gets high in a cartoon. The toilet destruction is pretty self-explanatory, given the game's main form of interacting with the environment.

"Yeah, that was our 'running out of ideas phase,'" Smith said of the gag. Well, it was still a pretty good bit.