Being afraid of women is exactly the best reason to enter a sewer and shoot a load of zombies. Or so Gynophobia would have you believe, at least.
Mother!
We perversely meet our hero, Mark, in his mother’s bedroom, with her underwear scatted all over the place. Having referenced a classic serial killer stereotype about boys and their mothers, Mark decides to set off and explore his house (which mostly involves clicking on things with the pointer). Mark’s fear extends to visible distress at the sight of spiders, too. So he’s unable to enter his kitchen where one lurks harmlessly. And instead, ends up distracting himself by playing a terrible first-person shooter on his bedroom PC.
Mise en abyme…
So begins the game-within-a-game. A short level set in a sewer, filled with zombies with poor AI and dodgy collision detection.
You can, and probably will, stand on their heads and come to no harm while their undead comrades flail at you unsuccessfully. Ammo for your pistol and what appear to be tins of tomatoes for ‘health’ unconvincingly litter the place but rather than stock up, the best course of action is to simply leg it for the exit ladder.
Exit found, you enter a car park in a town occupied by more zombies and for no explained reason, a massive guy with some sort of hammer. He’s not unlike one of the Bad Brothers from Golden Axe and follows you everywhere while you find some wheels and petrol for a van so you can escape. Exactly why Mark can’t just turn the game off is not explained!
Nobody actually cares…
Back in Mark’s house, you can explore some more as the spider has moved on. Eight-legged friend out of the way, you soon trigger the next level by way of a dream sequence. Or is it a dream? Maybe it’s real! Nobody actually cares.
Here, however, you finally confront Mark’s worst fear: women. Shoot them all! Evil women! And some giant spiders for good measure. And so it goes on.
In 1996, Gynophobia would be near the peak of plot-based FPS action games. In that pre-Half-Life world, a meta story and this sort of action would impress. In 2015, a clumsy, generic Unity asset-based shooter is hardly going to stand out from the crowd – even if that crowd includes Devils Share.
It is clear there’s a vision here, an interesting psychological exploration into the mind of someone with a chronic discomposure of something; but the implementation shows the developer lacks the talent to fully represent this. Weak graphics and shocking AI could be glossed over with a great story or some genuine horror moments, yet Gynophobia lacks these too. What could be on a level with Eternal Darkness is instead a soulless gun game with clear baiting – why chose women as the literal target of the game if not to provoke? There are better ways of handling this, most of which don’t involve filling nurses full of bullets.
Although it is clear somebody – or some group of bodies – has spent a lot of time crafting this sub-par experience, it’s not a game that can be recommended.
If it turns out this was the hobby project of a 13 year-old boy (which this does feel like), then well done him. He’s made a great start in a career in game development. Perhaps once he’s had a bit of counselling, anyway!
If not, then no amount of polish is going to create an acceptable game from this as there is no single issue to repair. Everything needs serious attention and some sort of cohesion. It’s understandable that each section is thematically disparate, but the overarching ‘house exploration’ interludes don’t tie them all together in any defined or considered way. Vagueness and discovery can be used as excellent devices when implemented correctly, see Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture as proof of that, but Gynophobia is a limp collection of poorly realised levels replete with poorly realised gun play, bound together with a poorly realised (and poorly advised) premise.
Avoid.
Gynophobia is listed on Steam for £2.79 and is also currently available as part of a 12-game Indie Gala Hump Day bundle for $4 or more. The Hump Day offer ends at 11:30AM (10:30 CET) on Wednesday.