OTXO Review

Welcome to my review of OTXO which is a game developed by Lateralis Heavy Industries (Dogworld) and published by Super Rare Games (Lone Ruin, Grapple Dog). OTXO is a fast-paced, top-down, roguelite shooter. It will be available on April 20th 2023 on PC via Steam.

Enter The Wolf

Continue reading to find out more about the game and my thoughts on it. You can also check out our previous reviews when you’re done here.

The Game

OTXO starts with our protagonist on public transport. Before we know it, he puts a mask on and BAM he appears to be face down on a sandy beach. We soon find out that OTXO means “wolf”, and you’re basically a lone wolf in this game. Where is he? That’s for players to find out as they progress through the game. After a short tutorial on how to play the game (it’s simple) we begin our journey.

Every run starts in The Rose Room. This is a very quiet bar with two people in it. One offers you drinks which are your power-ups for the run, your first one is always free. The other is a woman sitting on a sofa, she can import new drinks for you for coin. Basically, she will give you upgrades at a cost.

The Rose Room… Fancy.

Once you’re done in the room you can start your journey in this noir world. That’s until you start spraying your enemies’ insides on the floors and walls. Then it turns black, white, and red. I love this effect to be fair, it really makes the blood stand out.

One thing that really stands out in OTXO is the gunplay. It plays similarly to Hotline Miami, only for me this feels more fun. Upon picking up a weapon you will have two full magazines. One is already in the gun, the other is a spare ready to be loaded into the weapon to bring pain to your foes. Once you run out of bullets, that’s it. After that, all it will be useful for is chucking at an enemy in the hopes it will kill them. There is also a huge arsenal of weapons for you to find and use. Not only guns, but there are also throwables like grenades, kunai, and more.

You can pick up more guns as the enemy drop them, failing that you can kick them. This works on doors too, you can kick a door down and if an enemy is close enough on the other side, they’ll be knocked to the ground and sometimes instantly killed.

Be The One!

The game also has focus. This is essentially slow motion. Your character will move and shoot at full speed whilst everything else is slowed down. Handy for dodging those bullets in the style of Mr Anderson himself. Although you won’t have to bend over backwards in OTXO. Although there are quite a few little movie references in the game, I’ll leave them to you to find though. I do like the in-game boss fights as fortunately you’re given an option of guns before you go into the fight. Not only that, you have infinite ammo in boss fights which makes it a tad fairer.

I mentioned coin further up. This can be earned by killing enemies as you work your way through the rooms on each level. You can also get combo bonuses for different styles of killing the enemy, so mix it up and get the maximum coin!

Even though the game is “unknown” at present on the Steam Deck, I found it very playable. Controls were easy, it ran very well, and I experienced zero crashes both on my main PC, and the Deck.

OTXO also has 18 achievements for you to unlock. The game will last you as long as you want it to thanks to the roguelite elements in the game.

Also please be warned that there is a seizure warning when starting up this game. I can see why, there are a lot of flashing images. So please take care and remember this.

Look & Sound

As aforementioned, I love the graphics style. Especially when you’re spraying blood everywhere. The game runs beautifully on both PC and Steam Deck with zero issues.

The soundtrack of the game is absolutely class. At one point I literally felt like I was listening to the soundtrack of a John Wick movie. It really sucks you in and gets you right in the mood for putting bullets into people, in the game of course.

Conclusions

There are many hours of great fun to be had in this game, regardless of where you shall be playing this game. The controls work well enough to be playable on both keyboard and mouse, as well as a controller. The only thing is you will need to be fast with a controller where as the mouse is a little easier for aiming. But that’s obvious and not a fault of the devs at all.

I also need to get this off my chest, Lateralis are basically a one-person team. How on Earth can one person make a game that’s this fun?! Good job!

I was pleasantly surprised by OTXO and this is why I score it 10/10.