A sweet friend spotted this odd little game on my wishlist and gifted it to me this evening. <3 I have a wildlife sanctuary on our property, founded after discovering a family of groundhogs living in an impressive network of burrows. In an effort to combine my love of these underground animals with my love of gaming, I found Smithy, and added it to my wishlist some time ago. :)
I’ve been having great fun with Smithy tonight! It’s the essence of old school gaming, in my opinion. It’s a twin-stick shooter, with retro graphics, boppy chiptune music, an inexplicably strange gun-wielding rodent, unforgiving hits, procedurally generated levels (truly with no rhyme or reason), stingy bullet and health drops, and a grindy loop with the aim of earning coins for a collection of five different guns and vague upgrades to said guns. And no Steam Achievements!
As someone who isn’t much of an achievement hunter, I like this. :D It makes me nostalgic for the simpler days of gaming, where the purpose of playing wasn’t to top global leaderboards, understand why a rodent is amassing military grade weapons, or assess the intricacies of a sprawling map. You simply play and try your best to get good.
I’ve never been great at twinstick shooters, but I have played Smithy for over two hours nonstop this evening and I’ve managed to purchase all available guns (those babies are expensive!) and also upgrade one. Each gun operates quite differently, causing you to adjust your movement around the maps (in an effort to bunch up enemies) quite drastically lest you become overwhelmed by enemies who take advantage of your gun’s particular firing rate or range. You can’t freely swap between weapons during runs; you can only swap at what appears to be a weapons handler who is positioned at the start of each level. (You can return to him and swap mid-level if you need to make your way back). Bullet drops are color-coded to weapon type, and so you may find yourself in a level with no bullet drops at all, or bullet drops that don’t match your gun color. When the enemies “hit” (…munch at you), they hit hard! I have run out of bullets on several occasions and accordingly found myself running for my life from rats and bats!
The walls of the underground are also comprised of various substrates, which take vaguely varying amounts of firepower to blast through. You can exit a level as quickly or as slowly as you wish, either via an existing opening, or by firing your way through walls to create your own opening (and thus tumbling down into the next burrow level). The appeal of remaining within a level for as long as possible depends on the extent to which you are moving through with “fingers crossed,” hoping that the RNG gods have smiled upon you with your favorite color bullet drops, crucial health drops, or gold bars around the next bend. Some levels have little to none, others are loaded.
I’ve been playing Smithy on a handheld (Lenovo LegionGo with SteamOS, which operates nearly identically to my Steam Deck) and it’s flawless. I’m not sure why it’s listed as only having partial controller support, as I’ve been able to do everything with the controllers, no trackpad or touchscreen necessary. It should be Steam Deck Verified in my opinion!
I think Smithy is a great little retro game for anyone who enjoys (or wishes to experience) the simplicity of 80’s arcade-style twinstick shooters. For the sake of playing the game, not for achievement-hunting. Smithy is odd, it’s challenging yet simple, and it has an adorable little burrowing animal (groundhog? gopher?) to whom I’ve become quite attached. Poor little guy just wants to chill in his burrow, but has been forced to become Rambo Rodent. :D
