Chumps Preview is a special kind of post where we unofficially preview games in Early Access, Beta, or are otherwise “unfinished.” This kind of preview is meant to be a first impression rather than a definitive review where we provide a rating to determine a game’s value. As such, we fully expect a game covered in a Chumps Preview to have room for improvement, some bugginess/incompleteness, and other features associated with similar games in the category.
Last month, Get to the Orange Door (GTTOD) dropped a major update, “The Dark Down Under Part II,” improving its parkour mechanics, adding melee weapons, adding new enemies, several level biomes, a prologue (The Exclusion Zone) that goes over some GTTOD basics, and some hidden secrets, too. While this title is in Early Access at this time, let’s see how this update is shaking up!
GTTOD has been described to me as a roguelite meets FPS set in an 80s-inspired retrofuturist world being threatened by The World Sentinel. As the protagonist, your goal is to get to the orange door (literally, it’s in the name!) and eradicate the enemies guarding the door. It’s neon. Its soundtrack oozes synth-wave. It’s fast-paced. And, most importantly, it’s quite fun. After spending several hours with GTTOD, I believe it to be quite the unique boomer shooter experience with roguelite tendencies. In some ways, it’s just as fun as the Titanfall series (if not more); in other ways, its roguelite experience is reminiscent of Risk of Rain and RETURNAL but with less variance and less visible progression.
Part of GTTOD’s gameplay loop involves roguelite gunplay, with some melee options that have been recently baked in thanks to additional melee weapons. The starting weapon is always a pistol, but other weapons can be bought in-game from a randomized slot machine (Grab-A-Gun!) or the occasional gun-specific box that occasionally spawns. Shooting is incredibly forgiving; as a player who prefers controllers, precision can occasionally be a frustrating experience. Not here, as I was able to shoot in the general direction of enemies and have most damage register. It could also mean that the hitboxes for the enemies themselves may be larger than they look, but it’s still quite difficult to miss an enemy when you’re trying to gun them down.
While GTTOD features additional tactical weaponry that enhance the gunplay, I want to emphasize how two of its power-ups made me feel powerful under the right circumstances: The “Ultimate Ability” and Dual Wielding. Neither of these things were explained well in The Exclusion Zone, but I happened across them after some time. The Ultimate Ability is the game’s “Slow-Mo” mode (think OTXO or Rightfully, Beary Arms); it’s unlocked after a few successful runs but gives the player more control in aiming and reducing some of the chaos that comes with GTTOD’s insistence on the player moving first and shooting later. Dual-wielding, on the other hand, becomes available when two guns are acquired during a run. Dual-wielding two different weapons is absolutely wild and makes the boomer-shooter experience much more boomey and gun-forward. It enhances the experience in all the right ways while encouraging me to mix and match weapons I come across. Sure, I could use two shotguns, but why not try a SMG and a pistol?
As a roguelite, GTTOD doesn’t adhere to the typical gameplay principles that involve variance and persistence. There’s a small weapon pool, so it’s possible to hit the same weapons over and over despite being on different runs. If you manage to pick up keys, they can be used to unlock bunkers that are randomly distributed across the levels. The bunkers can contain workbenches to upgrade your current weapon or shrines that grant you a blessing or a curse should you decide to select it. That, paired with the small number of levels at this time, can make runs feel like they’re becoming less “fresh” and more repetitious.
Another facet of “good” roguelites involve that of its persistence and progression. In other words, if players feel like they’re progressing despite dying multiple times in a row, it feels less punishing and more fun. GTTOD’s current progression mechanics involve that of its vine currency. Completing a level grants the player vines, and vines can be spent to achieve permanent unlocks such as an additional dash, more health, and the player’s ultimate ability of slow-mo. As it stands, most initial unlocks require at least 15 vines, and that means at least two levels need to be completed before getting that first permanent unlock.
During my playthrough, it felt like I wasn’t truly progressing until I made that first vine purchase. And at that point…almost an hour of trial and error had passed. Maybe this is because I didn’t “get” what to do after the tutorial, which was recently added to the game. The Exclusion Zone was great in teaching me the basics, yes, but I didn’t understand how the levels “worked” or how I was to get stronger. That is…until I just ran to the Orange Door.
Yep. The game is literally called Get to the Orange Door…and I wasn’t doing it. I was spending time exploring levels and shooting everything I saw. The more enemies I killed, the higher the threat level went, and enemies’ power would grow in turn. I didn’t think about getting to the orange door first, surviving the waves of enemies, and then going back for powerups afterward. The approach of clearing the level and then doing a quick victory lap is similar to how I learned how to play Risk of Rain 2, many thanks to my friends who had to literally tell me to keep moving unless I wanted to artificially increase the difficulty because of it being time-gated rather than level-gated.
Maybe this is an opportunity to potentially, ever-so-slightly, modify The Exclusion Zone’s onboarding tutorial just once more and literally force players to run forward to the door rather than shoot things. Or just…shoot less until you get to the door. As much as I recognize that I done goofed with the first hour or so of my playthrough, I am sure that there will be those after me who don’t realize the gist of GTTOD despite the goal being the literal name of the game. If the meta involves clearing the level first and exploring second, at least until a few upgrades are obtained, then maybe that should be hammered into the player’s mind as they get familiar with GTTOD.
During my preview period, I took the time to listen to some of Arcade Coin’s DevLogs on YouTube to get a better understanding of the developer’s intentions. One of the things that stood out to me was his characterization and placement of GTTOD in comparison to other titles, be it DOOM and Risk of Rain 2. He’s right: There are very few games that do what GTTOD does, and in developing this title and marketing it as a roguelite-meets-boomer-shooter, two competing sets of expectations need to be managed. On the roguelite side, players’ expectations of progression and combat need to be level-set. On the boomer-shooter side, players need to be taught how to utilize the hub to its fullest extent and grapple with the additional power it brings in between runs.
I look to RETURNAL and (most recently) Nightmare Reaper as titles that blend the roguelite and boomer-shooter genres with mostly success. RETURNAL utilizes vague-yet-intriguing storytelling to push players to try (and fail) again and again. Its level makeup changes constantly, teaching boomer-shooter players how to navigate the variance despite having big guns that can do big boomy things. Its roguelite players are taught the ropes of its 3D platforming and gunplay by attempting to survive enemies’ highly variable bullet patterns and weaponry with varying degrees of power. I’ve said varying and various in the same sentence, which feels weird. I digress, RETURNAL doesn’t truly hit the big boomer-shooter fantasy that DOOM players may expect, but it emphasizes its roguelite structure to a greater degree.
On the other hand, Nightmare Reaper (a game that I’ve now spent almost 60 hours playing this year and have little intention of stopping) utilizes chaos and minigames to teach players the ropes and make them feel more powerful in bite-sized increments. Roguelite players are taught to use its incredibly wacky weaponry and new abilities over time, slowly building up to what would be considered a DOOM-like experience once you’ve hit Chapter 3. The game assumes that boomer-shooter players will know what to do with its weapons but ever-so-slightly pushes them into playing minigames in between tough losses to increase their character’s powers. Winning the minigames results in more health, more starting ammunition, dashes, and so much more. While some of these elements aren’t communicated well, Nightmare Reaper attempts to level-set expectations from multiple types of players with learned behaviors that might not mesh well at first glance.
All of this is to say that maybe GTTOD shouldn’t lean too heavily into trying to be a roguelite. Or at least, it shouldn’t attempt to institute too much variance and mechanisms of persistence for the sake of it being considered a “good” roguelite. It’s already succeeding in other ways as being a fun shooter first and and foremost. Don’t get me wrong, roguelites can be fun when progression cushions the reality of a loss-heavy gameplay loop. That progression doesn’t have to be tied to player power, either. Sometimes, a smidge of story in between losses offers enough of a distraction and inventive to try again. Again, GTTOD’s gunplay is big-boomy enough to warrant it succeeding on that front. Its current roguelite content skews more toward arcade-leaning gameplay (think Risk of Rain) than other roguelite-first titles. Arcade-friendly content is fun! That, and its parkour. Holy mackerel, its parkour is nuts.
On the topic of GTTOD’s parkour, I have nothing but overwhelming praise to give. It’s some of the best parkour gameplay I’ve gotten my hands on in the past few years. I know some folks have rightfully compared GTTOD to the Titanfall series, but I feel that in some ways it’s much more player-friendly and less finicky than EA’s forgotten stepchild. In GTTOD, you can wall run, you can double jump, you can triple jump, you can quadruple jump, you can dash, you can slide, and so much more all while maintaining momentum. The act of getting to the orange door (heh) is incredibly agile and fluid thanks to the game’s engine in letting the player use every inch of the environments to their advantage.
This is how parkour gameplay should exist, to be honest. Environments should encourage freedom to move over just about every obstacle while boosting speeds for who can successfully maintain momentum. Neon White succeeds in pushing players to new heights through its gun-cards and makes you feel like you’re “good” at its high-speed platforming. It’s literally fun because of how well it makes you feel you’re “good” at playing. The Titanfall series, and in some ways DOOM Eternal, pushes players to move fast, shoot fast, and think later through synthesizing gunplay with vertical and horizonal platforming. The games I’ve mentioned thus far put combat and speedrunning at the front-and-center of the arcade-like experience that’s worth replaying over, over, and over again at high difficulties just for funsies.
GTTOD is not about speedrunning or advanced gunplay, though. It’s about survival. The game is but one constant loop of getting to the orange door (again, heh) despite waves of increasingly powerful enemies chasing you as you jump, dash, slide, and climb your way up, around, and through its synthwave levels. Moving IS surviving, not just shooting and attempting to hide behind cover. If there’s one thing that I don’t want Arcade Coin to change, it’s that of GTTOD’s momentum and parkour. It’s legitimately fun and makes me want nothing more than to literally keep moving. I want more opportunities to climb, jump, and glide around its maps. I want more obstacles that encourage me to use every inch of GTTOD’s arenas as I make my way through to the door.
Since GTTOD is in Early Access, I’m unable to assign it a score at this time. I wouldn’t want to, either, simply because there’s quite a bit of potential for GTTOD to grow outside of its current state, be it additional levels, fully functional NPCs/areas in the hubs that are currently works in progress, and additional mods that can enhance the current experience and give players tools to change up their playstyles. I encountered some crashes, too, but I expected to seeing as it’s still in Early Access. As I’ve kept track of upcoming changes in Arcade Coin’s Discord server, I’m also quite excited to see how the default control/progression schemes will change, along with upcoming controller support. Hoo boy – when controller support becomes official, I can see myself playing and replaying GTTOD for quite a bit. It’s the Titanfall replacement I’ve been wanting for quite some time, and then some.
Once you get the hang of Get to the Orange Door (GTTOD), it becomes incredibly fun and replayable. Its newest content gives players slightly more onboarding than before and more tools to use for its combat, but it remains to be seen what Arcade Coin adds in terms of additional levels, new content, and hopefully new bosses. I only hope that the developer doesn’t change the parkour gameplay one iota…because it’s refreshing beyond anything I’ve gotten my hands on in recent years.
A copy of GTTOD was provided by the publisher for the sole purpose of this DigitalChumps Chumps Preview.
