Set during the 1920's Prohibition era, Rot Gut is a retro platformer that's done in the style of noir; meaning that the graphics are completely black and white, save for some red accents here and there. You play as a detective who is out to uncover the secrets behind the underground organizations of a city.
The pixel art mixed with a noir tone really helps set the mood of the game. There's a severe lack of 1920's gangster noir based titles in general, so it's always a welcomed atmosphere from a hardly touched market. The original chiptune Jazz themed music is also a brilliant touch, and it brings the time period of the game together wonderfully. There are six levels, and two bosses, each bringing their own track to the table; this guarantees that the soundtrack will stay fresh for many playthroughs to come. Similarly, each level also has its own unique visuals and platforming design.
While the graphics and sound shine, sadly the same cannot be said for the actual gameplay. It's far too easy to simply sidestep a huge quantity of the enemies by double jumping over them. In fact, I'm sure that if you tried to, you could go through the entire game without killing a single one; save for the bosses, of course. You could always ignore that you can do this and kill everything that you see, but there are only a handful of enemy types and killing them sometimes feels like a chore. They can shoot faster than you, and will annihilate you if you don't do things such as standing on a lower platform and jump to shoot them, or jump down from a ledge and get a couple of shots in before jumping back up.
On the other hand, the mechanics aren't that bad. Rot Gut doesn't support a gamepad, so using the keyboard you can control the character by using either WASD or the arrow keys, and pressing either spacebar or C to shoot, R to reload, and X or up arrow to jump; pressing X or up arrow twice instigates a double jump. There are vending machines for first aid kits, shotgun shells, and machine gun ammo placed sporadically throughout the levels, and you must shoot barrels and chests to get coins to buy the items. If you die, you lose all of the ammo that you've bought and you're reverted to the default amounts that are given at the very start of the game.
Rot Gut isn't necessarily a bad game, but it's not one that you'll remember a few months down the road either. For what it is, it's okay, but it could be done a whole lot better; there's not even an in-game exit/quit button. The only thing that truly saves it, is the era which it is set in and its noir theme. Overall, it takes a little less than an hour to complete, maybe an hour total if you have a problem with one of the bosses. It's true that for the price of $2.19 CAD you can't expect much, but there are much better games for the asking price and even lower.
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