The Steam Next Fest brought gamers a host of inventive upcoming indie demos; due to the sheer amount, however, unsurprisingly, the list seems to be never-ending. Due to this, several promising and creative upcoming indies are often overlooked by potential fans. Service With a Shotgun, created by independent game developer Nolyn Vansyckle in collaboration with the publishers at Silver Lining Interactive, is one of those inventive and truly outside-the-box titles afforded a free-to-play demo during the period of early October when the Steam Next Fest was in full swing.
Service With a Shotgun is a post-apocalyptic text-based visual novel that blends the zany, character interaction-driven storytelling of a typical visual novel with the hectic and often claustrophobic feelings associated with a wave-based survival shooter. By thrusting you into a world rife with zombie hordes of all shapes and sizes, unhinged customer interactions, and the expectation that you will be manning a cash register, Service With a Shotgun aims to be a deeply hectic and fun experience. Gameplay sees the player engaging in conversation with a customer behind a computer desk one moment, as a blurred television screen in the top right corner displays live, panning surveillance footage of the environment outside your store. The player will have to periodically manage both the customers within their store as well as the zombies approaching from outside in a back-and-forth routine style of gameplay that mirrors surveillance camera simulator games, most notably Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s series. When the player ultimately moves from the store’s interior to its exterior in confrontation with the zombie hordes, the gameplay shifts to that of a first-person shooter. With a fully unlockable arsenal ranging from a simple pistol to a minigun, hunting rifle, and of course a shotgun, players will be tasked with blasting away every one of the encroaching vermin if they wish to preserve their own and their customers’ lives.
Detailed on Service With a Shotgun’s Steam page are its developer’s primary inspirations, these being Sukeban Games’ VA-11 Hall A: A Cyberpunk Bartender Action, Baltoro Games’ Pixel Cafe, and Hakababunko’s Urban Myth Dissolution Center—each of them games in the same vein. These inspirations range from job simulators to time management and problem-solving games, each intertwining elements of visual novel character-driven storytelling with their core gameplay loop. With this being said, fans of interactive visual novels, time management games, and colorful, unique casts of interactable characters are sure to find Service With a Shotgun right up their alley.
While Service with a Shotgun received a free-to-play demo during the Steam Next Fest, it was recently announced that the game’s planned release date has been set for November 6 on PC via Steam.