Do you want a game that is best described as the lovechild of Metroid and Doom, but they gave it up for adoption and it was raised by Dark Souls and H.R. Giger?

Then you should check out Vomitoreum, a first person shooter made and published by Scumhead for PC using the GZDoom engine. Scumhead is a modder from the Doom modding scene, well known for their work on the Shrine and Lycanthorn total conversions, among other projects. Vomitoreum is their first commercial release. 

There is one thing that I feel I should point out before we get started. This game heavily features phallic and vulval imagery along with recurring themes of sexual assault. If this content bothers you, I would suggest giving this game, and the rest of this review, a pass.

Additionally, there is a known error with this game where it may boot up Doom rather than Vomitoreum due to an issue with GZDoom. While this may be patched out in later versions, directions for a manual fix are available here. It’s also worth noting that you might not have any issues booting this game, so don’t attempt the fix unless you have this issue.

GRAPHICS 10/10

The graphics and artwork in Vomitoreum are amazing. Per the developer, they were heavily inspired by a Polish surrealist horror artist named Zdzisław Beksiński. While I’m not the most artistically educated person, the influence is very obvious. Every single sprite in this game oozes Lovecraftian dread. The monsters and level art are deeply unsettling and use lots of phallic and vulval imagery, like a very deeply cursed version of Ooo from the series Adventure Time. This is nicely contrasted with the mechanical design of the weapons, and some of the characters are a mix of dark medieval fantasy and something similar to a dieselpunk aesthetic. It’s a bit hard to describe, but if you’ve seen Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, it’s pretty similar to that aesthetic. The game uses simple 3D models for the weapon and item pickups, which may interfere with immersion for some, but I liked them since it’s a nice throwback to later 2.5D games. It also helps them stand out from the busy backgrounds, which is a massive relief for me.

SOUND QUALITY 9/10

As with the graphics, the sounds in this game are designed to be deeply upsetting. Even the selection noises in the main menu sound like an uncomfortable combination of breaking chalk and popping knuckles. The soundscape in this game is mostly ambient noise that helps emphasize the weirdness and isolation of the levels. What little music appears in the game is actually pretty good. It tends to be gothic organ or heavy metal that evokes Symphony of The Night or Vampire Hunter D. The enemy and weapon sounds are all well suited to their corresponding enemy or weapon. Honestly, the only complaint I have about the soundscape in this game is that there are a few areas with obvious triggers that switch tracks abruptly rather than fading into the next song. This isn’t a huge immersion-breaker for me and I suspect that it’s an issue with the GZDoom engine, but it is a bit jarring.

GAMEPLAY 8/10

The gameplay in Vomitoreum is a clear throwback to the 2.5D Boomer Shooters of the early-to-mid 90s, but with some twists. The biggest change is the addition of manual save points in the form of Save Masons rather than checkpoints within the level or the ability to save at any time. These were generally well spaced and refilled your health and highly limited supply of health items when used. Unfortunately, these didn’t allow you to name or sort your saves. This does provide some irritation when you try to load a save file from the menu, since GZDoom doesn’t always sort saves by most recent and all of the save rooms look pretty much the same. The weapons and items are all fairly standard, but with some thematically appropriate/upsetting twists, such as a Metroid-esque morph ball where your character regresses to a fetal form and rolls around to navigate tight spaces. Or your health power ups, which are delightfully named Embryonic Batteries.

As for the gameplay itself, it’s a pretty fun time overall with excellently designed maps, encounters, and weapons, but I found most of the game to be fairly easy. Scumhead decided to give every weapon in the game infinite ammo which means that you will always be using the best weapon for any given situation and are never forced to switch to anything else. Because of this, most combat encounters are very easy, handled by holding mouse 1 and circle strafing. The one notable exception to this was The Whore Sisters of Concubath boss battle. While the battle itself is beatable, it’s immediately preceded by a 25-second-long elevator ride and cutscene that I currently hate more than the DMV after watching it around a dozen times. I’d also add that while the Light Homonculus (a little glowing demon that follows you around and acts as a light source) was an excellent idea, the relatively primitive pathfinding in GZDoom made the dark sections of the game slow to an absolute crawl.

CHARACTERS 8/10

Characters in Vomitoreum are very difficult to talk about for two reasons. The first is that this game is mostly about being one of the last survivors of an apocalypse that you had absolutely no way of preventing. The second is that a lot of the character building is difficult to discuss without getting into spoilers. I can safely say that the few characters featured in this game are depressed, insane, or a delightful combination or both. They’re also pretty well written and convey a lot with the limited dialogue they have, barring one or two lines. Personally, I would’ve liked more interactions with them, but they were definitely well used. I’d also like to add that this game features a demonic sex worker named Mildred, which is something I failed to notice until writing this review.

STORY 10/10

As with the characters, the story is also difficult to discuss without spoilers. The too-long-didn’t-read and spoiler-free version of the story is that years before the game started, Vomitoreum, The Fog Bringer, came “from beyond the clouds” and cursed the world with a plague that turned people into monsters until a great warrior called Umadermadine gathered an army and fought back, aided by the life-giving spells of The Masons and The Demon Whores of Concubath who ate the infected. This alliance was able to drive back the plague and Vomitoreum the first time they appeared. Unfortunately, the plague returned a year later and the alliance was unable to stop it before it ravaged the land again. The player is an artificial being called a Nephilem that The Masons created to stop Vomitoreum once and for all. If you hadn’t noticed, the story is very, very bleak and isn’t so much a story about preventing the apocalypse, but a story about getting revenge for the apocalypse. While I personally loved the story, it does feature some themes of sexual assault that deserves a big old content warning for players who may be sensitive to that.

OVERALL 9/10

If it’s not obvious, I really liked this game. The story, environments, characters, and monsters are chock full of bleak, atmospheric dread and did a fantastic job keeping me engaged. This is doubly impressive considering that I’m not really fond of most horror media, games or otherwise, since I find that a lot of it just uses gore or mature content for the shock value rather than trying to build actual horror or dread. Because of this, seeing anything that tries to use surrealism to make a genuinely horrifying setting is a massive breath of fresh air to me. This is especially noteworthy in horror video games since so much of the genre can be summed up as “walking simulators with jump-scares”.

The only downsides, at least from a gameplay perspective, are the relatively easy difficulty and the relatively short length (just under three hours of play time per the game). Of the two, the difficulty is probably the bigger problem. A lot of the tension that could’ve been built by the manual save system and the limited health-restoring items is lost when I can solve my problems by simply holding down the trigger on my machine gun until everything is dead without having to worry about if I’m going to need that ammo later.

At $10 USD at the time of writing, I would absolutely recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of old-school shooters and surrealist or cosmic horror.

Vomitoreum was funded on Kickstarter and released on July 30, 2021 for PC on Steam and itch.io.