How to describe Golden Light? It's the roguelike first-person shooter James Davenport memorably summed up as "prop hunt in an infinitely sprawling office building meat maze from hell." More recently, in her celebration of ugly games, Nat Clayton called it "disquietingly meatcore".
Golden Light is a game where you descend through the levels of a fleshy construct called the Gut, which is equal parts Silent Hill office space and cannibal nightmare. It's a game that lists among its features: "Things you can eat or throw in this game: Bat Head, Corrupted Fetus, Fish Head, Fat Lips, Meat Apple and many more!"
Whatever this baffling horror-shooter really is, you can now experience it in its most horrifyingly feature-complete form, as Golden Light has now hit version 1.0 with an upsettingly wet splat. It's available on Steam with a 30% launch discount, and is further discounted in two bundles. The Go to Hell bundle collects it and retro FPS Ultrakill, while the Taste of Madness bundle combines Golden Light and Cruelty Squad, one of the most offensive-to-the-senses games in recent memory.
"This is not a game for anyone expecting something conventional or easy to slip into," James said of Golden Light back in 2020, "but for me (and I'm still pretty early on) I love kicking around in queasy, resistant games like Golden Light. And while maintaining tension, mystery, and a sickly unease is paramount here, there's still a game under that heavy blanket of thematics, and one I'm slowly beginning to understand even if it resists me at every opportunity."
