TheGamer Editor-in-Chief Stacey Henley recently wrote that2020s gaming has no identity. The ’90s were defined by mascot platformers and technological advancement, she argued, the ’00s by HD and Wi-Fi, and the ’10s by streaming and photorealism. The ’20s, so far, seem like they’re serving up microwaved leftovers of the previous decade. We’re still playing games-as-a-service, still putting ultra-realistic narrative adventures on a pedestal, and still turning to indies for actual innovation and one-off experimentation.
The Emergence Of The Micro-Genre
So, what actuallyisnew in the ’20s? Mostly: micro-genres. Whereas in the ’90s and early ’00s, platformers took up a whole lot of mindshare, the standout genres of the 2020s are incredibly specific. 2022’sVampire Survivorsbrought ‘bullet heavens’ — in which the player moves around a map swarming with enemies, dispatching them with an unlockable suite of abilities that trigger on a timer — to mainstream attention, and imitators likeRenfield: Bring Your Own Blood, Brotato, and the upcomingZombie Rollerz: The Last Shipsoon followed. This is a subgenre of a subgenre, taking bullet hells (a subgenre within top down shooters) and splicing its DNA with idle games for an incredibly narrowly defined niche.
Fall Guysdid the same, taking the battle royale (a subgenre of multiplayer action games) in a new direction, combining the ‘99 enter, 1 wins’ pitch of PUBG and Fortnite with the minigame antics of Mario Party. Stumble Guys quickly copied its homework, and Sonic Rumble is set to take inspiration from Mediatonic’s 2020 breakout hit later this year.
Of the micro-genres to emerge in the 2020s, the ‘speedrunner shooter’ may have the most juice, the one that seems like it should have been around since the inception of the first person shooter. The first game I played in this genre was 2022’sNeon White, which cast players as a recently deceased soul fighting demonic monsters in a vaporwave heaven. That game was fascinating, a unique object unlike anything I’ve played before or since, combining a shiny, angelic atmosphere with a card-based weapon system and an edgy anime visual novel story.
But the thing that made the biggest impact was the game’s timing system. Each level doled out medals depending on your speed, creating replayability by tempting you with the potential of trimming a few seconds off your score every time you played a level. You could compete against yourself and your friends, which pushed people who had never speedrun a game to begin thinking like a competitor. You never knew everything that a level contained after just one run – new, secret routes that allowed you to shave precious seconds off your time would reveal themselves if you kept throwing yourself against a level.
Neon White Popularizes The Speedrunning Shooter
Since then, several other games have emerged in this subgenre. They’re typically defined by timers, the demand for precision, and short levels with few or no checkpoints. It became clear to me that this was a burgeoning genre when, at PAX East in 2023, two games I played were going for the same every-second-counts approach.
Hell of an Office offered the same acrobatic levels, designed to be completed in a matter of minutes. The game combined the two locations namechecked in the title — Hell and an office — for a bizarre mixture of magma and middle-management. Staplers, coffee mugs, and pencils hovered over big pools of lava and structures made of bone. You needed to get through these obstacles before the hot, hot liquid rose to submerge you.
At that same event, I playedWarstride Challenges, which also tasked you with completing bite-sized levels as quickly as possible. That game was incredibly streamlined, with a minimalist look designed to focus your attention on the only thing that mattered: going ridiculously fast.
However, the game I suspect has the most breakout potential of the subgenre is Anger Foot, which I’ve been playing this week., It’s published by Devolver Digital and has a great, grimy, NickToon-for-adults aesthetic.
In that game, you’re still trying to beat the clock, but the big difference is that your guns are supplemented by the title character’s big, green foot which can instantly juice any foe foolish enough to get in his way. As you replay levels over and over again, striving for perfection, the throbbing bass soundtrack lulls you into a deep flow state. You might get frustrated when you die the first few times, but eventually it pulls you into a pirouette of punts.
Anger Foot is good, and it points to an interesting future for 2020s gaming, as indie developers take narrowly defined genres and tweak them to find something truly unique. In a gaming space that feels stagnant, Anger Foot is kicking the doors off the hinges.
