Overview
A detailed guide into understanding how the game mechanics work and how to succeed at the game.
Introduction
The first thing to understand about The Slaughtering Grounds is that it’s a very innovative title that you might deem similar at first glance to many other games (I.e. The Left 4 Dead franchise, Dead Rising, Killing Floor). But you should be aware that this game is severely different, as the games prior are about killing zombies with your friends and generally having a great time.
However, The Slaughtering Grounds understands that a zombie apocalypse would really not be anything like those games. It would be painful, you’d be afraid to sleep, you’d have to scavenge for food, and you would not be ready. I mean seriously, you’d get thrown into this new life of terror and agony without really understanding what’s happening.
The Slaughtering Grounds perfectly understands this, and tries to reflect this in its gameplay. Playing the game is painful and you will be haunted by pondering questions like “Why?” or “How?” and most importantly “♥♥♥♥♥♥”.
Launching the Game
Upon first launching the game, you will be met with the illusion of choice. Most of the information presented to you will not mean much for you, and really, probably won’t do much for you anyway. You can choose your player model, but it does not matter. The playermodels descriptions are ravings of ancient madmen and the models do not have any impact on the game. You could buy weapons, but you have no money. You can turn the music off, but it does not matter. It will appear again ingame. You might as well keep this insane pseudo-asian groove crafted by only the likes of Souljaboy himself to remind yourself what you are doing. And truly, what are you doing?
Asking the Big Questions: Singleplayer or multiplayer?
Now after the gauntlet of choosing your options, you must decide on what mode you will be playing. Will you play as the lone wolf, or will you opt for a role in society to satisfy your sad need of belonging in the world, as you grasp at straws of approval from anyone in this cruel and empty experience?
The real truth is that it does not matter yet again. Like seriously, in my experience of trying to play multiplayer, all I could see being proof of anyone else playing was an IRC protocol styled chat that brought me nostalgia from an older time, as I remembered when mIRC and crackling internet modems were still a thing. Puberty hadn’t blossomed yet, and my mother still warned me of the dangers of talking to strangers on MSN. Sadly, I did not follow her advice, and I fear this is one of the main reasons this game has a place in my life now.
A recent update has supposedly added some changes to the game from what I hear, but being a seasoned veteran and proudly having learned all the meta-game strats in my 40 minutes playing this game, I felt at peace and decided it was finally my time to gracefully throw in the towel and watch the game and its community bloom from a distance.
To be honest, I doubt it matters.
Surviving In-Game
Regardless of your choice to play solo or online, you will find yourself submerged in a cruel world filled with all kinds of monstrosities varying in artistic style, looking akin to Sesame street as experienced by an epeleptic on experimental russian drugs purchased from spam mail.
The scenery is dreadful, but you must adapt quickly. The monsters will give you no rest, and in many cases will actually pop into existence right in front of your face. Not that you will see them anyways, your field of vision will always be capped to that of a shortsighted horse wearing blinders.
I was lucky enough to encounter the sole developer of the game, a man beyond my comprehension in wisdom, especially in the arcane arts of indie videogame development. Upon asking “lol wtf y is my fov 20?” he was happy to explain that increasing the field of vision would make the game run slower. Seeing as the game was already running at a whopping 15 fps, I could understand and empathize with his concern.
Anyways, you will have to move quick is my point. If nothing else will give you solace in this world, at least you should know this; you will never run out of stamina.
You are equipped with two guns at the start, a shotgun and another gun. Both their view models weirdly point to your left, but dont worry, the bullets come out from some bizarre hole in your chest. Upon shooting an enemy with your shotgun, you will find that the enemies explode into a flurry of ketchup and play-dough, their corpse vibrating on the ground in such a violent fashion that it will bring your game from 15 fps to 10 for a brief moment. After consulting the dev once again, he said in his words this was “a feature, not a bug.”
After that massive relief, beware that you will run out of ammo in less time than it takes to regret buying this game. Naturally you will switch to your other gun. This is a mistake, and should be avoided at all costs. There are actually ammo pickups in the game, shaped as flying spinning boxes that are spread out on maybe a one per squaremile grid. Naturally, the ammo only replenishes the gun you are currently holding.
Now, even with you understanding what you’re dealing with, you will not survive. You will not know if you are being hit, because there are no hit indicators to show that it’s happening. Besides the massive amounts of jpeg-artifacted blood sprites that will cover your screen at all times once you’ve been battered a bit, your character is about as aware as someone drifting off to sleep after taking multiple doses of Ambien and Vicodin.
I find this to be an essential work of detail in helping to truly immerse youself into this experience. Your character will die, silently and willingly. He is experiencing true apathy from being in this universe. Truly, we can never understand the pain on his level, but thankfully, we have a little keyhole to peer into and imagine what it could be like.
We all are.
Completing Quests
Believe it or not, there are actually objectives to complete in this game. The developer calls them “quests,” and not to deny Dante The Second’s eternal wisdom, I still do not feel that the word is appropriate.
Your objectives are located in the top-left corner, made unreadable by the aforementioned red mayonnaise sprites. They will tell you to do things like “Blow up x amount of The Riddler” or “Save the princess from her castle” and other similar tasks.
There is no counter on how many boogymenkilling tasks you have already executed, so there is no way to know if you are doing well or not. In reality, it doesnt matter, as the game will not reward you anyway. Sure, it will give you money, but what good is the money when you’re drowning in eternal sorrow by painstakingly trying to detonate mines that were most likely programmed originally on a TI-82? This game does not want to give you any amount of satisfaction while you are playing it.
In conclusion, dont do the quests, make up your own goals and dreams. Be something. I believe in you.
The Airdrops
Obviously, there are airplanes that drop supplies for you.
If you’re lucky, you might happen to look at the sky when they appear. Still, its not like it has any meaning to you or anything, as you will never find the supplies they drop in your neverending run through samey looking buildings and large areas.
You might think you just heard a plane, but you can’t be sure over the pumping soundtrack that your character seems maniacally motived to keep playing, probably as a last thread of normality to hold on to.
So in conclusion, dont look for the airdrop, as you will only waste time and die.
What the drops actually provide you with that you can’t already find scattered around on the ground will surely remain one of the 7 mysteries of our universe.
Multiplayer Elements to Watch Out For
Multiplayer is at first glance identical to singleplayer, except for the previously mentioned notepad in the corner. Notice that you can’t see more than two lines of previous chat, and while the window appears scrollable, it isn’t. Spooky stuff.
You might be wondering how you can find other people in multiplayer, and the truth is that you won’t. The only person who can presumably see all playermodels is the games own mastermind himself, which upon gracing you with an early death will say something along the lines of “Hehe, Got ya :P”.
There is no penalty from dying whatsoever though, so whats even the point? Like, in general.
These are the only differences from singleplayer. Its also worth noting that you will forever only play with the dev, and a few other worthless souls much like yourself and I that somehow ended up forever having this game listed in our libraries.
Tips and Tricks (Or the tru-strats)
The GUI can be disabled, which is a good thing, as it causes general eye-damage and covers half of your screen. You might be thinking to yourself now, “How will I see how much ammo I have left, though?” Amazingly, the dev thought the very same about this option and thought of a clever loophole. You will no longer have to worry about ammo altogether, as disabling the GUI gives you infinite ammo.
The menu to do this can be accessed by pressing ESC, where half of the options will be covered by your gun, which obviously exists at the highest possible plane of existence.
In this menu you also have the option to turn off the music, but why would you want to deny yourself the pleasure of the funkiest beat known to the human race? Besides, you probably already tried from the launch menu, it will find another way back.
The option to quit the game can be found here as well, which is arguably the best feature of the game.
After Quitting the Game
If you for some reason decide to quit playing the game, let it be known that the ride truly never ends. It will severely affect your GDi.exe system file and crank up your cpu upon exit, giving you the 15 fps feature in every other application you use from then on out. A reboot of your system will sadly disable this feature.