Of the bullet variety.

Go ahead. Laugh it up. That’s the name of the damn game, I can’t change it. NEGAFISH made this choice. We all have to live with it.

HOLE is an extr-ahahaha ok no hold on, I’m not ready either. I still need a second before I show you HOLE. You gotta adequately prepare before you play with HOLE, you know. Don’t wanna injure anything or anyone involved. Aside from all the masked dudes you’re about to murder, I guess. 

It would be reasonable if reductive to describe HOLE as “Liminal Space John Wick Simulator”. It’s a roguelite, and I normally utter that word with contempt, but this one’s made far better for giving the player actual agency. You’re given a pistol and dumped into a spooky office, wandering its echoey halls and cubicles, silent save the dull hum of idling electronics. Then the gunshots start.

HOLE is an extraction shooter, but it utilizes that framework to a different end. No multiplayer, for one. Instead your enemies, a bunch of increasingly dangerous weirdos in masks, belong to different color-coded factions that all hate each other. It’s typical to hear their inhuman chatter noises followed by a barrage of gunfire from around the corner, giving you the opportunity to find your angle to third-party them, constantly watching your back for new groups looking to get involved. It’s one of the best adaptations of the multiplayer deathmatch experience into single player I’ve seen because you’re incentivized to play the role of the opportunistic kill-stealing shithead that’d make a hormonal teenager assault his drywall. The only thing it’s missing is the other players calling you every slur they know, though given they don’t speak any known human language, they might be!

The gunplay here is rock solid. Reloads have multiple stages – your starter pistol, for example, needs to be racked after slamming the mag. It’s far from the most manual reload in a genre chock full of borderline fetishized levels of firearm enthusiasm, but it’s an additional layer that adds weight and decision making to any given combat. You need to be careful not to fire too much too fast, lest you risk a jam in an especially heated moment. The guns, simple though they may be, sound amazing and feel weighty. HOLE is a bit floaty to control, especially in its movement, but the snap of recoil will remind you that you’re lugging a heavy piece of angry exploding metal.

Death comes quickly at first, and since a failed run only earns you 10% of the resources you’ve found (spendable on upgrades between runs because, you know, roguelite) you’ll start feeling the tension quickly. Carefully choosing which fights to take and when, scouring the map for the randomly spawning refrigerators full of bonuses, and frantically rushing through the map to locate a microwave and hold position until the titular hole whisks you home, is going to force you to play with headphones and sit up straight. No I don’t know why all of the important interactables are home appliances, come on, let’s focus on what’s important.

HOLE doesn’t offer a ton of weapon variety, instead going down the customization route. Without spoiling exactly how it works because the game is largely one of intuitive discovery, completing maps gets you a new gun to play with and you source blueprints for mods via [REDACTED]. Completing maps involves locating [REDACTED], which allows you to trigger [REDACTED] and awards you [REDACTED] if you can survive the map’s transformation. I hesitate to call HOLE a horror game because it’s not interested in labeling itself as such, but when you start to pick at its edges and dig a little deeper, you’ll witness sequences more effective than games that make these sorts of moments their main feature. 

Eventually you get more guns, more gear, more stats, more maps, but most importantly, more skill. You start to identify enemies by their timbre, regardless of distance. You can tell what guns they’re holding from sound alone, if they’re above or below you, and how many are likely still alive. You become accustomed to the reloading, chambering an extra round whenever possible, and taking cover to clear jams mid-fight when they previously would have induced panic. You learn to hit the head, or depending on the enemy, to dump a few rounds into wherever is unarmored and finish the job once they drop to the ground. Most roguelites are content to have you grind until you break past some non-specific numeric barrier, rarely challenging the player’s execution. HOLE demands a lot, but never in an incomprehensible or unmanageable way, and your finesse matters far more than figures. HOLE begins by locking you in with them and ends with them locked in with you.

With that said, I do wish there was a bit more meat in this HOLE. There are a whole 3 maps, and this isn’t an early access situation, that’s just the scope of the project. I highly recommend reading the Steam page in full for this one, because NEGAFISH makes it very clear that A) this game is small on purpose and B) their priorities are straight:

“HOLE is a low-resolution, gun jamming, single-player FPS.

This is a small but hard gunfight.

Let’s clear jam with swearing.”

I respect such a level of self-awareness and actualization in game dev. This project is exactly what it intends to be, succeeding at exactly what it needs to: punchy gunplay and teeth-grinding combat. It even has a few surprises in store, and after those run their course you’re still left with a perfectly cromulent bite-sized FPS. It’s hard to think of a better way to blow off some steam for a few minutes here and there than fiddling with your H-no. No, I am not ending this review on repeating that joke. HOLE is a good video game, it deserves better than that.

8/10