Before you can jump into Paranautical Activity, you must first choose a class to play as. Each class determines what weapon you will start out with, how many bombs you get, and your beginning stats. Health and movement speed are first determined by your class, and damage and fire rate are just the stats of your starting weapon. Finding different guns during gameplay and picking up upgrades can all completely change how your character will act as you progress through the floors. You might start out as the really fast sickle thrower, but later down the line you might become the slow moving rocket launcher guy.
Each class has its own starting weapon, as well as weapons only available by finding them from playing the game. You can find replacement guns from either defeating bosses or buying them in a gift shop. Most weapons are just guns that shoot projectiles in different ways, such as the crossbow, shotgun, and minigun. More unique weapons come in the form of a sickle that acts like a boomerang and can hit enemies multiple times. Explosive weapons such as a grenade and rocket launchers also exist. No matter what weapon or class you are, everyone can use bombs which are consumable items that can be thrown to cause tons of damage.
There are many different shapes and sizes of enemies in Paranautical Activity, each with their own unique qualities. Most enemies just differ in how much health they have and how they shoot projectiles at you, though there are some unique ones. Evil butterflies will float in the air while shooting two homing projectiles at you, and there are ninjas that will either melee you or throw stars at you, while even becoming invisible to attack you.
All enemies and bosses will drop basic loot when they are killed. Coins will be the most common item to acquire, and it will let you buy items in the gift shops. Health and armor drops will restore one point in their respective attribute. Bombs don’t drop very often and it is a good idea to conserve them.
Instead of just basic loot, you will sometimes acquire upgrades that will affect your stats in different ways. You will always get a guaranteed upgrade after defeating a boss, and gift shops located on every floor will allow you to buy them as well. Some upgrades only effect one stat, while others will cause many to get stronger while causing one additional one to actually become weaker, so you have to be careful.
You will always encounter two bosses on a floor, though only one is required to advance to the next floor. There are many different bosses in Paranautical Activity, and it is always random which ones you will run into. For the most part, all bosses are the same in the sense that they are a large monster that shoots projectiles at you, but some are more unique such as Hanz who will chase you with a chainsaw, summon chainsaws from the floor, and sometimes shoot at you as well.
There are a few different types of rooms that you will run across in Paranautical Activity. Normal rooms will have obstacles strewn through them with just spawn a random assortment of enemies in them and just require you to kill them all in order to unlock the doors to surrounding rooms. Gift Shop rooms allow you to purchase randomly chosen items with the money that you have collected. Boss and elevator rooms both require you to defeat a random boss, but the simple boss room just rewards you with a random item after being successful, and the elevator rooms will always reward you with an item specific to the boss you just defeated.
Each floor will always have the same guaranteed enemies and hazards, but the order that you encounter them in will always be random. Progressing to lower floors will cause you to fight different and stronger enemies, while making the rooms themselves more dangerous to be in, such as large pools of lava.
Other than the basic options being in place, such as volume sliders and some graphical choices, a very important option of changing the Field of View is available. The graphics themselves are so far just basic voxel models with some lighting. The menus have no music or sound at all currently, though when you’re playing the game you will be listening to some loud metal music.
Some classes are easier than others, but in general Paranautical Activity is most likely too hard of a game for anyone that wants to simply sit down and play a game for fun. There is no way to save your progress and if you are doing well, you can expect to have to sit down for up to an hour if you are wanting to get far into the game.
With the combined quickness of old school FPS games with rogue-like qualities, everyone that wants a fast and challenging game will love Paranautical Activity. There is currently nothing at all to collect and unlock in Paranautical Activity, and you have to completely start over every time that you want to play the game.
Paranautical Activity currently costs 10 dollars. It is in a playable state, though it is obvious that it still needs a lot of work done on it. If you don’t mind a rough game with FPS and rogue-like qualities, it is still worth trying out.
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