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Logos, screenshots, images | Trailer | Gameplay | Reviews and Playtests
| Release date | 11.01.2023 (January 11th, 2023) |
| Genre | Tower Defense / First Person Shooter. |
| A bit like | Sanctum, Orcs Must Die, Hypercharge: Unboxed |
| Platforms | Steam for Windows |
| Price | $12.99 / £10.99 / €12.79 |
| Trailer | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJl-s3dkzX4 |
| Gameplay | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQioGb4cgv4 |
| Story summary | In a world where greed has been weaponized and turned into a disease, your escape turns into a road trippy quest for the cure. |
| Gameplay summary | Primarily a TD game, building a maze and strategically placing turrets is the main priority. During combat you jump into the fray with guns and grenades, maintain your turrets and make sure to secure cash before it evaporates in front of your eyes. |
| Multiplayer | No, currently single player only. |
| Developer | hangry owl games. Solo developer, IT vet of 25 years, gamer of more than 30. |
| Publisher | Hawthorn Games for China, hangry owl games for rest of the world. |
| Languages | English, German, Swiss German, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Italian. |
| Music Copyright | The game uses music that might be protected by content ID. You can activate the “Streamer Mode” in the audio settings (Escape button). This should only play music that is not registered for Content ID. If you want to be on the safe side, mute the music volume completely (there are plenty of sounds to fill the silence). |
| Why should I try this? | There is no other game that takes the full, uncompromised TD experience and combines it with first person action. There are potential pitfalls to such a combination; it’s hard to keep both the players shooting and building feel like it has a solid impact when each half of the game serves the same purpose (kill stuff). GROSS addresses these issues. Building is as essential as in any TD game, and during combat the player is constantly forced to make split second decisions to perform the right action in the right place. This game is fun to play. |
What is GROSS?
GROSS is a Tower Defense/First Person Shooter hybrid in the spirit of the classic Sanctum games. The game tries to preserve what makes both of these genres great individually: To solve the puzzle of placements and synergies that make a defensive maze efficient and deadly, and rewarding gunplay with many different guns and ammunitions.
On top of that, GROSS offers new and unique resource management mechanics. Cash doesn’t just land in your pocket – you have to collect it. By foot, with bullets, grenades and abilities. Be quick before the cash pickups get stolen or destroyed.
The games name is a direct result of its central themes: gore and money.
Who is hangry owl games?
hangry owl games is currently mostly a one man show. Established in 2021, Chris Stauffer is the solo developer behind the studio, supported by his wife Nettie who is in charge of all the administrative work.
Who is Chris?
This guy:
My first gaming experiences were with hand held LCD games, soon replaced by a classic Game Boy that entertained me for thousands of hours.
At around age 13 I got my first PC, a 286 running at a whopping 12 MHz. Although this device was outdated even back then, and couldn’t run anything that you’d call a game, the Game Boy was quickly cast aside.
In the absence of games I read the DOS (3.3) manual and experimented with GWBasic, creating my own timeless classics like “can you guess the number?” and “Yahtzee”.
A year later I got a 386 with twice the CPU speed and four times the RAM. This allowed me to play games like Colonization, Tyrian, Might & Magic 3-5, Wolfenstein, Jagged Alliance and many others.
At age 15, through lots of luck, I managed to score a position as an apprentice in the role of an “Informatiker”, which loosely translates to “IT professional” at Swiss software company Infosystem. (Shameless advertising here: If you’re in need of bespoke business software, they’ll take great care of you.)
For most of the next quarter of a century I developed and debugged software, became a system engineer, an Oracle Database Administrator and team lead, not necessarily in this or any particular order. If it’s IT, I’ve probably dabbled in it at some stage.
Although born and raised in Switzerland, life took me to Ireland in 2012, after meeting the love of my life which happened to be an Irish gal. Her homesickness had us move from a country where everything runs like clockwork to one where the weather can change twelve times an hour and as soon as two houses are built too close together a pub spawns in between them.
It was only in early 2020 that I decided to give game development another try. Work on GROSS started in spring 2021 part time, and July 2021 full time.