Hillbilly Doomsday Review

Hillbilly Doomsday is set in a small village called Rottenwill where, along with the rest of the world, an unknown enemy turned everyone into zombies and chaos ensued. It’s up to Uncle Billy to save humanity and eradicate the cause of the worldwide catastrophe. Billy will traverse a variety of areas such as swamps, caves, and dead lands in order to find the source of this chaos.

Hillbilly Doomsday is a 2D action platformer where our unlikely protagonist can do melee and long-range attacks. At first, Billy has his trusty shovel for some up-close action and can also use his pistol for long-range attacks. The latter is quite useful when coming across explosives as you can shoot them from afar. Killing enemies and breaking crates will drop money that can be used at a shop in between levels.

The shop offers a handful of additional firepower such as an additional pistol, a machine gun, or shotgun; among others. You can also purchase varying levels of armor for an additional layer of protection. And finally, you can also buy additional 1-ups, although you can’t have more than three. In order to survive, our hero has a health bar that can be refilled when picking up items such as hamburgers.

The game offers a fair challenge. When you lose a life, you’ll respawn where you died, unless you fall into a pit; this will throw you back at the start of the area. If you lose all your lives, you’ll be thrown back at the beginning of the area/screen. Given the length of the levels, this is a blessing.

Hillbilly Doomsday does a few issues. The first is a bit crucial; the jump is slightly delayed so when timing your jumps, you need to press the jump button half a second before your jump, and given this game has a lot of platforming, mastering this nuisance is key. The other issue is that levels drag on for a bit too long. When thinking about classic platformers offering levels of perfect length, Hillbilly Doomsday will make you ask yourself: am I at the boss now? Now? Or now?

The game features a wonderful 16-bit pixelated aesthetic. Enemy variety leaves a lot to be desired as you’ll often see the same enemies across the six levels. The game will introduce a handful of enemies in the last level. While each level features a new design and theme, given that they feel like they drag on for too long, there’s a bit of repetitiveness. Also for some reason, Uncle Billy looks like a mix of a human and a beaver. The game also has a surprisingly banging soundtrack.

Hillbilly Doomsday is a fun albeit short action-packed platforming/shooting experience. It’s mindless fun as you run and gun through waves of enemies; although it does feel a bit too easy. Boss will basically just wait for you to pummel them and while firearms feel very underpowered, the shovel picks up the slack as it can kill most enemies in one hit. If you need a short entertaining diversion, Hillbilly Doomsday is good a way to spend your time and money on. Also very easy 1000Gs.