September 2023's Monthly Game Club is a strange and mysterious game. _Tomato Way_.
I have no context or any clue what this game is. Maybe it's best that way?
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FPS/Slasher/Horror for people with strong nerves. Tomato Way it's like your favorite video game, but better.
Nominated by @"穴"#580, here is what she has to say about it:
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wild card (and it's on sale)
(Note: it may not be on sale during the MGC!)
Let's include the whole _Tomato Way_ series in this month, as well as the developer's other games, as there seems to be a bit of an aesthetic theme to their work.
[Get it from Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/565860/Tomato_Way/)
I remember Liz Ryerson mentioning this game on an episode of the show. The only thing I remember her saying about it is the quote “the Tomato Way is the only way”.
I am so bad at playing any game besides the ones I have been feeling like and planning to play when I play them. But I want you to know that I love the monthly game club so much.
just bought this on steam and downloading right now. love a trailer that advertises 10+ hours of gameplay but then howlongtobeat.com says the main story is 1 hour.
i'm very ready to jump into this psychedelic tomato world as soon as i get up tomorrow morning.
I have finished Tomato Way. Took about an hour and a half. I played on normal, but I think I would recommend easy. It was kinda hard on normal, and I probably could have played through it in about half the time on easy (assuming easy is easier, which with this game who knows).
This game is so rough is so many ways, but kinda perfect in like one or two ways. The music rules. Everything is upsetting.
I thought I would pass along some tips to help others walk the Tomato Way, spoilered in case folks want to figure this stuff out for themselves.
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The shotgun seems like your weakest weapon. Dunno why. It only felt useful in the first level.
>! Machine gun is the strongest.
>! You have to manually reload with right click.
>! Use your grenades. They do mysterious amounts of damage.
>! Enemies will clip into you and deal damage over and over. It really hurts and it‘s very disorienting. Try to stay away.
>! I suspect but can’t confirm that the sledgehammer similarly clips into enemies sometimes.
>! If you‘re in the second level and you’re not sure what to do, jump out the window.
>! The final boss can‘t hit you if you stand right underneath it. If you’re fast you can kill it before the adds kill you.
Just finished the first game. I basically hated it but I also don't think I blinked once in my 68 minute playthrough?? Just kinda stared straight ahead with my brows furrowed. Not sure what that means.
I didn't find the difficulty on normal mode _too_ obnoxious, but checkpoints are fairly sparse and a few times I came just one hit point away from losing upwards of five minutes of progress. Use your judgment, but imo you miss nothing by minimizing the abhorrent combat (>!you can even run straight past many larger enemies to bypass whole encounters!<).
Another spoiler-y tip for anyone struggling: >!I'm 90% certain a thrown sledgehammer deals the most damage of any weapon in the game. If you stand close enough to an enemy and throw it, you'll automatically pick it back up, meaning you can spam it. I killed the final boss in less than a second this way.!<
I just loaded it up for the first time, got in to the first fight and died in an instant. I suspect an enemy must have clipped in to me as mentioned above and caused some absurd amount of damage.
There not being a checkpoint before that fight and instead taking me back to the very start of the level made me exit the game; I'll come back to it but I'm not in the right frame of mind for this style of low-rent deliberately(?) bad production right now.
@“Bbtone”#p132243>!I’m 90% certain a thrown sledgehammer deals the most damage of any weapon in the game. If you stand close enough to an enemy and throw it, you’ll automatically pick it back up, meaning you can spam it. I killed the final boss in less than a second this way.!<
Oh wow, that's nice. I didn't throw mine much because I was scared of losing it (which I actually did during the final boss lol)
i forgot you could throw it! i made it thirty mins in and felt exhausted. will most likely finish this morning. i find i can only play this kind of shooter in very short bursts.
||not to be _that guy_ but... is this a qanon game??||
edit: game beaten. i almost gave up on the last boss until i realized (i think) >!you're supposed to shoot the eyeballs off his stomach? prior to that i died a few times just shooting in boss' general direction and running out of ammo but then the time i beat him i beat him super fast by aiming at the eyes. i was gonna try the hammer trick but when i was fighting the doctor with the minigun boss i threw my hammer at him and it broke into a bunch of tiny pieces and i never found another one.!<
trying to walk through doors is one of the kinetically worst feelings i've had in a video game in a while.
I tried to play Tomato Way 2. I don‘t know about this one. It’s very confusing. I don‘t really understand what’s going on, where I am, or where I should be going. I think it has quests? A cucumber told me to kill the monsters in the laboratory and the dining room. Wherever those are. I gave some guys flamethrowers because I found them somewhere else.
I found a map but I don't know if it's a map for using; all the keys that I thought might be map didn't work. I ended up in a blightown looking place and when I fell off a platform I clipped down into an earlier part of the level.
I may have reached an ending in Tomato Way 2? I really can't tell. This game blows.
To reach my "ending," I first had to find sheet music and farm 2000 silver to activate the weird piano in the library, then >!take an elevator up to the literal red room from _Twin Peaks_!<. After some confusing dialogue I eventually made my way to >!a church on a beach, where I fought and killed a fox whom the main character served in the military with. Winning this fight triggered a cutscene which booted me to the game over screen!<. So I think I'm done. Cuz I can't take any more of this game.
I somehow hated it even more than the first one!! For one thing, there's a character in this game with a Hitler stache, and another with dark skin and bright, round lips. Taken together I have a hard time chalking up the latter to ignorance. I also encountered three stupid ass memes. So maybe not a QAnon game (lol), but **man** do I have a weird feeling about it.
Uhhh haven‘t gotten around to play them but maybe I should’ve researched the games more before submitting them…
When thinking of what to submit a couple of months ago I checked my steam wishlist and saw I and tomato way on there and decided to submit it as the weirdo game. it had ways intrigued me cause it looked so bizarre and I liked the name. and apparently the series isn't what I thought it was. sorry
Update: I just found the dev's Gab profile, linked on the main menu of TW3.
In case you, like me, have never heard of Gab, here's a bit about Gab (from Wikipedia):
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Gab is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service known for its far-right userbase. Widely described as a haven for neo-Nazis, racists, white supremacists, white nationalists, antisemites, the alt-right, supporters of Donald Trump, conservatives, right-libertarians, and believers in conspiracy theories such as QAnon, Gab has attracted users and groups who have been banned from other social media platforms and users seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms.
Bullseye!!!! @Coffinwarehouses
Pretty fucking insidious how deep this is all buried in there. Hard to research cuz there's so little info on these games outside of their store pages in the first place.
if you allow me I have an alternative short (and free) game (that I'm sure was made by good people) in mind with the kinda weird vibes I thought Tomato Way had.
Don't feel too bad!! Again, I had to get most of the way through an ultra-unfriendly, borderline-unplayable videogame to see any of those red flags (and before that I had to own it). Plus, anyone who bought one of these games for the club can almost certainly still get a refund through Steam—so no harm done.
Thanks for heads up in time for me to get a refund on 3!
I started to feel weird about 2 as well, for reasons Bbtone covered. For whatever it's worth, I did get to another level set in a mineshaft. This was after the red room sequence. The game is quite bad.
@"穴"#p132305 And yeah don't feel bad! It's not like it was easy to vet, and even if it were, whom among us hasn't accidently/unknowingly recommended something made by a bigot. You should totally get another shot!
A weird 2013 adventury game develope you can download directly from the developers site.
And If you've already played or finished it to fast. A sequel came out recently on itch.io : [Crypt Underworld: The Final Videogame™!](https://lilithzone.itch.io/crypt-underworld)
I played the first one at the beginning of the year and really liked it, and I've been meaning to try the sequel.
Oh and Lyz Ryerson made the soundtrack.
@brettch or @antillese could you change the title of this thread when you see this? thx!
