Glum—what better word describes my feelings after playing ‘GLUM’? Maybe that was the intention of developer and publisher CinderCat Games, but after spending three hours playing the demo, as much as I wanted to have fun with GLUM, I never found it.

Glum is a goblin minion whose overlord has been kidnapped. Glum slept through the whole coup and now, with no purpose, puts on a magical boot and embarks on a journey of vengeance. Being only a demo, the story will unfold further. There are mild hints of a comedic undertone, but exploration of this in the demo was limited, and I’m currently not laughing.

Along the lines of my Best Indie of 2024, ‘Angry Foot’, ‘GLUM’ is a first-person shooter where you boot your enemies to death with your magical boot instead of a gun. Unlike ‘Angry Foot’, ‘GLUM’ is an open staged area where skill expression is important for getting stylish kills and navigating the environment. Hidden items around the stage add to the exploration and humour. Again, as this is a demo, I was limited to what I could find, but what was found did give me a mild chuckle. Hopefully, the comedy evolves further into its dark and crass tone.

The stage gives you a goal, and as you progress towards it, you will encounter enemies with various assets to help you kill them faster and with more style. The more sadistic or interesting the kill, the more points you earn. I found the scoring system unnecessary and unpredictable.

This was evident on the trial level I found hidden on the stage. This trial was a score trial where you had to kill all the enemies to complete. Different trials potentially, like parkour or speed, will be in the fully released version. There is a scale when you complete the trial that shows you how you did score-wise by a bronze, silver, and gold boot.

Striving to get the gold boot was infuriating because, as mentioned, the way the score was calculated made no sense. One round, I would be in my thoughts terrible, missing kicks or failing to send an enemy flying into an asset to instantly kill them and scoring huge numbers. Other times, I would be on point, nailing every kick and hitting every asset, and my score would be dismal. Maybe when the full version is released, the scoring will be more predictable or meaningful.

The controls for ‘GLUM’ also felt overly complicated. For example, punting a held item requires a different command than throwing an item. Due to the fast pace of ‘GLUM’, simplifying the controls by having throw and punt on the same command and changing the action by kicking or not kicking would have been better. As I said, this is just an example. There are other design choices I believe could be tweaked.

‘GLUM’ is bombastic in colour and animation. Its environments get as realistic as possible in the fantasy setting without losing the cartoonish aesthetic. The flow of animation is good, which is important in ‘GLUM’ as it requires you to move fast through the stage.

Audio in ‘GLUM’ is there, but recalling it with nothing to say is disappointing. The music is charming, but asking me to remember after I put the game down will be met with a blinking stare. Much the same can be said for the sound effects, explosions, screams, fanfare, and Glum’s voice, which are all great, but nothing stood out in such a way as to be memorable.

The demo of ‘GLUM’ was also unstable, with fatal errors and frequent hard crashes back to the desktop. I hope CinderCat Games will refine it further before the full release. I can see great potential and fun with ‘GLUM’, but unfortunately, the demo did not kick into gear and instead felt like a sweaty sock.

Written by: Ashley Barnett-Cosgrove