Earl vs. the Mutants is chaotic survivor-like fun with vehicles

There's a whole lot of Vampire Survivor-likes and bullet hell / bullet heaven mixtures around, but not many stick you directly in the driver's seat like Earl vs. the Mutants. Note: key provided by the developer.

Another super-cheap bit of happiness you can pick up here at only £2.49, you can't really go wrong with it if you love repeating runs where you build up a ridiculously overpowered character. Or, in this case, vehicle. Thanks to you being behind the wheel, the pace of it is many times quicker than other games in the genre, and for some that might be a great thing. You're speedy and reasonable powerful right from the start, so the action is speedy and satisfying right away.

Since it's in a proper 3D from a top-down perspective, and you have wheels, you can actually properly use the terrain to your advantage here. Boosting over hills and smashing down into the hordes never gets old. Although, I will admit some slight disappointment that you can just drive through trees, it would have been more entertaining to accidentally wrap your car around a tree when fleeing the hordes as your turrets shoot around you.

There's two different control modes depending on how you wish to play. Twin-stick for easier gamepad use, and a more traditional mode for keyboard and mouse. You can set your weapons to auto-fire too, or manually control them to focus-fire on particular enemies so really you play it how you want.

Lots of upgrades are possible too. During runs you get per-level upgrades where you can pick various stat boosts, which are all random and sometimes you get some truly over-powered stuff. One run I remember gave me HP constantly for running over enemies, as well as driving fast, so I was basically god-like in car form. That was, until it started throwing bullet-sponge enemies at me, walking bombs (big ouch) and all sorts firing things at me to dodge which isn't particularly easy when you're boosting around in a vehicle.

The old lady boss likes to drop down extras for you too, like drones to follow you, new weapons and more. And thanks to the meta-progression, you can keep upgrading basic stats even when you fail.

YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Accept Cookies & Show   Direct Link

I've played a lot of these games now where you run drive around, smash through whatever weird types of enemies it decides to throw at you, collect gems and level up eventually becoming pretty much unstoppable. As far as Earl vs. the Mutants goes, it does exactly what's advertised and for that price you really can't argue on the value of it.

Nice short runs too at 5-10 minutes per level, so no sweat in you don't have a lot of free time.

You can buy it on Steam. It runs perfectly on Linux with Proton 9. It has no Steam Deck rating from Valve yet but works fine.