Tear Them All is a silly, fast-paced Doom-inspired arena shooter made in Godot 4.6!
You are trapped in a notebook fighting doodle enemies with a pencil. You have to sharpen your weapon, survive through waves, and tear those paper evils apart.
The demo is officially live for Steam Next Fest right now!
Steam: Tear Them All on Steam
I’d really love to hear your thoughts on the game feel, the combat loop, or any general feedback from fellow Godot devs. Any feedback appreciated!
As you wrote, it’s a Doom-inspired arena shooter - not much more to say at the moment 
The idea is fun, but I feel like the environment doesn’t really fit the theme.
In terms of mechanics, awarding health pickups on glory kills would be an obvious one.
I like that one can air dash, it gives some control over the floaty jumps, and it’s fun - might be interesting to factor that into how the level(s) are navigated.
A thought - using the pencil to draw something that would then become real… a pickup / weapon / ally / hole in the wall / and so on. Might be a fun framing for a mechanic.
Thanks for the detailed feedback! You’re completely right about the arena needing some work. I actually have a shader that makes the environment textures look like doodles to match the theme. I didn’t use it at first because I was worried it might be too harsh on the eyes. (Maybe I can overcome that by applying the shader only to specific objects.) I’ll definitely give it another try and see if I can tweak it.
The shader I was talking about:
Regarding the combat, glory kills currently double the chance of a health pickup dropping. However, making it a 100% guaranteed drop sounds like a better idea that I can easily implement. As for the movement, the dash really does gives great mobility, but I’m just a bit unsure how to properly build the map navigation around it. Do you have any specific ideas or examples on how I could use that in the level design?
I also thought about a drawing mechanic! Since the full release will feature a lot of additional weapons alongside the pencil, a deep drawing system might be tough. That said, adding a few interactive drawing elements like you mentioned could be really cool. Thanks again for the awesome ideas!
No problem, I quite enjoy trying games in development
If the other weapons are also drawing implements (like pen, paintbrush, …), they could have the same abilities, so the system is more contained? Another, simpler route might be something like having things in a map for the player to color in (like an area or object), which then produces a reward, like a weapon / powerup / upgrade / …
I was thinking things like long jumps connecting hub areas, or semi-secret areas you can see but only get to with a change of direction in mid air. The baddies are (currently) always approaching, so being able to get around quickly is very valuable (as opposed to if baddies are spread out over the level).
Have you tried having one or two additional air dashes? It might be a little overpowered in terms of escaping enemies, but I have a feeling it would be quite fun and fast-paced
Yes, the other weapons will mostly be drawing implements. I have a few in mind for now: a ballpoint pen, a paintbrush, and a stapler shotgun (I know the stapler is a bit random, but yeah haha). I think your idea about coloring specific things on the map is the better route, as giving all weapons the exact same drawing abilities might get a bit repetitive. Also, once I add more weapons alongside the pencil, I’m planning to implement a quick switch mechanic so players can swap weapons at any time.
Oh, that’s actually really smart. I haven’t tried adding a second air dash yet. Do you think tying the extra dash to a temporary upgrade/pickup would work well for that?
Are you the pencil? If not, it may make sense to have a hand holding the pencil.
No, you aren’t the pencil. I think a floating weapon feels a lot cleaner for the doodle art style. It keeps the screen uncluttered and makes the animations look much smoother. I’ll probably stick to this style, but thanks for the feedback!
Hey everyone, it’s been a while since my Next Fest demo post! To be completely honest, I just forgot to update this thread lol. But I’ve been coding non-stop!
I’m finally adding a new Paintbrush weapon alongside the main Pencil weapon!!! Since releasing the final major update for the demo, I overhauled the weapon system almost completely and added a swapping system.
Red: Explosive
Blue: Bouncy
Players can only interact with the blue paint, which launches them up. Enemies, however, can step on the puddles and get covered in both red and blue paint. Once they are covered by paint, dealing damage to them triggers the effect. Red’s gonna explode the enemy and blue launches them into the air.
This weapon acts more like a tactical utility, so its ammo will be rarer than the others. It’s still a heavy WIP (no SFX or animations yet), but it makes the combat so much better.
What do you guys think of this new weapon? If you have any suggestions, please share them!
I’ve been struggling with the pinning mechanics for a while, but it might be the most satisfying weapon to use so far.
Here is how it works:
Left Click: Fires a shotgun spread of staples from one side at a time.
Right Click (Hold): Charges up a shot that pins enemies to walls. If there are enemies behind them, it picks them up and pins them right alongside them!
I also completely revamped the death/tearing logic for the enemies. Instead of playing a canned animation and sinking into the floor, they now act like real paper, and if you tear them they get dynamically sliced!
(Note: the charged shot is super OP right now, so I’ll be adding a proper cooldown to balance it out soon!)
OMG how do I play!!!
There is a demo available on Steam right now!
Currently, only the Pencil is playable in the demo. The Stapler and the Paintbrush are being polished for the full release.
One feedback for Mac →
It shows as not playable on modern Mac
But works fine on M2 Max ( Apple Silicon )
Some gameplay on Mac →
Nice start it shows mechanics at start, the thing which is annoying in fast paced game is when you resharpening pencil you can’t switch to different pencil, which I would expect it would stop sharpening and immediately allow you shoot with new one
Also be nice if those collectables last longer on ground so you can stack them
I believe this was caused by some incorrect Steamworks settings on my end. I just tweaked them, so I hope the warning is gone now. Thanks for letting me know!
The full game will feature multiple weapons, so switching between them will naturally cancel the reload animation. I hadn’t thought about letting players swap to a new pencil in the demo, but that’s a really interesting point, I’ll definitely consider it.
As for the collectables, I’ll do some testing and probably increase the time they stay on the ground.
By the way, I noticed the framerate in your gameplay video seemed quite low. Was that just due to the screen recording software, or was the game itself running at a low FPS on your Mac?
Thanks for taking the time to play and for the feedback!
on store page it still showing this info
but in library , it’s gone.
not entirely sure , I have recorded new video with full Metal HUD enabled, configuration for OBS is H264, 4K,
I just realized I only updated the Steamworks settings for the demo. I’ve applied the fix to the main store page now too.
Thanks for sharing the clip with the HUD! Looking at the stats, the game is actually running perfectly at a solid 60 FPS. The stuttering in the video is probably just OBS struggling.
Thanks again for the help!
yoo that’s crazy! really glad the steam algorithm actually recommending it. thanks for sharing!
o just wanted to say agian because it got flagged and removed last time the game runs really bad on my pc my pc is an asus zenbook 14 oled I’m getting like 2 fps on my pc
Are you using an integrated GPU? The game uses Godot’s Forward+ renderer, which is probably why you’re having issues. On top of that, the game detects your screen’s high native resolution and renders at that size, which makes the performance even worse.
no forward+ acsaly works better on my computer are you using ocludes or render distance or fov unrendering or bakced lighting
