Service With a Shotgun Review
Service with a Shotgun attempts a clever genre mashup between visual novel and shooter, but its parts fail both individually and as a whole.
Service with a Shotgun. Credit: Nolyn Vansyckle and publisher Silver Lining Interactive
Developer Nolyn Vansyckle and publisher Silver Lining Interactive’s Service with a Shotgun tries to fuse visual novel storytelling with shooting-gallery gameplay. It’s a novel idea on paper, but in practice, it falls apart because it feels like two incomplete games fighting for attention rather than being complementary to each other.
You play as the last cashier stubbornly keeping a roadside shop open during the zombie apocalypse. That setup doesn’t last long: once raiders overrun the store, you’re swept up with a small cast of survivors on a quest to find a cure for the plague. The premise should be fertile ground for comedy and character-driven storytelling, but the jokes fall flat. I struggled to care for any of the underdeveloped characters and couldn’t recall any of them now, except the creatively named “New Guy.”
Service with a Shotgun. Credit: Nolyn Vansyckle and publisher Silver Lining Interactive
Gameplay is split across multiple screens accessed via button presses. On one screen, visual novel dialogue unfolds as NPCs stop by to chat. On another, zombies shuffle toward you in simple shooting-gallery waves. A third screen is a shop where you purchase ammo and health. This constant juggling creates artificial difficulty rather than meaningful challenge; you’ll miss story beats while shooting, then take damage while trying to read dialogue since the zombies never stop moving closer. Instead of blending its systems, the game forces them to compete for your attention.
Each of the game’s five chapters introduces small mechanical tweaks, but none meaningfully evolve the core experience. Chapter one includes buildable barricades between waves. Chapter two introduces a second shooting screen. Chapter three offers a handful of barely different weapons. Chapter four finally adds an upgrade tree, though most upgrades have a negligible impact so late in the game. Chapter five abandons the dual-screen idea altogether, dropping you into a janky first-person shooter segment that feels tacked on rather than climactic. The whole game feels like a barely-there concept thinly stretched into half-baked variations.
Service with a Shotgun. Credit: Nolyn Vansyckle and publisher Silver Lining Interactive
The visual novel elements suffer the most from the divided focus. Speed-reading dialogue just to get back to shooting makes genuine narrative engagement impossible. Throughout the game, characters literally quiz you on previous conversations to ensure you were paying attention, with “You listened!” appearing if you answer correctly. It’s a tacit admission that the game knows its story can’t hold interest on its own.
Visually, Service with a Shotgun mixes low-poly 3D environments with 2D character sprites reminiscent of early FPS games like Doom. The anime-inspired character art shows flashes of personality, but the overall presentation is bland. As the story shifts locations, conversations continue to take place at the same shop counter, awkwardly transplanted into entirely new environments. It’s a weird choice that undermines immersion.
Service with a Shotgun. Credit: Nolyn Vansyckle and publisher Silver Lining Interactive
Service with a Shotgun stretches a thin idea into roughly three hours through repetition rather than evolution. Neither its shooting nor its storytelling satisfies its own, and combining them creates frustration rather than compelling interplay. What could have been a clever genre mashup is, at worst, frustrating and, at best, bland.
Service with a Shotgun is available now on Steam.
Overall Score: 4/10
Played on: Steam Deck
