In later levels, the key to success is managing the limited number of teleports that you have. Aside from weapons, abilities also drop on the map and they are limited use special weapons or defences, like a special lightning bolt that shoots out and explodes in a mob, or a pulse shield that will push enemies back. Moment to moment gameplay, like many other games of this ilk, revolves around circle strafing and dealing with large mobs in an efficient way. The number of perks is limited at first, but as you progress through the “story”, you unlock new weapons and perks. As your enemies fall in the hundreds around you, you level up and gain the ability to pick one of two perks, things like faster movement speed or an extra barrel on your gun to shoot even more bullets at any given time. Otherwise, the game is very similar to Crimsonland and anyone who has played and liked that one will probably like Tesla vs Lovecraft as well. The mech suit is an interesting mechanic as you start each level with the suit for a few seconds before it blows up, after which you need to scavenge the arena for the parts to put it together again for another moment of overpowered chain-gun murder-fest before the thing breaks down and the cycle repeats. You have all manners of conventional weapons like Tommy guns and revolvers, as well as more esoteric stuff like Tesla rifles and mech suits to aid you. Anyone who has played the previous games by the developer 10tons will recognize a lot from titles like Crimsonland and Neon Chrome. You square off against everything from Deep Ones to the horrid Shoggoths that come spawning out of portals around the map. Moving from mission to mission on a map that is supposed to be Arkham, each level is a different arena where all manner of Lovecraftian beasties are spawned in great hordes for you to tackle.
You play as Nikola Tesla, who is on a quest to stop H.P Lovecraft from swarming the world with the spawn of the Great Old Ones.
What if the myth of the titular characters were true: Tesla having access to mysterious and strange electric devices no one has ever seen and Lovecraft actually being in communion with the eldritch nightmares he wrote about in his novellas. It doesn’t really have a story as much as it has a premise that is as simple as it is brilliant. Tesla vs Lovecraft has all the things you want out of a real arcade-y shooter: hundreds of enemies on screen, fast firing weapons and lots of upgrades.