I’ll pleasure myself on being the resident retro FPS man, however this style revival has been so wild that some neat-looking stuff even flies below my radar. Nightmare Reaper launched into early entry yesterday, a roguelite FPS by Blazing Bit Games. I’d nearly neglected it due to its extra-chunky graphics and the inherent difficulties of mixing random era with fast-paced FPS fight. But phrase on the old-school grognard grapevine is that this one’s fairly dang good, with some intelligent concepts and large plans for its time in early entry. Have a peek on the debut trailer under.
What we’re here’s a vaguely Rise Of The Triad-ish looter shooter (see the chunky grid-based world) with randomly generated ranges, and a narrative a few girl combating her internal demons by evening. It’s a bit on the garish aspect, however the weapons appear loud and satisfying, and the enemies are available in massive swarms encouraging explosives and wading by way of clouds of gibs. There’s additionally a chainsaw with a grappling hook and a soundtrack from Andrew Hulshult, contemporary from Dusk and Amid Evil. Not his most imaginative work, nevertheless it’s good chuggy retro FPS steel, which inserts.
What actually units the game aside is the RPG bits. Enemies explode right into a bathe of cash which bounce gleefully into your HUD when picked up, with multipliers based mostly on combos and trick pictures. These are cashed in through an 8-bit fashion mini-game the shooty girl performs on a handheld console. There’s an entire Mario World fashion map inside this game to navigate, which doubles as a passive talent tree, nodes (and ranges) unlocked by spending your blood cash. Complete a degree, acquire a perk that carries over to all future runs. Like Rogue Legacy, if the improve system was a game unto itself.
There’s some enjoyable random occasions too, together with a pleasant canine that’ll dig up loot for you and obtain pets, and a few zero gravity areas the place you could kick partitions or use weapon recoil to maneuver round. Blazing Bit reckon it’ll be a 12 months till this leaves early entry, and can triple in scale between every now and then. Right now, you get the primary of three deliberate episodes (every damaged up into a number of multi-level segments), and there’s 32 weapon sorts to play with, with stat rolls for additional selection. The dev estimates eighty base weapon sorts and lots extra baddies by launch.
Nightmare Reaper is out now in early entry and prices £12.31/€13.59/$16.14 on Steam. There’s no plans for value will increase between now and launch.
