Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, an aggressive, retro-yet-aggressive-looking first-person shooter from Auroch Digital, has a release date. That’s revealed in a trailer that shows off various monsters from the 41st century, in pixelated sprite style from the late 20th century. Specifically, from May 23, 2023.
Those enemies include a pick-and-mix bag of heretical cultists and demons serving the Chaos Gods in the 40K setting. The little slime-colored men are Nurgles who work for Nurgle, the plague god, and their larger cousins, the Great Unclean Ones, are purged in 20 seconds and are horned with tongue attacks that are plague toads. Similar to some amphibians. The Blue Bird, like the Skeksis of the Dark Crystal who became a member of Jim, is the Lord of Change, a senior demon of Tzeentch, the god of magic and mutation. There’s also some sort of armored demon I can’t even identify – it definitely seems like there’s a diverse set of blasting mavericks.
As Robin pointed out in a recent hands-on boltgun preview, Doom has always been a borderline 40K game. After all, the Doom manual started with the words, “You are a space marine,” and ended with an encyclopedia of demons to kill. The idea seems pretty obvious, but I’m surprised there were many other Warhammer 40,000 games of his before anyone got to this one.
While the bolt gun has a very retro look and feel, the chain sword charge attack that can be done while in the air, as featured in the trailer, definitely feels like a modern touch, as does the amount of jumping. There’s a dedicated key for throwing grenades and another for roaring, neither of which were in the 1993 shooter, but I’m glad to see them here.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltguns vapor (opens in new tab) Available for pre-order now on May 23rd.
