A lot of PC indie games seem to come to the conclusion, “If big dogs don’t make the kind of games I like anymore, I’ll do it myself.” My favorite result of this impulse is the vibrant “boom shooter” scene, where intrepid solo developers or small teams remix old favorites and “angry slippery guys with guns It offers a whole new spin on the timeless concept of ‘unleashed in a labyrinth full of labyrinths’. enemy. ”
Angry slippery man with a gun thrown into a maze full of enemies
I’ve gathered some of my favorite retro indie shooters from the past year, as well as continuations of old favorites, and some pointers to getting started with source ports of classic FPS.
cult (opens in new tab)
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Jasozz Games, $9.99 on Steam
This debut from Jasozz Games was the perfect Halloween treat, but its excellent level design and crisp shooting are welcome all year round. Cultic most closely resembles Monolith’s 1997 classic Blood, but has much of his DNA from Resident Evil 4 in the more grounded weapon choices, autumnal color palette, and some of the encounter designs. detect.
There were sequences about clearing village houses and sniping a man off a rickety bridge over a canyon, and I thought I was in “a lonely, rural part of Europe.” Cultic is also a real bargain. $10 down gets him the first six-hour episode, and it already feels like a full campaign.
dream wild (opens in new tab)
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Fading Club, $7.99 on Steam
Dreamwild has one of my favorite art styles of any game I’ve played this year. The point-and-click adventure portion of it resembles the best render packs of the 90s, surreal and dreamy, but the Horde Mode arena is transformed into a crunchy, software-rendered look from the Quake era.
Dreamwild turns out to be surprisingly emotionally influential as well. A well-sketched supporting cast and a surprisingly good soundtrack (think lo-fi synths his beat wanders the psychic waste). .)
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David Szymanski, $4.99 on Steam
Pure arcade shooter bliss. Chop Goblins, the latest installment from Dusk developer David Szymanski, builds on Dusk’s anarchic sense of humor, depicting a titular lovable asshole invading all of time and space. increase. There are his five levels, from a Greek temple to Dracula’s castle, and his advertised 30-minute run time, but thanks to a global leaderboard and a combo scoring system with plenty of Boomer Shooter level secrets. So Chop Goblins boasts a lot of replayability.
The game also has some of the best fast melee combat I’ve ever seen seriously in an FPS. You get knife stabbing that feels just as cheeky and rude as the rest of the game, and it’s just as spammable as classic FPS melee weapons like Gordon’s Crowbar and Doomguy’s Punch. Being able to maintain it is very helpful in keeping the pain in while you set up another shot of your flintlock pistol.
Prodeus (opens in new tab)
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Bounding Box Software, $24.99 on Steam, Gog (opens in new tab)
Basically, imagine a high-quality, classic-style FPS campaign that not only uses sprite-based enemies and weapons, but also packs in as many Xbox 360-era normal maps and particle effects as possible. It recalls much of the Marathon trilogy’s Xbox Live remaster, but far better executed and with a purposeful end.
Aesthetically, Prodeus feels like a playful de-make of Doom Eternal, but with a more traditional level design sensibility than Doom Remake’s “separate arena sequences” deal. The filming and exploration are very well done, but the visuals he’s worth watching for the spectacle alone. Prodeus also comes with a robust map editor that is the entry point into our own modding ecosystem.
Second act: Floto (opens in new tab), turbo overkill (opens in new tab)When ultra kill (opens in new tab)
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Three of my favorite shooters got continued Early Access this year, with more to come in 2023. Hrot, his beige-brown FPS set in Soviet Czechoslovakia, got a second episode of Knockout that includes Gothic castles and darkly pagan countryside. Act 2 of Ultrakill added her Wrath and Heresy of Layers along with a new boss for Killer. Meanwhile, cyberpunk chainsaw shooter Turbo Overkill now has a sick grappling hook thanks to Episode 2. All three of these in-progress FPSs are typically available for purchase on Steam for $20.
What the heck is a source port anyway?
thank you. These fan-made reverse-engineering of classic shooters allow for modern quality-of-life additions such as mouselooks and high-res rendering, as well as easier creation and implementation of user-generated content. Doom’s modding scene is the grandfather of them all, centered around great source ports such as: Z Doom (opens in new tab)you can check out Doomworld in 2022 Cacoise (opens in new tab) Discover this year’s best new campaigns and levels.
The classic Star Wars shooter Dark Force gets its own full source port for the first time. force engine (opens in new tab)and Bungie’s classic FPS trilogy, Marathon, have been completely free and open source for years. Aleph One (opens in new tab) (Be sure to check out Apotheosis X, a great recent total conversion. (opens in new tab)).
You’ll need files from retail copies of Doom or Dark Forces, but it’s easy to run a classic campaign or fan build if you need them. The Force Engine will auto-detect the Dark Forces install directory, but GZDoom (the latest version of ZDoom) needs a copy of the retail game’s master WAD in that folder to work properly.
