5 Awesome Horror Boomer Shooters in Early Access on Steam You Can Play Right Now
Nostalgia is a powerful thing, and right now the indie scene is riding high on a revival of 90’s era FPS games in the style of classics like Doom and Quake. With a plethora of retro style boomer shooters out there, this list is taking a look at five great horror-themed titles currently in early access on Steam. Lock and load people; it’s about to get gory!
5. Nightmare Reaper
Nightmare Reaper answers that eternal question, ‘what if you took the premise of Sucker Punch and turned it into a pixel art, fast-paced shooter?’ The game puts you in control of a young woman who wakes up in an asylum for an as-yet unexplained reason. Unable to leave her room, she retreats into a series of hellish fantasies where ‘Rip and Tear’ is the order of the day. Boasting a staggering number of weapons including melee items, guns, and spells, Nightmare Reaper also comes with several entertaining mini-games and some light RPG elements.
4. Wrath: Aeon of Ruin
Developed by KillPixel and published courtesy of 3D Realms (creators of Duke Nukem 3D, Prey, and Max Payne) this grimdark, kill-tastic shooter puts you in the boots of the Outlander, a mysterious being washed up on the shores of a dying world and tasked with doing what all mute, gun-toting protagonists do best. With an arsenal of satisfying weapons including double-barrel shotguns, an explosive cyst launcher, and a machine gun that fires goddamn stakes, Wrath of Aeon is worth a look for anyone wanting to get medieval on some undead ass.
3. Doombringer
Those who like their boomer shooters but have tired of pixel art and voxels may want to give Doombringer a look. Taking heavy inspiration from Quake 3, everything about this game from the enemies to the guns, to the gibbing has that gloriously chunky look that just screams old school. This is also the only game on this list to feature a multiplayer mode, letting you choose between massacring your way through the singleplayer campaign as a top-hatted badass or bunny-hopping to victory in fast-paced online deathmatches.
2. Hrot
Like the brutalist Communist country in which it’s set, Hrot (which roughly translates as ‘spike’) has a no-nonsense attitude when it comes to letting you know what you’re in for. According to the Steam page, the game takes place in Czechoslovakia after an unspecified disaster in 1986. ‘Those times were dark and terrifying’ it tells us, ‘and so is this game’. Playing as a nameless gas-masked military type, Hrot is a mixture of bullet-riddled action and unsettling Soviet surrealism, pitting players against waves of zombie hazmat soldiers, unnatural abominations and even a murderous pommel horse. Yes, that’s right, a murderous pommel horse.
1. Prodeus
Contender for the ‘Bloodiest Game Ever’ award, Prodeus is Doom-style mayhem on steroids. With a frankly drop-dead gorgeous (and often just drop-dead) mix of 3D art and retro pixel rendering techniques, this ultra-violent shooter is light on story and heavy on the gore, with enemies spraying literal fountains of blood as you gun them down. In addition to a kickass campaign, the game also features a custom level editor and a soundtrack composed by boomer shooter patron saint Andrew Hulshult. Anyone who can’t wait for Doom 3 to announce itself should get on over to Prodeus pronto.
