Arthurian Legends
The Greatest Medieval Retro FPS to date…
Okay, so listen, son! This is the most fun, most historically inaccurate, bonkers, no-nonsense, Arthurian slaughter-fest you can ever imagine in videogame format. It’s like if it was made in 1996, before it was lost and forgotten for ages until a young and brave archeologist dug it out from some old crypt in Ireland.
It is highly addicting and rewarding with full of opportunities created by the wide variety of weapons, spells, and items. It’s almost like an immersive sim in terms of how many different ways you can approach an encounter or problem. It is hard but fair, very reminiscent of Blood where you need to adapt quickly to tense situations yet always thread very carefully to succeed.
– Real player with 27.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Retro Hack and Slash Games.
This is an excellent game for fans of classic melee FPS games like, yes, Witchaven I & II. It’s absolutely a hoot to play, the secrets are very well hidden, and there’s a real attempt at atmosphere going on. I almost wish it was more like an immersive sim (or at least a step or two towards Hedon) in including notes to read along the way, just because the environments LOOK like they’d have little stories to tell. Excellent work, there.
So, all of that said, let me focus on what needs improvement, starting with one issue/disclaimer.
– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game
Hecatomb
In a world where cultists desperately need to be shot…
What, Were You Expecting A story?
Oh, Alright.
You are checks notes Gary, an unassuming nobody with no backstory, personality or, for the moment, voice, who got kidnapped by an evil cult aiming to summon their god into this reality. You are the final sacrifice. And you’re having none of it. You break out of your cell, and kill literally everybody so the cult cannot summon the great evil they worship.
#### A Window Into The 90s
3D enemies? 3D weapons? No. The enemies, the weapons, most of the props are all 2D sprites. What 3D models there are are crude and low-poly. Texture resolutions are abominable. I even wrote a special shader that lowers the apparent colour depth.
Commitment to the 90s aesthetic is near absolute: The sole exception is that the weapon viewsprites are normal mapped, which is anachronistic but looks so good.
#### Boom, Pew, Bang
Shoot all the bad guys! Or hit them! Or kerplode them!
Defeat your foes with these bog-standard FPS weapons:
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Carpenter’s Hammer
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Pistol
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Submachine Gun
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Shotgun
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Hand Grenade
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Fire Staff
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Staker
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Rocket Launcher
(Note: List subject to change as I see fit.)
#### Reinventing the Wheel
Unity? UE? Build?
No.
That would be easy.
Hecatomb is coded entirely in GameMaker. I had to do everything 3D myself. Among the things I had to figure out are:
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Drawing walls and ceilings without tanking performance
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How sprite-based enemies move
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Shaders to restrict the colour palette
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A normal mapping shader for the weapon viewsprites
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How to calculate the position of bullet holes in a wall (it uses the tangent!)
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How to bake lighting into the map
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How mouselook works (Note: vertical mouse look is implemented, but disabled.)
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And many more that cropped up over the months but I can’t think of right now.
Read More: Best Retro Combat Games.
Relentless Frontier
Ross 128-B, a fresh new colony on the fringes of occupied space. Known for its beautiful red sun, volatile politics, and until recently, it’s independence. Ross has just signed a pact with the Solar Dominion Forces out of desperation, offering economic control of their planet in exchange for a piece of the SDF’s arsenal. Seems the planetary government has been having a hard time with a local energy cult, so the SDF is sending over a legion of expendable conscripts to test the waters.
You are Noah Gansky, a brilliant inventor doomed to Dominion servitude. Your prized invention, the Omnistruct, was capable of breaking down any matter into “Omnifuel”, then using that matter to instantly build a physical copy of any object. Unfortunately, this invention was also responsible for the death and illegal replication of an oafish Dominion official. Now you’re serving your life sentence as a soldier on the Penal Legion barge Procyon; your invention stolen, and your existence forgotten. Fortunately, the Procyon has just been called to deploy on a fringe planet to deal with some two-bit cult. This might be your chance to ditch the legion and go rogue.
On the way there, however, the barge gets a series of garbled distress calls from Ross. Panicked descriptions of hard-shelled creatures raining from the sky, ships being picked out of orbit by massive tendrils, and all ending with bloody screams. Abandoning some penal legion is one thing, but leaving these civilians to their deaths doesn’t sit well with you. You grab your ramshackle Omni-blade and do some warm-up stretches as you prepare to board your drop pod.
FEATURES
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Rapid combat with critical decision-making!
Your enemies are quick, lethal, overwhelming in number. Brute force may work, but using the right tool for the job is much more effective. Burn down a forest to keep swarming enemies at bay, detonate a demolition charge under a massive armored foe to sunder their defenses, or simply keep your opponents knocked down and stunned with a belt-fed automatic shotgun.
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A versatile weapon selection; a tool for every problem!
Every weapon you find will be viable throughout your entire journey (Yes, even the pistol). Blast enemies at range with the powerful Enforcer magnum, keep ‘em down with the Peacekeeper automatic shotgun, and then liquefy them with the triple-barreled Justice turbo-machinegun. If you’re running low on ammo, switch to your Omniblade (or simply hit quick melee) to punish any enemies that get too close, and refill your Omnifuel reserves to boot!
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A unique Omnistruct conversion and ability system!
Ran out of magnum rounds? Lacking in vigor? Maybe you just want to feel safe and armored? Noah’s Omnistruct system has your back, with the ability to perform personal on-the-fly ammo/health/armor conversions. Simply keep it supplied with a steady stream of Omnifuel by finding pickups, or ethically farming it from your foe’s bodies with your Omniblade.
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Interconnected maps with multiple progression routes!
You’ve got a destination, and many ways to get there. If a direct force solution isn’t working for you, use your wits to find a better vantage point, a route that avoids direct conflict, a secret cache of supplies, or any other myriad boon that can be rewarded by exploration.
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Difficulty settings that do more than increase enemy health!
You have 3 difficulties to select from at the start, with each one changing enemy placement, environmental hazards, and even level progression! Higher difficulties don’t just require quicker reflexes, they can also be conquered using strategy and exploration. Beating each episode gives you access to a new difficulty mode, which replaces conventional balance with a brutal progression.
Read More: Best Retro Singleplayer Games.
Spaceguy
I have to be honest here, i have put some time into the game, to get to know it better and to feel what the gameplay feels like.
And my opinion changed trough out playing this game, i started playing whilst thinking i found a golden game, but after my hours of playing i realised it isn’t a golden game, it is way better.
Everything about this game is awesome from the graphics to the controls and let’s not forget the storyline.
I’ve played quite a bit of shootergames in my day but spaceguy takes the lead, of being the best one, by far.
– Real player with 20.7 hrs in game
Simple wolf3d style gameplay. Consists of six levels with moderate difficulty, a few enemy types, and a few weapon choices. If you’re looking for something simple and quick, this is for you. Definitely worth the dollar I paid for it.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
The Citadel
Pro’s:
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like the product description says: a love letter to 90’s fps like doom, wolfenstein 3d, etc. It scratches the nostalgia itch while also being it’s own game.
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The level design rewards exploration. Sometimes there’s an ammo crate on a roof that you can see from the path the level has you take. Sometimes you think ‘‘what if I climb this?’’ or ‘‘are there any fake walls in this room?'’. I’ve poured over environments excitedly for ages trying to find the way to an are I’d seen from far away.
– Real player with 25.5 hrs in game
What a bizarre experience this was.
The Citadel is a very bleak story of martyr, you’ve probably seen the artwork by now. It’s full of semi-sexual content which will probably be repulsive for many, but those that choose to endure it. There awaits a very fun game that will make you feel uncomfortable in the best way possible.
The story is rather vague and you need to put the dots together yourself, there’s total of two characters who have any dialogue with the protagonist through the entire story. Ending doesn’t help either, it’s rather open ended what actually happened there. But unlike similar stories that fail to give any sort of closure, here we can tell what could happen based on visual clues throughout the game.
– Real player with 17.8 hrs in game
ThrustLander
I really love Thrustlander. Originally it was a launch title for the much vaunted new Atari VCS Linux Super Console that came out last year. I have to say as soon as I saw it, I wanted it. Though there was nothing else on the VCS for me to buy so I forgot about that idea. Then I noticed it was getting a PC release. I immediately put it in my wishlist. So I am really happy that today I get to play it.
Well I have been playing it for months actually. I was one of the select few who got to play it early. Below is my review of a truly great game. Where other modern retro games fail this one has succeeded.
– Real player with 81.6 hrs in game
This is a great game, some real retro goodness. It brings back memories of Lunar Lander, Thrust, and Oids. While simple in nature, it gets quite hard later on. The graphics are excellent, the little touches like the landing gear extracting while refueling are top notch. The controls are fluid and responsive, I’m using an xbox one controller for it, and the game is quite fun. If you’re a fan of retro shooters, get this game.
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
International Tennis Open
This game was originally released on CDi, Mac, and PC formats in the mid-1990s.
You can choose one of 9 nations to represent in this game. You also get to play singles against a wide variety of opponents by choosing practice mode, quick match, or tournament. Practice your tennis skills first, then move onto a quick match which allows you to select your opponent (pick one of 4 fictional players) and the type of court surface (concrete, grass, clay). Finally move onto tournament mode where you can select a host city from around the world and start playing from the quarter-finals onto the final!
The action is viewed from a 3rd-person perspective, and the in-game graphics are 2D rotoscoped-animated sprites.
Original reviews of the game stated –
PC Gamer – ‘But even with all its multimedia flash, International Tennis Open is first and foremost a fast-paced, challenging sports sim and a solid computer game, rivalled only by 1992’s Jimmy Connors’ Pro Tennis Tour. It’s a shining example of what multimedia entertainment should be.’
PC Joker – ‘It is not for nothing that the version for the CD-i was awarded as the best European multimedia entertainment product - it is not for nothing that the International Tennis Open is now also at the top of the world rankings on the PC!’
Kazakh Drive
This is an endurance racer: You have to drive for an hour or so without crashing to pass the first task. The apparent best strategy is pretty mindless: drive on the shoulder, keep your wipers on all the time, and spray fluid when the windshield gets dusty. The oncoming traffic lane is way too risky to use because you can’t usually see if it’s clear.
I do want to like this game, and certain improvements could make me recommend it:
1. controller support
2. some kind of meaningful decision to make while driving. There needs to be some reason I shouldn’t just drive on the shoulder to pass.
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
This is one of the best games here on Steam. Scenario, game play - everything is just great. A lot of possibilities to discover, I’ve just started the game, but I already decided to spend the entire weekend playing Kazakh Drive for the sake of Uncle Eldos. You know, boards can’t bring themselves on their own.
Best regards and ALGA
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Reformers Intl Ver(变革者国际版)
The game is more retro, although the picture is very ordinary, but there are many small eggs. Personally, I prefer this kind of game without hints to fumble on my own. Suggestions 1. Increase the minimap 2. Keyboard shortcut 3. I want to see the number of people online.
– Real player with 9.9 hrs in game
Solo Mode only! and can see online people only! i thought can help each other!(cannot)
– Real player with 6.4 hrs in game
Return To Sender
Return to Sender is a competitive horde mode first-person shooter with retro graphics reminiscent of Wolfenstein 3D and a multiplayer mode inspired by Tetris.
What is Competitive Horde Mode
Every monster you kill,
Spawns in your opponent’s game.
Buy guns to powerup,
and upgrade the monsters you send to the other player.
Outlive your opponent… or die. Last living player wins.