The growing list of retro-fuelled shooters has another entry now with Perilous Warp which has released.
Inspired by the greats like Quake, Unreal, Doom and Chasm: The Rift. There's cramped hallways, deadly weapons and plenty of action. Created by Crystice Softworks, who are known for the Half-Life mod Headcrab Frenzy and for the J.A.C.K level editor, this is their first full commercial release.
Direct Link
Features:
- Optional Storyline: either learn everything about the tragic events that took place at the base, or skip the boring stuff and plunge into the action.
- Classic Combat System: find new deadly weapons at the base, from a classic shotgun to an advanced railgun, as well as a way to upgrade each gun.
- Diverse Bestiary: your enemies will run, swim, pounce or dig out; they will be anything but a piece of cake.
- Explore the World: look for stashes and secret places, visit optional offshoots, and get Steam achievements.
- Scalable Graphics: the game engine implements many modern graphics technologies, but at the same time it can support weak systems.
- Save Anywhere: in Perilous Warp you can save your progress wherever you like, and as often as you like; there are also auto-saves.
- Accept the Challenge: for certain gamers, the game can be real hardcore - no health regeneration, no navigation arrows, no bullshit!
What's interesting from a development point, is how they built their own game engine they call the 'Volatile Engine'. They created it to intentionally have many "quake-like" design principles and fully cross-platform. I think in the age of Unity, Unreal, Godot and much more - it's good to see a fair few developers still opt for making it themselves from scratch. You can learn more about their game engine here.
You can find Perilous Warp on Steam. They also have a demo available.
But maybe that is just the video, since it has a demo on steam I will give it a try :)
Last edited by coeseta on 21 October 2020 at 1:11 pm UTC
Quake originally had most of its merits in the engine side. It did catch on on the multiplayer side bit later.
Single player on the other hand was nowhere near Doom, though it was still somewhat fun. Not the best game to copy as such and it really shows in Perilous Warp.
I tried the demo too, and I agree with Anza. This one feels more like a careful restoration of a late 90s fps, and unfortunately not one of the memorable ones.
Anyhow, they certainly nailed the color scheme (brown) and the hunt for keys (red). Also, writing an engine from scratch is impressive and I do hope they do something further to my liking with it.
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