Nightmare Reaper, upcoming shooter heavily influenced by Wolfenstein, Doom and the Build engine games

Hi, I'm ItBurn, a pretty old school PC gamer that grew up on Wolfenstein, Doom and the Build engine games, with my favorite being Blood.  I've made a ton of maps for it.  Anyway, I've been working on a new shooter heavily based on all these games and I thought that Doom fans might enjoy it.

It's going to be released pretty soon on Steam and I've been trickling out media on Twitter (https://twitter.com/ItBurn_), which is kinda hard to find.

Here are some screens and other links.  Feel free to absolutely bash the sh*t out of it like I know some of you will ;)

I've put some higher quality videos on Youtube: 

I’m surprised I’ve never heard of this, it actually looks really good.

Getting the look, feel and sounds of weapons is a hard thing to do but it looks like this game nails it.  

Even now when retro styled FPS games are becoming more common you don’t see many that attempt the 2.5D style as opposed to 3D (Project Warlock and Ion Maiden being the only other two I can think of).  

I’ll definitely give this a try when it comes out.

I think I also wanted to write something to this, but maybe I was on my phone then. Well, it certainly looks great and I would like to see more. Do you have any updates by now?

Reminds me of Minecraft.

To be brutally honest, the visuals are jarring (especially in the first video/ minigun video). I think it is because of all the stuff/coins coming out of the enemies coupled with the heavy bloom, lighting and other effects like blood/weather effects. This makes it pretty hard for me to see what is going on.

Remember that all old school games have good visibility, as it makes spotting far away enemies easier.

These screenshots are fugly. I love color in games, but a lot of this looks like clown vomit without any kind of cohesion, but hey it's a 3D game with a variety of terrain and those are always big sellers.

I'm fine with the clown vomit. As long as the game plays good. But the bloom effects mix poorly with the pixelated aesthetics though. My biggest issue is how ilegible the HUD is. Which is detrimental to game play. The excessive screen shake on weapons fire can be a problem too.

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Feel free to absolutely bash the sh*t out of it like I know some of you will ;)

Hold my beer.

If someone would release a Doom or Blood map with this Minecraft/block level design, they would be laughed out of the room.

But releasing a new commercial game in 2019 inspired by these games with this level design is a good move? Personally, I have bought Dusk and will buy Wrath and Ion Maiden. But not your Brutal Minecraft, Project Warlock or the torrent of other retro shooters.

I feel this criticism is overly harsh. Since this doesn't strife to be a Doom MegaWAD but is its own game, I'd first try it and see what else it has going for it.

I think the trouble is that "retro FPS" games are dime-a-dozen at this point, so people can afford to be a lot more picky and selective.

I guess I'll mention my main criticism is that I just don't like this modern style of pixel art much. Even the cartooniest, drawn from scratch things in Doom tended to have a lot more detail, and looked nicer, I feel.

I'm not crazy on too much bloom, if any at all. I would hope there would be an option to turn it off.

On 2/23/2019 at 5:17 PM, ItBurn said:

Hi, I'm ItBurn, a pretty old school PC gamer that grew up on Wolfenstein, Doom and the Build engine games, with my favorite being Blood.  I've made a ton of maps for it.  Anyway, I've been working on a new shooter heavily based on all these games and I thought that Doom fans might enjoy it.

 

It's going to be released pretty soon on Steam and I've been trickling out media on Twitter (https://twitter.com/ItBurn_), which is kinda hard to find.

 

Here are some screens and other links.  Feel free to absolutely bash the sh*t out of it like I know some of you will ;)...

 

 

Once it's on Steam, don't forget GOG.

On 3/12/2019 at 6:20 PM, elend said:

I think I also wanted to write something to this, but maybe I was on my phone then. Well, it certainly looks great and I would like to see more. Do you have any updates by now?

Yes, tons, on my Twitter.  https://twitter.com/ItBurn_

On 3/14/2019 at 6:21 AM, ReaperAA said:

To be brutally honest, the visuals are jarring (especially in the first video/ minigun video). I think it is because of all the stuff/coins coming out of the enemies coupled with the heavy bloom, lighting and other effects like blood/weather effects. This makes it pretty hard for me to see what is going on.

 

Remember that all old school games have good visibility, as it makes spotting far away enemies easier.

Yes, this is something I'm concerned about.

So far, all testers have said that they never had issues tracking enemies at least.

About the bloom and other effects, they can be toned down and even removed.

I've already improved the visibility a bit since the minigun video.

On 3/14/2019 at 4:23 PM, kristus said:

I'm fine with the clown vomit. As long as the game plays good. But the bloom effects mix poorly with the pixelated aesthetics though. My biggest issue is how ilegible the HUD is. Which is detrimental to game play. The excessive screen shake on weapons fire can be a problem too.

About the clown vomit, I think it's just these levels that are pretty intense visually when you pause during an explosion.  I think that if you look at video, it's not so bad.  It's true that it's a very colorful game though, but most people seem to like it.

On 3/14/2019 at 5:12 PM, VGA said:

Hold my beer.

 

If someone would release a Doom or Blood map with this Minecraft/block level design, they would be laughed out of the room.

 

But releasing a new commercial game in 2019 inspired by these games with this level design is a good move? Personally, I have bought Dusk and will buy Wrath and Ion Maiden. But not your Brutal Minecraft, Project Warlock or the torrent of other retro shooters.

That's perfectly fine.  But Nightmare Reaper is a bit deeper than all these other games.  It hasn't been revealed yet though.

On 3/14/2019 at 8:10 PM, SaladBadger said:

I think the trouble is that "retro FPS" games are dime-a-dozen at this point, so people can afford to be a lot more picky and selective.

 

I guess I'll mention my main criticism is that I just don't like this modern style of pixel art much. Even the cartooniest, drawn from scratch things in Doom tended to have a lot more detail, and looked nicer, I feel.

I'm a one man studio, so I have to be very strict about where the time and effort is put.  I strived to make the best balance I could.

It's true that there's tons of retro FPS nowadays, but Nightmare Reaper will differentiate itself from others with details to come.

On 3/14/2019 at 8:12 PM, Ajora said:

I'm not crazy on too much bloom, if any at all. I would hope there would be an option to turn it off.

You can raise or lower the bloom or turn it off entirely.

On 3/14/2019 at 9:18 PM, Master O said:

 

Once it's on Steam, don't forget GOG.

Steam first.

It looks good, as long as settings for the stuff like bloom can be tweaked, I'll give it a chance, most games are worth at least giving a shot and I think this one has the potential to be a good little gem.

Im definitely digging the grappling hook chainsaw. Thats an idea I've never seen! I like the feel of the chaingun as well. The look of the whole game feels like an acid trip as well. It looks great so far!

New update by the way.

In order to reach a bigger audience, we're removing all blood and gore and replacing that with more piñata-inspired effects. We think you'll love them as much as we do!

Been keeping up with this on twitter! Looking good!

I definitely prefer pinatas to uber-gore, though saying that feels odd, and advertising such a change on this website feels like it was meant as some kind joke. heh. 

It was an April Fool's joke :D

Yep, April fool's.  But, since a lot of people actually like it, I'm going to keep it in the game as some kind of joke parental mode.

I'm down for another retro style shooter. I'm not too big on Bloom myself as i usually turn that off (tends to make me dizzy) but i don't mind dynamic lighting and all that jazz. Screen shaking is iffy to me too as when i'm playing Doom mods that have that i tend to turn it off if i can, but i can deal with it if i have too.

I also don't mind the bright colors either. I like Heretic and that has a lot of bright colors compared to Doom. I mean, Wolfenstein 3D is really bright, although they are all flat shaded planes instead of textures (i think). The grappling hook chainsaw is pretty neat as i remember just a standard grappling hook in the Quake games (multiplayer only i think?, unless it was a mod i'm thinking of). Anyway's, lookin' good so far!

6 hours ago, CyberDreams said:

I'm down for another retro style shooter. I'm not too big on Bloom myself as i usually turn that off (tends to make me dizzy) but i don't mind dynamic lighting and all that jazz. Screen shaking is iffy to me too as when i'm playing Doom mods that have that i tend to turn it off if i can, but i can deal with it if i have too.

 

I also don't mind the bright colors either. I like Heretic and that has a lot of bright colors compared to Doom. I mean, Wolfenstein 3D is really bright, although they are all flat shaded planes instead of textures (i think). The grappling hook chainsaw is pretty neat as i remember just a standard grappling hook in the Quake games (multiplayer only i think?, unless it was a mod i'm thinking of). Anyway's, lookin' good so far!

I think the grappling hooks were in mods.  I remember the Quake 3 Corkscrew mod fondly because of that.  But yeah, the chainsaw is cool.  I never really used it much in Doom because you usually end up taking some damage from ranged enemies.  I figured that a grappling hook to close the distance was a good idea.

Ding.  We've just released the official reveal trailer for Nightmare Reaper.  Coming summer 2019.

I've sent out preview builds of the game lately and got a lot of feedback.

Check out this vid: 

I had made improvements with feedback I got in this forum, and I made further improvements because of feedback following that vid.  My main focus was visibility, now it's art.

I got a total of zero comments about "clown vomit" at least, which is a major win :P