A riotous scrapbook of a boomer shooter with incredible vibes and attitude. I love the theming, and the round-based upgrades offer genuinely interesting choices. Minor nitpicks are getting stuck in geometry occasionally, and limited scope of the game (arena-based survival). But it's mostly a good time and a cool experiment with game mechanics and graphical style.
this is an excerpt from heather's fps museum, hosted at my blog.
FANS OF GLORIOUS JANK, COME ONE, COME ALL, TO THE SCENECORE ARENA SHOOTER TO END THEM ALL: Nightmare.
this game is held together with duct tape and elmer's glue in the same sense that a good fromsoft or super mario 64 are. nightmare is on its knees, begging you to pry it open and exploit every single one of its mechanics. the most defining of these is the "time freeze". unlike other shooters with time manipulation, this ability does not slow down time. it instead operates like the stasis from breath of the wild, allowing the player to spam bullets which will all hit the enemies at the same time upon deactivating the ability. combine this with the stacking knockback from every weapon and enemy death and you've got a recipe for madness. there's only one arena and a handful of enemy types and weapons. the game is giving you just enough resources to finagle a high score out of this brutal dopamine machine. who knew all you needed to balance an unfair video game was to make every aspect of it broken?
this game is so ludicrously awesome and dedicated to The Bit (i assume the terrible mouselook and janky physics are intentional) that i'd feel bad for calling it a "throwback fps" or "boomshoot" or whatever. so i won't. it's not one. what it is is an arcade arena shooter with a visual style that destroys worlds, a strong contender for the most aggressively late 2000s video game soundtrack, and a 5 star experience. play it for 5 minutes, play it for 5 hours. i don't care. just play it.
as a final note, the character on the main menu never appears in-game. she is adorable and i love her
FANS OF GLORIOUS JANK, COME ONE, COME ALL, TO THE SCENECORE ARENA SHOOTER TO END THEM ALL: Nightmare.
this game is held together with duct tape and elmer's glue in the same sense that a good fromsoft or super mario 64 are. nightmare is on its knees, begging you to pry it open and exploit every single one of its mechanics. the most defining of these is the "time freeze". unlike other shooters with time manipulation, this ability does not slow down time. it instead operates like the stasis from breath of the wild, allowing the player to spam bullets which will all hit the enemies at the same time upon deactivating the ability. combine this with the stacking knockback from every weapon and enemy death and you've got a recipe for madness. there's only one arena and a handful of enemy types and weapons. the game is giving you just enough resources to finagle a high score out of this brutal dopamine machine. who knew all you needed to balance an unfair video game was to make every aspect of it broken?
this game is so ludicrously awesome and dedicated to The Bit (i assume the terrible mouselook and janky physics are intentional) that i'd feel bad for calling it a "throwback fps" or "boomshoot" or whatever. so i won't. it's not one. what it is is an arcade arena shooter with a visual style that destroys worlds, a strong contender for the most aggressively late 2000s video game soundtrack, and a 5 star experience. play it for 5 minutes, play it for 5 hours. i don't care. just play it.
as a final note, the character on the main menu never appears in-game. she is adorable and i love her