Nightmare Reaper

With a rocking soundtrack, addicting gameplay loop, and creative progression system, Nightmare Reaper delivers a bloody and bountiful harvest. If you’re a fan of old-school shooters, there’s no reason to miss out on this one.

While its procedurally-generated nature produces some annoying issues, Nightmare Reaper has a creative story, punchy edge-of-your-seat action and a deep, entertaining arsenal. This is one bad dream you won’t regret ripping and tearing your way through.

Nightmare Reaper is a procedurally generated retro FPS, with fresh levels every time you play. Levels that are of such high quality they often feel deliberately composed, only every now and then giving themselves away with an errant dead end. For the majority of the time, these chunk-based designs are fantastic, and then surrounded by so many clever ideas.

With an addictive gameplay loop, lots of upgrades and an insane amount of satisfying weapons, Nightmare Reaper is easily one of the best singleplayer shooters of the year.

Nightmare Reaper is a good retro FPS experience that will be incredibly satisfying to all gamers who liked the genre since Wolfenstein and have kept up with its recent evolution. Shooting enemies, juggling weapons, and looking for secrets, all these ideas work well. There’s enough difficulty to make progress a challenge without too much frustration and death is never the end. The biggest obstacle to a bigger audience will be the graphics. I understand why developers choose this pixelated, low-fidelity approach and I like it in small doses. But it might drive some players who are used to more modern graphics away. Nightmare Reaper might not be for everyone but fans can look forward to tens of hours of enjoyable FPS action.

While I have issues with a few parts of the game, mainly the lower-quality skill tree stuff and gripes related to rogue-lites and old shooters in general, the total package on offer is really strong. At the time of release, the game is only available for PC, which I think could be the biggest negative here. It’s clearly capable of running on less-capable hardware, but I worry that it may go unnoticed unless the team at Blazing Bit Games can find a way to make console ports work financially. If you are already smitten with boomer shooters or rogue-lites, this one is an easy recommendation. I suspect many others will find fun in the myriad easter eggs and tributes to other games (the main menu UI is a Game Boy Advance SP) quite delightful if they aren’t too scared to keep sleeping.

If you have any interest in the old days of FPS gameplay when you were expected to wade in, unleash firepower at top speed, and leave a mess in the process, you will want to play this game. And if you’ve tried to play those games but can’t get over the gap in technology, this is going to be a darn fun experience for you as well. Give this one a shot; it deserves everything it’s asking and then some.

Nightmare Reaper is a thrilling, gory, blast-from-the-past that hits all the right spots. FPS fans eager for a retro game change from the industry's sea of open-world titles should give Nightmare Reaper a try. By restricting levels to a pixelated, 2.5D environment, Blazing Bit Games has delegated many resources to other mechanics that make this rogue-lite a phenomenal enjoyment. While players may struggle with the nuances of retro shooters, especially considering the high-end, open-world norm of many new industry titles, Nightmare Reaper is centered around a learning curve. Challenging gameplay combined with charming features and Easter eggs makes this an adventure that players won't want to miss.

Getting the grapple-hook is nice and shifting the action to modern urban environments is cool, but it's all a little jarring. That said, the retro-inspired first-person shooting is by far the strongest aspect of Nightmare Reaper, and the mix of levels, secrets, loot, and rogue-lite elements is something that works together to deliver immediate, addicting, and engaging action.