Nightmare Reaper promises uncompromising action with a headbang guarantee. We played it and the neck pain proves it right.
Nightmare Reaper is retro. That’s hard to miss, even if the powerful technical framework of Unreal Engine 4 is chugging away in the background. Nevertheless, even action fans who didn’t grow up in the 90s with shooter milestones like Doom should overlook this.
Because when you’re having a blast blasting disgusting hell creatures to red pixels to a bombastic and riff-heavy metal soundtrack with 80 different weapons, how important are the graphics at the end of the day?
Party like it’s 1993
Your first attempts at Nightmare Reaper will certainly send you back to the harsh reality of your patient’s room a few times due to thetight difficulty level, which cannot be changed (more on this in a moment).
But it’s worth persevering, because once you get past the shallow learning curve and initially monotonous, gloomy cave corridors after an hour or so,
there’s an action and guitar storm that you won’t soon forget.
The soundtrack was penned by the talented metal composer Andrew Hulshult, who has already been involved in the background music for numerous shooters.
With the finest shredding in your ear and your index finger at the ready, you rage through outdoor and indoor areas, ignite explosive barrels, puncture bosses and happily start the level from the beginning at a random point if you do get caught. Thanks to a practical automap, you won’t get lost.
Two of thechapters, each lasting around 7-10 hourswere already available to play in Early Access. The third chapter heralded the full release in 2022. The package is completed with additional game modes such as New Game+ and Endless Game as well as various challenge levels.
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
But first, back to the beginning:
As a player, however, you look forward to the nights above all, because as soon as you go to sleep,the eponymous nightmares begin and so does the fun. Without any further explanation or story worth mentioning, the game releases you into a cave full of deadly skeletons, zombies and other ghouls.
In contrast to the arsenal of the thirty-year-old role models, the up to 80 varied shredding tools are randomly distributed in crates or enemies and are further differentiated by means of 30 possible enchantments, in other words: Here, the modern loot shooter principle is married with the gameplay of the past.
Courage for variety
In addition to conventional shooting and cutting weapons, you can fight with almost anything you can imagine. Saw blade launcher? Almost banal against fire whips, acid-spitting skulls, target-seeking parasites and a magic trap cube that first sucks in enemies and then spits them out as allies when needed.
Depending on the rarity level, morerandom modifierschange the function of your weapons. The regular minigun was already fierce, but when the randomly appearing white ghost trenchcoat promised us a cheap upgrade, it became a legendary weapon that also freezes enemies and throws them back.
Once you have found the exit portal, the position of which can sometimes change due to the partly manual,partly random level generationyou cantake a weapon with you to the next level. However, overly powerful little helpers are grayed out so as not to jeopardize the balance. After all, the minigun gave us 16,000 gold coins at the end, as any surplus is automatically sold.
Greedy like Super Mario
You need these coins for thenumerous character upgrades, which you can acquire as soon as you have collected your first cartridge in the second level. These role-playing elements do what they do best: They motivate you to find even the last enemy andhidden secret room
.
The latter are often hidden behind cracked walls, but there’s also some great loot waiting at the end ofswitch puzzles and jumping puzzlestoo. If you switch to the talent tree with enough dough, it’s not just some boring skill table that awaits you, but a mini-game inspired by Super Mario.
Navigate your disturbed heroine across colorful Mario worlds and buy upgradessuch as additional ammunition, weapon slots or hit points to clear the way to the next world. From the second world onwards, you can also expand your repertoire of moves with a dodge jump (dash). You can return to missed side paths at any time.
Instead of a little warning in the style of “Do you really want to unlock this talent?”, you have to jump through short andpartly crisp 2D sidescroller levels, in which every coin you collect multiplies its value at the end and thus reduces the actual purchase price. The regular shooter passages also entice you with bonus coins if the final screen certifies that you have been particularly thorough.
For whom is Nightmare Reaper interesting?
The game should be digestible for all action fans,who have always placed more value on playful than visual “wow” moments. There are quite a few of the former, especially because of the unusually wide arsenal of weapons and the many random elements that loosen things up.
However, if you can’t overlook the visuals and wonder how much more realistic games will look in the future, this technical demonstration of the Unity Engine might be of interest:
In Nightmare Reaper, the typical loot-shooter pull takes hold after every level despite, or perhaps because of, the gentle reset, and the talent tree, which is set up like a video game in its own right, further increases the motivation to play “just one more round”.
OnSteamandGOGNightmare Reaper has been available since March 28, 2022, at a price of just under 25 euros without sales. At the time of writing, 93% of the 3,348 Steam players who rated the full version of the first-person shooter attested to its top gameplay and soundtrack quality.
Editor’s verdict
When I started Nightmare Reaper for the first time, I approached it with zero expectations. When I had to put it aside to write this article, I reluctantly disengaged. This is descriptive of the unfiltered and unadulterated flash of fun caused by the action-packed chase through the levels.
Whether you only have 15 minutes or several hours to play, a round of Nightmare Reaper is always worthwhile, because the adrenaline kick kicks in reliably and immediately after entering any level.
And if you have even a little bit of metal blood in your veins, you’ll be addicted to new battles in no time at all, just so that the excellent soundtrack kicks in again. For me at least, the composer’s music is now also regularly playing in the background outside of the game.
