Prodeus trailer shows 12 minutes of furious retro FPS action

Nostalgia's pretty great sometimes. Prodeus promises old-school shooter action inspired by Doom and Quake, presented in a smart hybrid style that evokes the genre's pixel art origins without sacrificing modern lighting and rendering techniques.

There's a lot to like here. There's the ridiculous amount of blood, for a start. I like the way the weapons and enemies animate at a lower FPS than the player's movement, so you still get the crisp responsive feel of a 60+ FPS shooter, but the gritty look of a retro shooter. I also love that the map screen is basically noclip mode; your perspective pops into the sky and you can rotate around the whole level.

The game is funded on Kickstarter at the moment, and development is due to move to Early Access in "fall of 2019, followed by a full release in 2020". The devs are planning to include a "powerful and intuitive level editor" and community tools that will let players share and rate maps.

If you're looking for more joyous shooters inspired by the 90's, we fell in love with Dusk earlier this year.

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.