Any game that cites Quake and Spelunky as inspiration has my attention—even more so if you throw a healthy dose of the 1990s into that mix. Strafe claims all three as a nostalgia-driven, twitch-shooting roguelike FPS. It's out today and marks the occasion with a suitably retro 'Official Movie Trailer.'
I wouldn't normally advocate for a trailer pushing the five minute mark so freely, however this one is worth the pseudo jaunt down memory lane.
"As a Scrapper on an impossibly dangerous mission at the edge of the galaxy," so explains the game's publisher Devolver Digital, "You only have one life to navigate all the nightmarish terrains of Strafe. When you die, nothing will ever be the same again."
For more involved thoughts on what Strafe has to offer, you might like to check out Omri Petitte's review. It's not without its failings, he reckons, however here he is on the game's throwback mindset:
"Strafe nails its chosen genre’s fascination with death, packaging a single-life slaying spree with deliberate visual anachronisms and a speed matching id’s formative titans. Developer Pixel Titans punched the time machine back to 1996 and broke off the abort lever. I loved the efficacy of Strafe’s low-poly look plucking at old memories—like marvelling at the first glimpse of accelerated graphics—and it showed in the sparking bulbs, blocky geometry, and dynamic lava glows peppering each map."
Strafe is out now on the Humble Store for £14.99/$19.96 (do you see what they did there?).
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