Love sprites and large guns? Then Realms Deep is the online convention for you. It’s a homage to all things shooters — most of them styled after classics in the ’90s — and this year’s iteration had a ton of games well worth adding to your wishlist.
From games that channel the spirit of Turok and Serious Sam to some oldschool rail shooters, this year’s Realms Deep delivered with plenty of eye-catching bangers. Which is good, because they might actually be released by the time NSW lets me out of my house again.
The full show runs for about four hours, and if you’re bored you can rewatch all of that here. It’s full of new updates to existing games as well — AMID EVIL and ULTRAKILL are getting major content updates, which is neat — but to save time, I’m just going to focus on the new announcements you might have missed.
Selaco
Please watch this gameplay and remember the entire thing is running off the GZDoom engine. Just unreal.
Selaco has a really high level of polish already too, although you can see in the trailer that there’s a bit of frame rate optimisation needed. Still, everything about it so far looks great. The soundtrack’s really prominent and there’s a lot of nice animations and touches throughout.
Selaco doesn’t have a firm release date yet.
Beyond Sunset
This one’s aiming for an October 2022 release date. It’s got a strong Duke Nukem 3D Build Engine vibe, if that was crossed with a bit of Deus Ex. It’ll support mods at launch, too. And if the quality of the synthwave in the trailer is any indication, the soundtrack should be awesome.
AFTERBLAST
This one’s a shooter for people who enjoy the roguelite format mixed with fast FPS movement. If you’re into games like Ziggurat or Gunfire Reborn, AFTERBLAST is worth keeping an eye on. It’ll be out sometime next year.
Dread Templar
This one’s already out in early access, although much like GRAVEN I’d probably wait a bit until it’s got a bit more content finalised.
But if you enjoyed more of a grim dark style of retro shooter, crossed with DOOM Eternal‘s gunplay stylings — frequent weapon switching for enemy types, that is — then there’s some fun to be had here.
BITTER
Turok meets Serious Sam. That’s basically all you need to know. There’s no official release date, but more info is on the Steam page here.
Forgive Me Father
It’ll hit early access in October 28 this year, and that can’t come soon enough. Heavy Lovecraftian cel-shading with some real Blood vibes? Bring it on.
War Mongrels
The biggest surprise of Realms Deep this year? It wasn’t all retro shooters. War Mongrels is a game set in the style of Commandos and Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, with a very traditional WW2 setting. It stars two Wehrmacht soldiers who have abandoned their posts on the Eastern front. It’s heavily steeped in that period of WW2, and it’ll be out on October 20.
Acheron
Acheron is basically a wave-based shooter with a heavy PSX vibe. The actual trailer shown off during Realms Deep was nigh-on unwatchable, however, so here’s some footage of gameplay from the game’s demo which is 1,000 times clearer. Don’t know if the constant tilting and screen shaking will be to everyone’s taste, though.
Ripout
Want a co-op horror experience? That’s what Ripout offers, except with 1,000 more scanlines than what you’ll get in GTFO or Aliens: Fireteam Elite. Plenty of filthy abominations and weird flesh monsters with claws, if that’s what you’re into.
Ripout is planning to launch on February 1, 2022.
See any great games we missed? Let us know below!
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