I was pleasantly surprised by this game. It felt very old-school but with a few modern twists.

I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the game when it leaves early access.

Original review over at FlickeringMyth.com

Villordsutch reviews Bedlam…

bedlam headerIf you’re like me , an old mature gamer who has been around for a fair few decades watching games evolve, we’ve seen wondrous things from black and white tennis (Pong) to the monochrome colour clashing on the ZX Spectrum then onwards to the 486 basic PCs up to our beast of a gaming machine and the Next-Gen consoles. If you’re not like me however and you stepped into the world with all of this new spangled ultra-realistic graphics on your plate a) you’re very lucky, and b) you’re very unlucky for you haven’t lived. Granted these days the “Retro” scene is quite big and a lot of people flock to embrace games I’ve discarded eons ago, but you weren’t there man!

It was my gaming past which attracted me to Bedlam from the very short demo I witnessed, based upon a novel of the same name by cult Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre. This FPS game sees you take on the role of Heather Quinn (aka Athena) a colleague of Ross Baker (aka Bedlam). Heather is an overworked and underpaid scientist developing medical technology for corporate giant Neurosphere. One rainy Monday morning Heather volunteers as a test candidate for the new Neurosphere brain scanning tech – anything to get out of the office for a few hours. It’s here it all starts going wrong for Heather as she becomes trapped inside Starfire – the Sci-Fi shoot-em up she played as a teenager – with no rhyme or reason for why she’s in her and currently under fire, she picks up a gun and ploughs on in.

Within seconds of playing this game anybody that played Doom, Quake, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Duke Nuke’em, Castle Wolfenstein and of course Star Trek: Elite Forces (just) will feel right at home. That’s clearly a lot of names on the chest but it’s proud to show them and further into the game it even manages to sneak in a UT’99 Homage with the Deathmatch map Morpheus (with trolling Teamspeak teenagers too). This is in amongst the many other nods to the decades of gaming through the years you’ll see. The generation of FPS from the 90’s (and late 80’s) has been perfectly captured with pixellated blood spurts, limbs falling off and the surrounding maps. It’s clear that the designers had a love for this era and they’ve set out with a goal and they achieved it.

The missions though basic occasionally can be a bit of a challenge and make you work for you goal; from domination to destroy the towers to your basic run through the map and destroy “X” at the end. You do need to keep an eye out for the shields and health packs as the enemy’s fire does inflict significant damage; with no health regeneration you can be quite knackered without the two afore-mentioned items. Occasionally you’ll come across a bizarre moment like the UT’99 homage when I assumed I was finished a mission. You just have to remember this is part of Athena’s Neurosphere brain scan and accept it. Occasionally Athena starts talking to herself – singing too – which can be amusing and also help push the story forward.

A couple of things however bothered me about the game – one being the basic pistol seems in the opening levels to be the best weapon in the game for range and damage (minor I know), but the biggest issue I have – one that made me rage quit at one point – is the bizarre autosave the game has. In this case it saved me at one health before a mob so when I restarted the game I was shot straight away and died. Aft...

Read rest of the review here .... http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2014/12/video-game-review-bedlam.html

Great Christmas gift !
Dudes ! Get this Game for your Folks ,it's fun for everyone !

So so so surprised with this one, loved every minute, keen to see what's to come.

I've played for two hours and was actually able to complete the game in this time. Initially I was uncertain whether it was a good choice considering that it's got $20 price tag, however;
- It was overall really really fun, it's buggy but some of the bugs made the game even more entertaining
- BUT the full game isn't actually available yet, you will reach a sign saying after only an hour or two that says 'end of early access, check for updates’ and a dead end

http://youtu.be/kfPwOlYgAlc
http://youtu.be/Qeft_KXzh0M
Okay to start off with you are are in a world with a theme that borrows heavily from Quake II. I loved that game. You get to play as a Strogg. They don't actually call themselves Strogg but I'm just going to refer to them as Strogg. I was very happy to get to be a Strogg =). I decapitated my superior officer with my salute and off I went. Initially combat wasn't so great. You have a blaster but it's nowhere near as cool as the real Quake II blaster. I found it hard to aim, you need to be very precise and I found it hard to fine tune aiming with the mouse in this game. However after playing for sometime I found aiming easier, so I may have just needed time to adjust. I still think your projectiles need to be bigger, especially your rockets. By the way the rocket launcher in this game has an identity crisis, it doesn’t know whether its a rocket launch or a rail gun lol. I soon found myself in a section playing domination i.e. capture all the points against the AI. That part is a bit of a work in progress, I think they could flesh it out quite a bit more. After taking the points I fought a boss in the next area. It was a cool Quake II style cyborg tank.
_____However I had trouble progressing through this section. At first it just killed me because it was too strong. Then I was unable to confront it again several times because the guard you need to kill to trigger the boss fight just wouldn't die no matter how many limbs I chopped off of him. So I had to reload and start from the end of the last area a few times until it worked. It also took me a while to discover the chaingun you need to defeat the boss.
_____Combat started to get more fun at this stage, mainly because there were more enemies. Sometimes you have specific objectives but they can be a little buggy or apparently not fully implemented e.g. at one point I was supposed to proceed to a tower and destroy it. However as soon as I made my way to the tower I was given the next objective without having destroying a thing. Gameplay mainly consists of heading to the next area and fighting through the enemies.
_____Along the way were some sort of alternate dimension instances filled with purple metallic platforms as well. There wasn't much to these areas but they were interesting locations, sort of like a non-organic version of the alternate dimension in the Half-Life series.
_____There is one bug at the moment which persistently made the game difficult and apparently it is something to do with the gravity levels. I found that when I reloaded after dying the gravity is for some reason extremely high. You are unable to jump, jump pads a rendered useless and for some reason it creates a really big frame rate drop. Until this bug is fixed in a patch the only way I could find to return the game to normal is by restarting it. This doesn't take long to do, just use quicksave so that you don't lose any progress. There is a bright side to this issue, it causes enemies to do cart-wheels when they die =)
After completing the Strogg act you find yourself in a World War II themed area fighting Germans on your way to church. Unfortunately the game ends before you get to your destination. I never actually saw some of the locations and weapons featured in the screenshots on the steam page.

The game doesn't look too bad. Obviously it is intended to look like older titles. Make sure you choose the right aspect screen ratio in the display menu. For some reason mine was incorrect by default and I spent the first half hour or so unable to see most of my HUD. Also the game looked a lot better after tweaking this.
_____Did I mention that I really liked being a Strogg? =) You retain this form throughout the game even during the WW2 section, which was cool.
_____I found several visually entertaining bugs or unintended features. You can pick up dropped enemy weapons with E and launch them out of the map with left click. You can pick up corpses and flail them about around like Ragdolls. Sometimes amputated limbs of enemies will roll continuously without stopping. I sliced of a Strogg's head and it rolled all the way across a large room bounced off the wall and kept on rolling. Usually the AI is good at aggressively finding you and hunting you down but sometimes enemies spin around continuously or walk around and around in tight circles. If you shoot enemies with the crossbow it takes them to the ground in a low arc and pins them there instead of carrying them at high speed to the surface behind them. Some of the stuff I saw I think should be left as it is =)
_____The dialogue wasn't always amazing sometimes it was amusing. I found it a bit painful to hear feigned American accents however, especially when I had to repeat that scene multiple times. Some of the sound effects sound like they are straight out of familiar old titles, which was pretty good for nostalgic reasons.

So yeah I did enjoy enjoy playing this. But I do think $20 is a bit much for what you are getting at least at the moment. I was expecting a full albeit buggy game. Yes I would have preferred not to have been set back so much to buy this game. But I'm not too worried about it personally. However I'm pretty sure it's guaranteed that a lot of people would not be happy to pay $20 for what they would get get in this case.

Bedlam is an original and fun take on the old school first person (multiplayer) shooters from the 90’s (and even before the 90’s). If you enjoyed playing Quake or Unreal Tournament back in the days (you might even play them to this day) then Bedlam is everything you want and more. No need to look any further. Here’s why:

Since this is an Early Access game – and therefore still incomplete – I can’t tell if the final product will be worth your money and time but the first few chapters that I’ve played so far are very entertaining to say the least. I won’t go as far as to say it’s brilliant, but I can’t remember a game that has tried this sort of story before. Not like this, anyway.
The basic story is as follows: your character is a scientist who’s volunteering to test some new brain scanning tech. The scan it makes eventually puts you inside a game, but you quickly realize that you can’t get out of it so the scientist is now experiencing the game herself. That’s correct; you are a female gamer, and a Scottish one at that.
The story is fairly to-the-point, so you’ll receive mission objectives and you carry them out. The girl will narrate as well, but this is mostly done for comic relief and a bit of a backstory.
Normally I’d write a whole paragraph about the gameplay, but the game plays like most first person shooters. So there’s a whole lot of shooting involved while completing different objectives. These objectives range from capturing checkpoints, blowing up towers, just plainly killing enemies and even winning an Unreal Tournament inspired low-gravity deathmatch. All made as a nice tribute to some of the older, but still great, games most of us used to play when they were young.
I haven’t yet played any of them, but there also seem to be a few levels that are a bit different as far as the gameplay is concerned; one of them seems to be a sidescrolling shooter (yup, it’s still all about shooting things). I think it’s a good idea to mix things up a little because not everyone might appreciate and enjoy this sort of repetitive gameplay nowadays. People keep looking for new things and ways to excite them and giving them an old school shooter might not just be the best solution/idea here. But there’s always an audience for things, no matter how silly, so I’m sure it will do just fine.
Bedlam is a game that references a lot of older games but it doesn’t seem to introduce anything truly new to the genre. Don’t get me wrong, because that isn’t really necessary in any way, of course; the game stands outs because of its fun voice-overs and over-the-top action, while it will also let you think back of the times when things were simpler. The Unreal Tournament-like level especially triggered some memories for me. Great times, and I’m certain there are a lot more people who will agree with me here, not just for that level.

The graphics can also be seen as a tribute with some old-school ugliness in there, especially in the earlier levels, but it gets increasingly better as you progress. It never becomes perfect or beautiful, but it’s all very serviceable nevertheless. Despite its (intentionally) ugly models and environments it all looks very sharp and clean. The developers have done a great job here, even if my review let you think that I maybe didn’t appreciate any of it.
The voice acting is charming but the Scottish accent can get a bit tiresome sometimes (no offense to Scottish people ;)). Sometimes it feels like she’s trying a bit too hard but overall I’m very satisfied with how it’s done. The rest of the cast also does a great job here.
In short; nothing wrong with the audio-visual experience here.

Because the game isn’t complete or even out yet, and levels are still being added, I can’t really tell you how long a playthrough will last you. I finished half of the levels in about an hour so I’d say that you can complete this Early Access version in 2,5 hours or so. I’m not sure about this, but I think the final product will last somewhere around 5 hours, maybe even longer.

Bedlam is all about bringing you a new old-school experience, and with success. It references a lot of the older shooters from the 90’s while adding some humorous voice acting and levels to complete the package. It might not do anything truly new but if you’re one of those people who doesn’t care about that sort of stuff then you should absolutely play this game. It’s a nice trip down memory lane, no matter what.

[Rating: 77/100]

This game is insane. Utterly utterly insane.

I cannot recommend this game enough. It's one of those games you have to play, just to experience it.

I put nearly five hours into this game, and finished the early access in one sitting. I'm genuinely disappointed there's not more to play yet.

The storyline is... confusing, but I gather that it's supposed to be. I want to see where it goes. I am committed to this wild ride.

The game is pretty self-aware, ticking off tropes like there's an achievement for including them all, and manages to balance the vast array of weapons from genre to genre and era to era well too.

However, the game is not without its faults too.

In the obligatory sewer level, there is a conversation with an NPC that triggers at a certain point. I was mobbed by zombies and died before the end of the conversation, and reloaded. This time, the conversation didn't trigger, and I spent a full 45 minutes in the sewer, attempting to find an exit that apparently only appears after the conversation has finished.

In the WW2 level, the enemy soldiers will sometimes run around in circles when you shoot them. I'm not sure if this is satirising dodgy AI, or is actually dodgy AI.

Overall, none of the problems are deal-breakers; and the game itself is full of dark, quirky humour, interesting concepts, and fast-paced, fun gameplay.

Worth every penny.

(THIS REVIEW IS FOR THE STEAM EARLY ACCESS BETA, AS OF 8/14/2014)

This game is pretty much a history of first person shooters meets a sort of tron/reboot story. Pretty much, a super cool scottish lady gets zapped into a game parodying quake 2 and proceeds to jump from game world to game world, keeping all of the abilities and weapons she gained in previous game worlds. The early access beta features the first quake 2- based mission and the call of duty 1-based mission, but I believe this game will really stir things up.
Also, the voice acting and writing is truly something to behold. I can remember only one other fps game that had a female protagonist, and that's Unreal Gold. This game is pretty cool!

Also, in case you're wondering this game runs on the unity engine!

This game definitely has alot of potential! A game that takes you back to experience early child hood memories of first person shooters is a great idea that i havent seen done before! (although that doesnt entirely mean that there isnt another with the same concept that i just am unaware about)

Ive only gotten into it like 30min and so far ive become a robot, gotten to shoot peoples legs off (and i mean how completely awesome is that?!?), played hokey-pokey with some of the enemies (cause that is what its all about), and went back and forth trying to capture control points because the freakn enemies kept taking them as soon as I got to the next one..... but I eventually destroyed them all with my 8-bit lazer gun!

I think this game would be alot more fun for the people who love the old school kind of games or the people who grew up loving these kind of games rather than the people looking for a next generation game cause your not going to get that from this game! its supposed to be an old-school kind of game!

$20 for this game may seem a little pricey (especially since there isn't much gameplay in it yet and there havent been many people to play this on YouTube yet) but i can say that they definitely are adding updates to it at LEAST once a week, so there is constantly new levels to experience and shiny new weapons that you can use to dominate all of your enemies!!! >:-D

If you want a more in depth look at this game before you buy it come check me out on YouTube cause im doing a complete playthrough of this game :-)
If you want to check it out here's the first video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ncGgnl-mBM&list=UUYAJO7jbKdmSR3pOQDQ7AfA



To the Developers:
I think a better introduction with more of a backstory as to why the character is here could really help get people more excited to get into the game, as well as making a good fist impresion of it! Even if it's just a small bit of background for now while the rest of it is being deveoped, that little bit of background can help the player get that much more connected and encourage people to buy it more! :-)

Early acces is a tricky proposition, so whenever you are tempted to buy one of those games there´s a little hesitation involved. This is a game that tries to take old styles of FPS gaming to the front and add a modern sensibility, this usually is a complicated affair because the shooting is the easy part, is one of the most elemental forms of interaction in game design, what usually feels off about this kind of endeavours is the movement, the way you move in the game world is bastly different, if you are old enough you can remember it, and usually there´s a disonance in what you remember and what you feel playing a game that tries to infuse modern movement in retro shooters and it can lead to some dissatisfaction, there´s some of this in Bedlam too, is unavoidable to an extent, but the game succeds in its graphic presentation and you can find your self smiling remembering old exploits.
The acting is pretty good, the weapons feel good to shoot for the most part, there´s some rough edges of course, but the game runs pretty well overall, right now you can easily end the game in under three hours, but the devs are pretty active in the forums and they are adding content, they have announced two more worlds, and are polishing the existing ones, i truly enjoyed my time with it and hope to continue doing it with the next additions, so far no regrets with this game, but remember is early access and if you have any caveats with it you may want to wait for the finished version, i for sure plan to keep playing and replaying it

I absolutely recommend this game!

I have to admit I am really biased here, I really wanted to like this game. I am a huuuuge fan of Christopher Brookmyre and Bedlam is a really great book, especially if you are into gaming. It's pretty obvious in his books that Brookmyre must have spent several hours in front of a computer screen, playing FPS games.
( off topic: I'd recommend reading "a big boy did it and ran away"; "pandaemonium" and of course "bedlam" for the gaming references, however all his books are great, witty, gory and so on. One note however, he publishes books under the name Chris Brookmyre: those are really suspensful thrillers, the Christopher Brookmyre books are basically the equivalent to a Quentin Tarantino movie.... just my two cents and end of off topic )

So I have wanted to get my hands on this games since the moment I heard about it. Now, to be precise, it is still "early access" however the content is very promising so far, and I really love it, there will be more levels in the future.....

I'd like to explain why I really like it. Don't get me wrong here, there are many, many games with better graphics, many with a better gameplay, I'd even say that this is not one of "my top ten games of 2014" IF I only consider the actual "playing" of the game. However, the actual experience playing this game is just fantastic. As somebody who played Quake back in when it was the number one game to play, this one just feels right. It's so full of all the gaming nonsense that was once topnotch in gaming.
If you have read the book, the reference to the story are there and obvious and funny, however there is no need to buy the book, if you are just interested in spending some time laughing to yourself and thinking back to the times when you reached secrets by just walking into a wall, or when all the bad guys looked the same, or when the dialogue were full of pathos and kitsch, or.... well whatever...

The game is full of references to older games, without making of these games, rather making fun with the games.... and Athena kicks ♥♥♥!

This is the first time I bought an early access game, and I would do it again.... Right now!
Developers when you read this, please turn Pandaemonium into a game.... "a field trip meeting a DOOM scenario..!" What can possibly go wrong?

This is an early review, so things are likely to change and this will need an update later.

I've found the game to be very well written in story and features, accurately simulating older genre's of play with some of the stranger bugs included that really gives the game play an amusing charm. Like one stranger bug, you can Pick Up an object you're standing on and fly!

The mix of older graphics and newer technology in the older areas feels slightly odd (Like early 1990's had no ragdoll physics which are now common - Used hit-boxes instead of model-hits), but the odd feeling you get from these mis-matches helps sell the story about being in the game when you're not supposed to be. I quite like the game so far, and look forward to it's full release.

11/13: Checked out the new level avalable was tough to have to take down the super saucer again but eh its cool. THE NEW LEVELS are fantastic one is medieavle rpglite ish thing and the other is speed running accross an RTS also several new weapons have been added that are fantastis

10/23: Just finished up the levels avalable for early access as of Oct 23, 2014. This is wonderful nod to the history of gaming. I found my self in situations that i absolutly hated in really crappy games but was having fun for the sole fact that this entire game feels like satire. Things like really awful AI, capture the base, death match with a whiney 15 year old redneck? This game is nod to shooters like quake 2, ww2 era return to castle wolfenstien, zombie...whatever, pac-man, and space invaders... so far! more is one the way.

There seems to be a very interesting story unfolding im not exactly sure where they are going with the story so for right now i wont spoil what I know besides to say I am enjoying it.

Secondary to that there is a strong focus on what it was like to be a female gamer in the 90's told through a very Scotish voice actor, Kirsty Strain (Athena)

As far as early acess goes: The dev's are very quick to address issues using the steam hub as the main area for feedback. they are putting out updates and working on level at a very solid rate. I am excited to see where this game goes. honestly my only regret was that i bought it in a bundle and didnt pay full price for it :/

The game is great and enjoyable, the enemies are very fast paced like it says so it makes it challenging to keep up. The level design sometimes feels repetitive but you learn everything in this game is there for a reason. The game has some little bugs that make you know that it is still in Early Access. The weapons are vast going from laser guns on a foreign planet to mp40s deep inside WW2. overral the game deserves a 9 maybe 8.5 because some of the glitches (I was stuck in a hole for a hour before I finally gave up and spawned in a explosive weapon to propell me out) this game is a must buy if you are bored or just looking for something new.

First of all, I won't recommend this game to a modern FPS-SUPERCOOL-GRAPHICS/PHYSICS-lovers. It seems to be a real Alpha.
But... it's a charmer though :)

Cons:
- Music... Where is it? Sometimes I can hear it (and themes ar good), but the whole game seems to be silent.
- When Mobs hit the hero - there seems to be no respond... Sometimes I stare at my HP bar and: wtf, where's my health? :)
- A lot of glitches.
- Unstable landscape.
- Not too clever AI.
- M-m-m... Strange controls and aiming.

Pros:
- Athena and her accent. Love at first... sight? :)
- Storyline. Really, I like it very much (though, haven't completed the game yet).
- Challenge. Some places are really tough.

More Cons, but I really like this game and will definitely finish it. Thank you, devs :))

It's Brookmyre. Ye ken well whit ye're buyin. Self-indulgent wank wi a Glesga accent is still wank. Me, I like an auld schuil shooter - an aw ither manner o self-indulgent wank - so I reckon it's braw.


Buckie/10 bit.ly/1uoe0p6

Shaping up to be a great game, if the rest of it continues along the same lines as the inital opening levels it will be a stoater! Some of the puzzles are not straight forward and i loved the twist on space invaders. Decent enough plot so far but perhaps too close to the book. Can i suggest a level based on a real old favourite of mine Rebelstar Raiders/laser squad or any of Julian gollop's chaos games.

So fun, I may buy the book :) still early access and $20 may be steep (got mine for $3.75 on GMG) Please note that at least 8 of the screen shots on the store page are not playable levels yet.

As far as I can tell, this game is amazing. It's well polished for its development stage, the loading times are short and the engine runs smooth and stable.

Downsides: Too many and too obvious game references as well as horrible voice output, especially from the female protagonist.

First fps game game that kept me playing untill the end since half-life.
Its fun and on normal setting hard enough, even a bit to hard at times for people like me who usually dont play fps, but the story and humor kept me going!