DUSK rather undersells itself when it declares it’s “straight outta the ’90s”. While absolutely going for that Doom/Hexen vibe, with outstandingly fast movement, gorgeous chunky pixel enemies, and big meaty guns that pack a punch, it also has a really quite fantastic amount of good sense where not to be faithful to those mid-90s gibby times. If anything, DUSK feels like the FPS that id, 3D Realms and Raven would have made if they’d only had the tech.

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It might be Doom’s birthday today, but its enthusiastic young cousin Dusk is invited to the party, bunny-hopping out of early access today. They grow up so fast, and David Szymanski’s shooter has grown another two episodes in size since its debut in August last year, introducing new monsters and places to kill them in, plus a remarkably fun (if twitchy) deathmatch mode. The game has technically been complete in early access for a few days now. I got to play the final few levels over the weekend and loved them to bits. A launch trailer and my quick thoughts on the full game are below.

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Channelling the dark spirits of Quake and Blood and packing a mean shotgun, Dusk is one of a handful of new but pointedly old-school shooters I’m excited for. It’s been in early access for a while, and you can play the first two episodes now, but the last, weirdest chapter of the game now has a release date – December 10th. While the final few levels are still in production, dev David Syzmanski and publisher New Blood let me take an early tour of its netherworld. It’s good, weird and playful stuff – take a peek at it for yourself in the new Halloween’y trailer below.

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A lot of people are comparing DUSK to Quake. They’re not wrong to do that; there are enough brown polygons and chunky weapons to bring back memories of nailguns, ogres and Trent Reznor’s ominous drones.

My mind turned to Blood though. DUSK begins with b-movie horror tropes as chainsaws whirr and cultists shriek threats, and from there it takes a tour through pretty much the whole of nineties shooters, as I remember them.

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Here’s a (partial) list of the things that explode in the early access trailer for David Szymanski’s retro FPS Dusk: demonic cattle, soldiers, cultists, wizards, skeletal moose and a zombie ghost farmer. As in, a farmer that looks like a zombie ghost – I’m not sure what he spends his time farming. Souls, probably.

Dusk released on early access last night. Dominic Tarason reports that the preview builds he’s played have excelled at scratching his old-school shooter itch, so this may well be one worth checking out.

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Update: To clarify, if you buy the game now you’ll receive access to episode 1 & 2 immediately, although the episode 2 launch isn’t >officially> happening until January 11th, when everything moves to Early Access.

Between Devil Daggers, Strafe, and the seeming eternal renaissance of Quake & Doom modding, it feels like gaming as a whole has come to terms with the idea that 90s FPS design wasn’t an evolutionary point that we’ve moved past so much as its own genre, which many are still experimenting with to this day.

One of the most promising of this fresh wave of neo-retro shooters is Dusk from solo developer David Szymanski and published by New Blood Interactive. The game had already impressed many critics with its first episode (available to play now if you preorder), and as of January 11th, the second act of the game will officially launch as the game transitions into Early Access.

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