![]() It's a small detail, but one that comes into play a lot more than you might expect.ĭirector Thom Glunt told me that he was inspired to make Strafe after playing a lot of Spelunky followed by revisiting the original Quake. The only way to mop up this environmental hazard is to destroy non-acid based enemies on top of the mess, allowing their regular red blood to coat the scenery with a safer ground. Certain foes have acid for blood and killing them results in dangerous pools of liquid on the ground. It's a nifty aesthetic detail that provides navigational help by marking the terrain, but it gets deeper than that. Fallen enemies leave trails of blood that stay throughout your run. ![]() Panic in a gunfight, however, and you'll find yourself swarmed by the buggers.Īnother absolutely brilliant detail about Strafe is its gore system. Catch these would-be assassins ahead of time and they pose little threat one on one. For example, there's an enemy type that hangs from the ceiling before dropping down and sprinting towards you. Strafe is by no means a stealth game, but an observant player stands much better odds at tackling Strafe's procedurally-generated gauntlets. Enemy encounters are telegraphed enough in advance that a meticulous player can often get the drop on a gunfight. ![]() Strafe is generously slow at times, allowing the player to catch their breath between tight skirmishes. If you want jacked up adrenaline, go play Devil Daggers (a lovely game in its own right). The only permanent progression in Strafe is teleporters, providing shortcuts to later regions.īut Strafe isn't just fast. The early levels are also quite good at navigating the player towards with exit with a series of white LED strips marking doors leading to the finish line. You can't find or buy ammo for these OP instruments anywhere, so you're encouraged to liberally use them before you find another super-powered gun to replace it. Pick up one of the game's special guns and they'll provide overpowered attacks at the expense of limited ammo. There are a few other ingenious design tricks to keep Strafe's flow fresh. In Strafe you're partially punished for your reflexes, but the bigger saboteur is your hubris. When you take damage in Strafe, you feel as though it was your own fault - something that elevated Spelunky from a procedurally-generated platformer into a comedy of errors. As a result, you don't feel like you've met your end unfairly by being shot in the back. You're always on the go-go-go in this zippy randomly-generated corridor shooter. There's no sprint button or stamina meter dictating how far you can hoof it. Like the original Doom or Quake, your character in Strafe moves very, very fast. "Bullets" in Strafe are shiny horizontally floating fireballs and you have time to react accordingly to their trajectory. Strafe remembers a day when players were supposed to have time to respond to glowing projectiles of death. If someone can see you, they can immediately pump lead into you. As such, you're often hiding behind cover and avoiding site-lines. Most shooters these days treat enemy guns as realistic entities that splatter you with bullets before you have time to react. Like any great roguelike, the devil is in the details. It's targeting about an hour for a full playthrough. Strafe developer Pixel Titan just noted in a Kickstarter update that it would like to make the game shorter to encourage repeat plays. That pitch dictated the retro tone of Strafe, but didn't hint at its Spelunky-esque structure of multiple zones with a few stages each, nor is it immediately obvious in video form what makes Strafe's current build so, so good. The first one is is Strafe, a 90's inspired first-person shooter that made a name for itself with an incredible live-action Kickstarter video. Coincidentally, they both involve a lot of shooting. This year at PAX East I played two upcoming games that capture this condensed journey shockingly well. There's something simultaneously bite-sized and epic about growing from a scrappy wayfarer to a veteran hero with a Gandalfian bag of tricks up your sleeve. It started with Mossmouth's delectable action platformer Spelunky and has quickly expanded into other polished procedurally-generated adventures like The Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne, Downwell, Enter the Gungeon, and Galak-Z. The action roguelike has quickly become among my favourite video game genres.
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