Nightmare Reaper promises uncompromising action with headbang guarantee. We played inside and the neck ache proves it right.
Nightmare Reaper is retro. It’s hard to miss that, even with the powerful Unreal Engine 4 tech framework chugging away in the background. Nevertheless, action fans who didn’t grow up in the 90s with shooter milestones like Doom should overlook this.
Because if you let disgusting hell creatures burst into red pixels to a bombastic and riff-heavy metal soundtrack with 80 different weapons and have a blast doing it, how important are the graphics at the end of the day?
After all, you can skilfully ignore them without nostalgia glasses if the gameplay is right. This is proven not only by perennial favourites like Minecraft, but also by an increasing number of retro shooters that earn dream ratings on Steam without any glossy visuals at all.
Table of Contents
Party like it’s 1993
During your first attempts at Nightmare Reaper, you will certainly be sent back to the harsh reality of your patient’s room a few times by the tight difficulty level, which cannot be changed (more on this in a moment).
But it’s worth persevering, because once you get past the flat learning curve and the initially monotonous, gloomy cave corridors after about an hour, an action and guitar storm opens up that you won’t soon forget.
The soundtrack comes from the pen of the talented metal composer Andrew Hulshult, who has already been involved in the musical background of numerous shooters. His joy of playing and brutal instrumental precision most recently secured him a place on the production team of Doom Eternal.
With the finest shredding in your ear and your index finger at the ready, you’ll rampage through outdoor and indoor areas, detonate explosive barrels, puncture bosses and happily start the level all over again at a random point if you do get hit. Thanks to a practical automap, you won’t get lost.
Two of the chapters, each lasting around 7-10 hours, were already available to play in Early Access. The full release is now heralded by the brand new third chapter. The package is completed with additional game modes such as New Game+ and Endless Game as well as various challenge levels.
There are even treasures hidden behind waterfalls and why they can be a pain in the ass when the hunt for them becomes a real obsessive-compulsive disorder.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
But first, back to square one: you belong in the loony bin. At least your protagonist in Nightmare Reaper does, because that’s exactly where the game begins. Apparently you have already been referred several times as a particularly serious case, but your current doctor, who prefers to file his notes in your cell, is looking forward to the challenge.
As a player, however, you look forward above all to the nights, because as soon as you go to sleep, the eponymous nightmares begin and with them the fun. Without any further explanation or story worth mentioning, the game releases you into a cave full of deadly skeletons, zombies and other giblets.
In contrast to the arsenal of the thirty-year-old role models, the up to 80 varied tools of slaughter are randomly distributed in crates or enemies and are further differentiated by means of 30 possible enchantments, i.e.: here the modern loot shooter principle is married with the gameplay of the past.
Courage to change
Besides conventional shooting and cutting irons, you’ll fight with just about anything you can think of. Sawblade launcher? Almost mundane against Fire Whip, Acid Spitting Skull, Target Seeking Parasites and a Spell Trap Cube that first sucks enemies in and then spits them out as allies when needed.
Depending on the rarity level, more random modifiers change the function of your weapons. The regular minigun was already fierce, but when the random white ghost trenchcoat promised us a cheap upgrade, it turned into a legendary wreck that also freezes enemies and throws them back.
Once you have found the exit portal, the position of which can sometimes change due to the partly manual, partly random level generation, you can take a weapon with you to the next level. However, little helpers that are too strong are greyed out so as not to endanger the balance. At least the minigun gave us 16,000 gold coins as a farewell gift, because all surplus is sold automatically.
Greedy like Super Mario
You’ll need these coins for the numerous character upgrades you can get once you’ve collected your first cartridge in the second level. These role-playing elements do what they do best: They motivate you to find even the last enemy and hidden secret room.
The latter like to hide behind cracked walls, but there is also fat loot waiting at the end of switch puzzles and jumping puzzles. If you switch to the talent tree with enough dough, you won’t find a boring ability table, but a mini-game inspired by Super Mario.
There you navigate your disturbed heroine across colourful Marioworlds and buy upgrades such as additional ammunition, weapon slots or hit points in order to clear the way to the next world. From the second world onwards, you can also expand your movement repertoire with a dodge jump (Dash). You can return to omitted side paths at any time.
Instead of a little warning in the style of “Do you really want to unlock this talent?” you have to hop through short and sometimes crisp 2D sidescroller levels in which every coin collected multiplies its value at the end and thus reduces the actual purchase price. The regular shooter passages also entice you with bonus coins if the completion screen certifies that you have been particularly thorough.
For whom is Nightmare Reaper interesting?
The game should be digestible for all action fans who have always placed more value on playful than visual “wow” moments. There are quite a few of the former, especially because of the unusually broad arsenal of weapons and the many loosening up random elements.
However, if you can’t get over the visuals and wonder how much more realistic games will look in the future, you might be interested in this technology demonstration of the Unity Engine:
In Nightmare Reaper, the typical loot-shooter pull takes hold despite, or perhaps because of, the gentle reset after each level, and the talent tree, which is set up like its own video game, further increases the motivation to play “one more round quickly”.
At the time of this writing, 95% of the 1,029 Steam players who rated the Early Access version of Nightmare Reaper attested to the very best gameplay and soundtrack quality. Now that it has left this phase after almost three years, there are hardly any excuses for interested parties not to get to the bottom of the mysteries of the nightmare worlds and the heroine’s further patient history themselves.
The full version will be available from 28 March 2022 on (Steam) as well as on (GOG)
Editorial conclusion
When I first started Nightmare Reaper, I went into it with zero expectations. When I had to put it aside to write this article, I reluctantly disengaged. That’s descriptive of the unfiltered and unadulterated flash of fun that the action-packed chase through the levels causes.
Regardless of whether you only have 15 minutes or several hours to play, a round of Nightmare Reaper is always worthwhile, because the adrenaline kick sets in reliably and immediately after entering any level.
And if you have even a little metal blood in your veins, you’ll be addicted to new fights in no time, just so that the excellent soundtrack kicks in again. For me, at least, the composer’s music is now regularly playing in the background outside the game as well.
