Max Payne is the pillar of slow-motion gunplay, one of the founding ancestors of the entire bullet time genre. Mix that with vibrant, minimalistic visuals of Superhot and the steep, die-and-retry difficulty of the superlative Hotline Miami. You want pace, style, and death by the barrel load? Welcome to Death Elevator, an ultra-slick new roguelike FPS game that’s just landed on Steam.
A sharp, roguelike FPS game, the rules here are simple. On each floor of Death Elevator, you’ll find another blood-thirsty squad of goons raring to chop you up and gun you down. Kill them all, make it back to the elevator, and go again. If you get hit once, you’re dead, and the level starts over. But you’ve got a helping hand. In moments of extreme danger, like a bullet soaring right towards your forehead, time slows to a crawl. So long as you act fast, you can stylishly dodge death and then continue dishing it up.
Superhot is definitely a major influence here, but Death Elevator’s level design also betrays Capcom’s superb Killer7, and there are some trace elements of the cel-shaded XIII and often-forgotten indie game Receiver. Basically, this is a lot of FPS pedigree rolled into one imaginative new game.
Between the massive RPG successes of Baldur’s Gate 3, Diablo 4, and – to a lesser extent – Starfield, 2023 has not been the year for new, imaginative shooters who play with the form. Death Elevator has arrived just in time. If you’re hungry for something punchy, stark, vicious, and vivid, Death Elevator is available on Steam right now with an introductory 15% discount.
Alternatively, try some of the other best indie games, or maybe the absolute best roguelikes available right now on PC.
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