A new Steam FPS game, with the pace and style of ‘90s classics like Doom and Quake, sees you playing as an unfortunate ghost fated to spend eternity trapped inside, well, an FPS game with the pace and style of ‘90s classics like Doom and Quake. With dashes of Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and later hits like TimeSplitters and No One Lives Forever, you must face down an evil wizard who has created the boomer shooter because he is “unwilling to overcome his nostalgia.”
Available now, Ghostware Arena of the Dead is created by Daev Team, and takes inspirations from the biggest FPS games of the ‘90s and early ‘00s to satirise, parody, and pay homage to the shooter’s golden era.
Playing as the deceased Molly, you are brought back to life and dropped inside a familiar-seeming arena shootout with five other players, themselves also resurrected spirits of the dead. What starts out as a straightforward retro FPS soon becomes something much more sinister, as you attempt to unravel the wizard’s plot and find a way out of the ‘90s-styled hell.
Naturally, there’s plenty of shooting, but Ghostware also features a lot of adventure game mechanics and tropes, too. There’s interactive dialogue, a story to uncover – at times, it looks a bit like Beyond Good and Evil or even Deus Ex. You can see it in action below:
A well-observed homage to one of the best eras in PC gaming, as well as a sharp satire on the dangers of nostalgia, you can pick up Ghostware Arena of the Dead now over on Steam.
Alternatively, you might want to scratch that retro itch with some of the best old games that still run today, or maybe some of the best multiplayer games, if you miss the halcyon days of the ‘00s boomer shooter. You can also get ahead on all this year’s upcoming games, if you want to look forward as well as back.