Nightmare Reaper Review (PC)

Two cowboys with shotguns get stunned by my bullets, so I switch to the explosive barrel next to them, with the blast catching two running zombies as well. My health continues to go down, so I look up to find two fling monsters pelting me with green go. They’re pretty easy to kill and I gobble up the health they drop. I then switch to a rocket launcher to whittle down the health of a group of enemies I can make out in the distance. It’s then back to the trusty machine gun as I seek to close the distance and then kill them all, hoping to get enough money to get another character upgrade before I push towards the end of this level.

Nightmare Reaper is developed and published by Blazing Bit Games. I played on the PC using Steam. This is a retro-focused first-person shooter that wants players to feel like they are back in the days of Doom and Hexen.

The narrative is built around an unnamed woman who currently resides in what seems to be a psychiatric unit. She cannot get out and the notes of her doctor suggest that her case is a complex one. Her escape is that, at night, she enters a realm where she becomes the reaper of nightmares and can battle tons of monsters, which seem to be somehow connected to her own psyche. As gamers clear levels more hints about the narrative appear.

The core gameplay of Nightmare Reaper is very solid and does not deviate from the classic first-person shooter formula. There are monsters inside these levels, use your weapons to take them all out. Be careful around corners, move fast, always shoot the red barrels, and check the walls if you are fond of secrets.

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The game does throw in some interesting concepts. The weapons you find include classic firearms, weird magical scepters, powerful spell books, and more, but you can only equip two at a time. Make sure to evaluate the situation and choose wisely. There are no health kits in the levels, but enemies so drop small amounts of it after death. It’s important to walk back and collect it all when someone takes a big chunk out of the player. Opponents also leave behind a lot of money, with more offered via destructible objects and chests.

Nightmare Reaper also features some platforming, although I never found the rewards worth the effort. It’s a better idea to push forward towards the end of the level. Once the player is there, he gets a quick summary of his performance and gets to keep one weapon for the future, with the rest converted to gold.

This is important because the shiny stuff powers the upgrade process, done via mini-games that are as retro as the FPS side of the game. It’s a small diversion that doesn’t add much to the game but adds to the consistent tone. Players need all the upgrades they can get if they want to make progress in the harder levels, filled with plenty of enemies that can quickly overpower an electricity-powered legacy shotgun-wielding player.

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I like the structure of Nightmare Reaper and the way its various systems interact. Combat is fast and filled with gore. But the levels have a few too many dead ends for my liking and the platforming is never engaging. The experience works best when players have to evaluate a situation, quickly decide on which weapons to use, and then use skill and superior firepower to triumph.

Nightmare Reaper does not try to deliver the “how it looked in your head” take on classic FPS experiences. The game adopts a presentation that would be instantly familiar to a 90’s kid who plays Wolfenstein. There is plenty of post-processing, adding a layer of brutal beauty, but there are moments when enemies are hard to distinguish and the level of carnage in an area makes it hard to actually clear it. A little more color would have helped, especially when it comes to enemy design. The soundtrack works well with the FPS action, but it is very repetitive, be prepared to add your own heavy metal tracks to compensate.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion