Nightmare Reaper

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You know what comfort food is, right? You got it: it’s a Taco Bell bean burrito. So tasty. So awful for you. Just load that thing up with Diablo Sauce and you’re getting somewhere. Don’t worry about the bathroom, it’ll be fine. Okay, now that the Bell’s got their cash floating into my wallet, it’s time to talk about Nightmare Reaper, a retro-styled first-person shooter that’s the video game equivalent of comfort food: you and your vast array of ridiculous guns against procedurally-generated maps and hordes of monsters.

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Mental illness is a serious topic that many people around the world deal with on a daily basis. In Nightmare Reaper, you engage in self-care by shooting the everloving crap out of all manner of baddies while trapped in nightmare labyrinths. We’re a judgment-free zone here on Popzara, so I fully support doing whatever makes you feel better. If your therapists are Smith and Wesson and your personal demons are actual demons, then you do you, buddy.

Nightmare Reaper’s easily described as a retro FPS with roguelike elements, but that doesn’t really do the game justice. It’s better to think of it as DOOM with several cups’ worth of insanity thrown into the mix. You’ll explore randomly-generated dungeon maps, collecting weapons, searching for secrets and dispatching baddies. Between battles, you’ll level up using a skill tree themed after classic Mario titles and, er, play Pokémon. Nightmare Reaper’s absolutely bonkers and doesn’t even try to pretend it’s not.

Case in point: the vast and bizarre arsenal of weapons that are available. You’ve got your basic knife, sure, which is great for slashing chumps and can be flung in infinite amounts, but that’s just the beginning. There’s pistols. There’s ARs. There’s magic spellbooks. There’s a giant hornet that you squeeze to shoot its child-hornets at enemies. There’s a magic whip that you can enchant to slap your enemies around with a wave of fire. There’s swords, there’s shields, there’s more.

Even then, we haven’t really gotten to the meat of Nightmare Reaper’s weaponry, because each weapon can be modified Diablo-style with unique attributes to spice it up. You know that shotgun you found? What if it shot knives instead of pellets? Nightmare Reaper can do that for you. How about molotovs that turn into black holes when thrown? Got you, bb. If you can’t find a gun you like here, maybe the problem’s with you. What’s more, once you find your soulmate, you can keep it between stages and deaths. Even then, you can still grab temporary power-ups to become even more heavily-armed.

You’ll use these to tear through procedurally-generated areas packed with enemies of all shapes and sizes. Given this is procedural generation you can’t expect level design on par with your DOOMs and your Quakes, but Nightmare Reaper’s mostly about dealing with random situations using random weapons in random ways. Even the power of the enemies you deal with is somewhat random, since every so often an empowered boss enemy will show up to cause chaos.

Beat them up and they explode into a pleasant shower of skill-unlocking coins and weapons. Feel that serotonin surging through your brain. As you progress through each level, you’ll unlock more of the plot, such as it is, and the between-level hub area…well, you’ll see.

Nightmare Reaper leans hard on its, um, inspirations from a presentation point of view as well. You like DOOM? You’ll like this. It’s as classic as classic can get, right down to the massive piles of gibs you’ll turn enemies into when you’ve found just the right gun. Same goes for the music. There’s nothing like slamming some shells into your knife-shooting shotgun to a soundtrack like this. How do the knives fit into the shells? Maybe stop asking questions and start shooting.

In a world where we’re still really focused on video games being art and making us cry, laugh, gag, and feel stuff, Nightmare Reaper is a real return to the old days. We’re talking about the days when all you needed was a weapon, hapless enemies and enough ammo to subtract them right down to zero. Turns out that even in 2022 you don’t really need more than that to make a great game and Nightmare Reaper proves it.

About the Author: Cory Galliher