Indie gaming has spent the last decade slowly working its way through the visual and mechanical styles of yore, starting with 2D pixel platformers before moving to boomer shooters and then PS1-era horror games. As such, it was only a matter of time before they began gazing lasciviously at early noughties blockbusters. I was only chatting to someone the other day about when we’d see our first retro shooter either running in or inspired by the Source engine.
It turns out the answer to that was “today.” Sprawl Zero is a newly announced FPS that cites games like Halo: Combat Evolved, FEAR, and Half-Life 2 as inspirations. It features time manipulation, gravity manipulation, and graphics so sepia you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a Hollywood film depicting a Middle Eastern country. Move over, boomer shooters, the Millennial shooter has arrived!
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Bungie and Monolith are inspirations in another area too—enemy AI. Sprawl Zero’s Steam page claims that “enemy squads will communicate and coordinate to wrestle the advantage” using tactics like flanking and grenades to keep you on your toes.
There’s a fair amount of Half-Life 2 in Spawl Zero too. The most obvious touchstone is the ability to manipulate objects and enemies with gravity gloves. But the game also has a ramshackle industrial vibe that looks very City 17, and there’s a helicopter enemy reminiscent of HL2’s combine gunship.
The big question is whether MAETH can forge this collection of inspirations into something that feels coherent. The retro shooters of the last decade were always at their strongest when they borrowed from a specific FPS, whether that’s Dusk with Quake, Amid Evil with Heretic, or Ion Fury with Duke Nukem 3D . That isn’t to say Sprawl Zero won’t be awesome, but without careful design it could prove to be an amorphous mush.
Still, I’m excited to see my adolescence get its turn on the nostalgia train. There’s no release date for Sprawl Zero yet. But if you want to check out MAETH’s work, the original Sprawl is on a 65% discount until March 5, bringing the price down to $5.24 (£4.47).
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