Strafe wants you dead, and it wants you to laugh about it. Pixel Titans built a first-person shooter that wears its 1996 obsession on its sleeve, and Devolver Digital shipped it on May 9, 2017, for PlayStation 4, PC, Linux and Mac. It is a homage to Doom and Quake, advertised with “bleeding edge graphics and gameplay” and a straight face. The joke lands. So does the shotgun.
Trailer, via DevolverDigital.
A Scrapper Boards the Icarus
You play a “scrapper,” a space explorer who collects materials as currency. An unknown party sends you to a ship called Icarus at the far edge of known space. Something aboard has gone wrong, and a deadly alien threat is waiting. That is the whole plot, and Strafe does not pretend otherwise.
The structure is roguelike. Four stages hold two or three levels each, all semi-procedurally generated. Each zone pulls rooms from a pool and arranges them at random, then scatters enemies, upgrades and merchants the same way. Death wipes your upgrades and reshuffles the levels, though teleporters on the hub spacecraft let you return to stages you have already unlocked.
Three Guns, Two Fires
From the hub you pick one primary weapon per run. Each has a primary and secondary fire, and power-ups make it far stronger. Enemies drop limited-ammo weapons you can throw when empty for extra damage. Merchants sell upgrades.
- Shotgun — the close-range default.
- Machine gun — sustained fire for crowds.
- Railgun — the precision pick.
The fourth stage adds a boss level that is not procedurally generated, the one fixed fight in the game.
Acid Pools and Enemy Blood
Strafe’s best idea is its mess. A dynamic blood splatter system lets you cover damaging acid pools with enemy blood to nullify them. Fire and acid spill from enemies and broken objects. Zombies, robots and aliens all want a piece of you.
Campaign runs pay out tokens that unlock 25 “modifiers,” switched on at the start of a run to bend the rules. One replaces every weapon with a rocket launcher. Another scrambles enemy types outside their usual stages.
What the Randomness Costs
The randomness cuts both ways. Rooms repeat, and a bad layout can gut a run before it starts. But the shooting is fast and mean, the blood mechanic is a genuine invention, and the modifiers give the campaign a second life after the first clear. Strafe knows exactly what it is and never apologizes for it.
Key facts
- Released: May 9, 2017
- Developer: Pixel Titans
- Publisher: Devolver Digital
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, PC, Linux, Mac
- Critic aggregate: 7.2/10 (5 outlets)
- Modifiers: 25
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