This article explores the growing popularity of boomer shooters, a subgenre of FPS games inspired by classic titles from the 90s. It highlights ten standout games that showcase the creativity, diversity, and technical prowess of the genre, while demonstrating how it has evolved beyond mere nostalgia.
Call them what you like: retro FPS games, your dad’s shooters, boomshoots, or 3D interactive first-person combat software titles for personal computer, we all know what this niche within the shooter market provides: a heady blend of purity, nostalgia and above all, incredible gunfeel.
Quite simply, the Citizen Kane of this subgenre, a titan of level design and mood-setting told via one man’s journey to a cult-ridden backwoods town. You get a hint that you might be onto something special right from the DOS parody sequence that precedes the main menu, and by the time you’ve eviscerated those first two chanting cultists with a hand scythe in gloriously brown Quake-o-vision, the deal is sealed.
If you gave HROT no more than three seconds of attention, you’d probably have it down for a Dusk clone. Indeed, brown textures and a shared love of dour backwoods scenery exist in their Venn diagram overlap, but where Spytihněv’s truly, truly fantastic shooter discerns itself is in the setting. A marriage of Quake’s ethereal atmosphere with the gunfights from Quake and level design straight out of, well—Quake, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin took its sweet time to materialise as a full release after years of Early Access teasing, but rewarded our patience in the end.
It’s extraordinary that nobody struck this precise deposit of gold before Auroch Digital in 2023: Warhammer 40K’s stompy marines and gloriously industrial weaponry, coexisting with ‘90s FPS principles. The devs must have felt like they’d invented a PB&J sandwich.
BOOMERSHOOTERS RETROGAMING FPSGAMES LEVELDESIGN INDEPENDENTGAMES
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