Dusk is a bloody good time, especially if you’re a fan of the classic 1990s actions PC titles. I’m talking about video games such as Doom, Duke Nukem, and of course Quake. You take these video games and mash them together today and you’ll come up with Dusk, the latest video game title released under developer David Szymanski and published by New Blood Interactive.
It’s very clear from the start where the inspirations came from when developing Dusk, the title brings back the classic gaming memories of the run and kill everything in your sight video game titles from the 1990s, however, the game was developed under Unity.
Before we get too ahead of ourselves, let’s dive into the story, currently, the game is broken up into episodes with the first one ready to be launched this month. Players take on the role of “DuskDude” who wakes up hanging on a meat hook about to be killed by some random dude with a chainsaw.
You’ll escape only to find that hell has opened their gates and flooded into your town. The only way you’re going to get answers and clear the area from the evil scum that invaded it is by diving into the town for answers.
As mentioned, there’s only one episode available right now and it offers ten levels plus a secret level. Speaking of secrets, this game is filled with them, from the menu to the game itself, but we won’t spoil the fun of trying to find them yourself.
Levels are similar to what you may find when playing Doom, they are essentially mazes filled with monsters wanting to kill you. As you explore and take down the enemies with a wide assortment of weaponry, you’ll come across colored keys which correlate to various colored doorways, again, much like Doom.
To progress, you’ll have to find the set of keys and keep track of the doors within the level, but again, you’ll want to keep a close eye out as there are a number of different secrets hidden about. Likewise, sprinkled throughout the episode are the occasional boss fights which will offer a tough battle when compared to the horde of various enemies within the game.
Everything in this video game screams fast-paced and if you’re finding trouble in the combat, you can always adjust the difficulty level quite a bit or adjust the variety of menus to help with areas such as crosshair sizes, weaponry placement, FOV, coloring, among other aspects.
Being developed to resemble the classic action titles from the 1990s, you won’t find your health slowly regenerating after taking a few hits from an enemy. Instead, you’ll have to push through to find more health and armor, or in this case Morale.
There are even beds located within various areas of the map to help increase your Morale, but depending on the difficulty you’re playing on, you may have no trouble finding enough health to keep you going until reaching the level exit. Also, it’s worth taking into consideration that the enemies have various health meters, though none felt overpowered in comparison to our protagonist.
Outside of the campaign, there is an Endless mode which places our protagonist in an arena to fight off hordes of enemies and the developer had made note that a co-op campaign mode is in the work post-launch, called Dawn.
Overall, Dusk is a fantastic action title if you’re a fan of the classic 1990s action video games. Not only does it look and sound like something that would have came out some twenty years ago, but the gameplay mechanics and secrets will keep gamers replaying the title until the eventual release of episode two.
Disclosure: A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
