How I had a nightmare – review of the game “Nightmare Reaper”

Speech is silver, and silence is golden

If you’ve played any of the From Software games, you’ll know what I mean. There are no standard dialogues in Nightmare Reaper , and the story is told using background details and logs left by our doctor. The main character is kept in a room where she has to deal with her own thoughts, climatic and terrifying lamentations and outbursts, probably from other patients in this God-forsaken facility. Initially, the door to her room remains closed, but over time, the player can start exploring the next parts of the hospital, while manipulating the objects around. Here you can feel a strong inspiration for the game Duke Nukem 3D .

This is a good deal for those who don’t like to be distracted by the pixel massacre, and players who want to delve into the plot can always do it in their spare time. It is not badly written, but it cannot be denied that it is the continuous action that plays the first fiddle here, and I must admit that it does it really well. However, the game spreads wings the moment the main character falls asleep… a dream that quickly turns into a nightmare.

The farther into the forest, the more trees

In Nightmare Reaper , the player, plunging into the nightmares of a sick woman, overcomes waves of enemies on procedurally generated levels. Each level consists of three, sometimes four parts, each of which increases the difficulty level to some extent.

Traveling through the thematic corridors, we shoot every enemy that the game threw at us. We collect treasures and various types of loot dropped by enemies in order to improve our skills over time (more on that later). You can also get additional treasures, money and weapons thanks to the chests scattered throughout the level, most often in secret rooms to which you can get you can by breaking through cracks in the wall of the building. Sometimes this way you can also find eastereggi, which are references to other games, movies or creators.

Each subsequent stage provides a satisfying rush of adrenaline. Weapons give a kick, and their huge variety means that the player will not get bored, or at least not too quickly, because the creators have tried and made available to us as many as 80 types of weapons with about 30 different spells, and any combination of them can make you dizzy the heads of many players. Weapons are classified from normal to legendary, depending on their attributes, such as e.g. double or triple shot or increased rate of fire. Among the widely understood weapons, you can find quite standard shotguns or rifles, flame-throwing bazookas, magic staffs and grimoires, remote mines, chainsaws, etc. Moreover, the weapons also have alternative firing modes. In order not to reveal too much, I will only say that the aforementioned chainsaw may surprise you.

However, the player must remember that after each stage, he can only keep one weapon of the first tier (this can be changed with the help of the skill tree). It is impossible to predict exactly what enemies will be waiting for us at the beginning of the next stage, therefore making the wrong decision regarding objects of mass destruction may turn out to be a serious problem. On the other hand, getting a spiked, rare version of a weapon with additional stats may weigh the scales on our side.

All of this becomes even more important when we remember that Nightmare Reaper has procedurally generated levels, so every approach is fresh. There will also be a hint of irritation when RNG turns against us and we come across a whole crowd of enemies armed only with a knife and a pistol, to which the ammunition has long evaporated somewhere. As a consolation, I can say that such a scenario is extremely rare, and after death, we only lose our equipment, because we keep the gold obtained and we can safely spend it on the necessary upgrade to try to pass the given level again, but better prepared.

As for the enemies, the list is quite standard: skeletons with rifles that someone forgot to say long ago are dead, zombie women with permanent PMS fighting in close combat, or flying dragons spitting acid – nothing particularly interesting, but smashing them is amazing satisfying, especially when you manage to hit a juicy headshot in slow motion. I would almost forget the occasional bosses – real ammo sponges. It’s hard to say anything more about them, except that there are only a few of them and the fight is based on continuous shooting combined with avoiding more powerful blows. They’re either very easy to defeat or annoying with their persistent, hard-to-dodge AoE attacks. Indeed, they can spoil your blood from time to time, but was that what the creators wanted? Well maybe good

The past is a mine of inspiration

It goes without saying that shooting is the strongest point of Nightmare Reaper . It realistically depicts the damage and combines it with satisfying visual and audio effects. While the levels become more difficult as time goes on, players have the opportunity to improve their character with a special development tree. Oh yes, the creators also implemented this element to their game, but here in a rather unusual form.

Unlocking new skills or upgrading the ones you already have requires you to play various mini-games, which are basically a tribute to classic titles. While shooting successive waves of adversaries, you can sometimes find an altar on which you can find a cartridge. This, in turn, is plugged into a device resembling something like a GameBoy. In this way, the player has the opportunity to play games stylized as Super Mario Bros , Gradius or Pokemon . I personally liked this concept very much. It’s a nice springboard from endless shooting and loot gaining, although it can be tedious at times and take too long compared to the reward it offers.

As I mentioned, the game draws from the 90s and it does not hide it at all. This can be seen not only in the construction of levels or opponents, but also in the user interface itself. In the lower left corner of the screen, we can observe a woman’s face looking left and right like the iconic Doomguy. He smiles when we pick up a weapon and spills over in blood when we take damage and the character’s health drops.

It’s a wink to those slightly older fans of digital entertainment, although the younger ones will also find something for themselves. Especially when we pay attention to the sound. To say that the music is mostly heavy metal inspired melodies as the action goes on and slower, low-key pieces as it slows down is like saying nothing. Andrew Hulshult, a man who created music for many shooters, such as Dusk , Quake Champions or Doom Eternal , is responsible for the soundtrack . If you think about it now, I understand why charging at your opponents was so exciting.

Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)

Nightmare Reaper is a particularly brutal game in which the enemies explode blood like candy pinatas (literally, thanks to the options in the settings). How much time we spend in it may depend, for example, on whether we are drawn into the Arena mode or whether we want to see what New Game Plus offers, and let me just say that it adds some additional statistics to weapons and of course allows you to use many skills / late game weapons that we acquired. The typical wall lickers will surely have something to do if their goal is to complete each stage 100%.

The difficulty level is not excessive and most of the time I didn’t worry about health or ammunition. So many enemies die around that it is not a problem to replenish one bar or another. If we still get weapon upgrades, e.g. increasing the rate of fire and slowing everything down, do I need to say something more? It is a pity, however, that these bonuses are usually obtained at the end of levels, which means that we will find them after clearing the area. It’s a disadvantage, but the basic mechanics are solid enough that I hardly noticed it.

Nightmare Reaper is a unique indie game with stylized pixelart graphics, providing players with a nostalgic and bloody adventure, exploring the recesses of the mind of a mentally ill woman. I know this type of game isn’t for everyone, but fans of retro shooters should give this title a try.