Project Warlock

Project Warlock is clearly a game made with passion. It's a fast paced shooter in the vein of the pre-Doom greats like Wolfenstein 3D or Catacomb Abyss. It's moderately challenging, and chock-a-block with weird monsters, fun guns, interesting (although very mazelike) levels, optional magic, and a small but well balanced upgrade system which rewards exploration and trying different things. Graphically, the game won't appeal to some, as it's a highly pixelated, cartoon sprite look deliberately similar to it's inspirations. The framerate however is far more modern, and there are many modern touches like reflective surfaces or realtime lighting effect. There are also a number of custom shaders available in-game to tailor the look and feel, although I mostly don't use these. In terms of audio, the FX are serviceable and identifiable but not spectacular. The occasional voice lines from the titular warlock (mostly "You motherf....s" when he dies) fit in pretty well. The soundtrack is the standout here, although it works best with the game and isn't quite as good by itself as an OST collector might prefer. In terms of mechanical gameplay, controls are simple and responsive, aiming is easy due to large hitboxes and minimal input lag, and weapons and spells feel largely balanced to the enemies you'll encounter. Protip: Get the quad shottie upgrade, flame weapons not so useful. Overall, an excellent game with a modicum of replayability, held back from 5 stars only because I think they missed a major opportunity to include some form of level editor and browser - these would have extended the game's playability tremendously, considering the relative simplicity of building levels would (hopefully) bring in many rookie mapmakers. However the devs appear responsive to feedback, even if it takes a little while to implement, so I'm hoping for good news on that front. Maybe in PW2?

Fast paced action, plenty of weapons and droves of enemies to turn into bloody smears on the walls to the rythm of the blood pumping music, Project Warlock does the shooting well, and that's the most important thing to nail in a FPS. However, there are some weird design choices that hurt the game pacing. -Acquiring spells is a hassle, first you have to find the spell and then use upgrade points to learn it, this makes the magic system feel redundant since guns are pick up and use, is best to save your upgrade points to unlock the powerful weapon variants. And to make matters worse changing spell is awkward and you cannot change the keybinds for doing so, even tho there are dozens of unused keys in the keyboard. - In the player's base there's a terminal to choose the level you want to play, this is deceiving since you can only play the levels in a determined order and you cannot replay levels to hunt for missed secrets. - And lastly but most importantly, hunting secrets is vital to gain experience and upgrade points, this brings the game to a tedious crawl of interacting with every surface to find all the secrets, specially since some levels have points of no return. - Why do you have a sword occupying a weapon slot, or why not replace the dagger with the sword as starter weapon? The axe is the only worthwhile melee weapon since it can be upgraded to regenerate health with eachj attack (you can bind the dagger and sword to a whatever key and forget about them) Overall, the game is a good shooter, it looks like Heretic, but plays more like DOOM and has some design quirks that bring it down. Still, is worth playing if you are fan of the genre. 3.5/5

I want to love Project Warlock but in its current state it's not working for me. That being said, with some updates I think the game has a lot of potential. Here's the positives. The graphics are top-notch. The sprites are meticulously hand-drawn and each of the episodes has its own style. It's neat to see familiar items such as health packs and keys change over time. The lighting is fantastic as well. The gunplay is the best part of the game. All of the guns feel like they pack a punch and are useful in different situations or against different enemies. All in all, the game is extremely fun to play when it's working well. Here are the negatives. The magic in the game is useless. There's no reason to waste time with spells when the guns do so much damage. The spells are also underwhelming and you have to pick them up as you progress through the game, which sometimes feels like it's too late. There's only one useful spell, the flashlight, and that's because the game is unusually dark. When you upgrade weapons or perks, you can't reroll or undo what you did. This is unusually punishing for players who just want to do one playthrough of the game. For instance, upgrading the shotgun shells to slugs made the shotgun feel useless and it sucked that it's not possible to go back. On another vein, by the end of the game you should have all of the perks as indepedently they're not very good and they don't really do much other than give you more of something per something. For instance, one perk gives you more shotgun ammo per shell pickup, etc. It would have been nice to see something like a vampirism trait where shooting enemies regens health. Idk, something different. Running out of mana means you can't use the most useful spell, the flashlight. So you'll literally be running around in the darkness. The levels don't ALL need to have three keys. The music is absolutely horrible. I wish I could write more. The game has so many flaws. I may do a video on it.

I feel like an idiot for not getting this game before. I saw the good reviews and decided to wait but man, after two playthroughs, waiting turned out to be a mistake. Project Warlock is awesome and it is a blast to play. The gunplay is good, the music is badass and atmospheric, and the level and monster variety is fantastic. It pays homage to the first person shooters of old but in the right ways. Gun variety is also excellent: almost all of them pack a good punch, especially after some upgrades! Not many games have me immediately start a new game after finishing my first playthrough, but this one did. It easily gives you that "just one more level" feeling. The gameplay flows really well but keep in mind, this game is a mix of Wolfenstein and Doom, with an emphasis on the former. Do try out the demo but if you like what see, Project Warlock is a must-play!

I really enjoy retro shooters, and every time and then, I boot up Duke Nukem, Blood, Doom, even Rise of the Triad, for a quick playthrough. So I was really excited to see a retro styled game promising similar action as those games. Unfortunately even though it's not a bad game, I will continue playing the old titles, at least until Iron Maiden gets released. First, the style choice kinda feels odd to me. Aesthetically it really reminds me the crappiest of FPS games of the early to mid 90s, like Pumkinhead or Depth Dwellers with really tight corridors, beefy pixels and low detailed enemies. Not a fan, but you can get used to it. Gameplay-wise it's decent but feels restricted at least up to the part I got (the boss of the first act). It just doesn't feel as smooth and satisfying as Doom, nor as complex and interesting to explore as Duke Nukem 3D. Again feels like those weird Wolfenstein clones we got when the FPS genre was in it's infancy. Action for me just doesn't feel right, and most enemies so far are just not that fun to deal with. The most (someone might say only) interesting part of the game is the RPG mechanics but don't expect anything deep. After every level you clear (which consists of 3-5 different areas), you return to your workshop where you can spend points you earned to upgrade your weapons, raise your stats and unlock specialties (becoming faster, better with a shotgun, etc). Maybe if I give it a bit more time it would actually felt like those mattered, but nothing during the first act felt like I needed to get stronger to progress. Until the first boss, where the kinda restrictive movement of your character became extremely apparent. With no sprint, no jump and not any defensive maneuver to pull out other than just strafe and hope for the best, it's just wasn't that fun of a fight. I know I sound very negative about the game, but there is fun to be had.. but unless you played them to death I would stick with the classics.