Chris InglisScathe is an intense, blood-soaked bullet-hell FPS by three-person development team Damage State and published by Kwalee. It’s set for release on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store on August 31, 2022, and early 2023 for consoles. They were not joking when they described the game as blood-soaked. You’ll be shooting and slaying so many monsters in this fast-paced doom-like FPS that you’ll need to wipe the blood off your screen, and there’s an ability to do just that.
You play as Scathe, Enforcer of the legions of Hell, forged from the earth by the Divine Creator themself. And you, like your fallen kin before you, must prove your worth by navigating a deviously crafted maze, entangled with demonic evil at every twist and turn. You must work through various connected zones looking to collect hellstones to get to the centre of the maze. Earn enough hellstones and you’ll unlock a boss. The metal music gets repetitive, but still gets you pumped as you start mowing down hordes of various types of monsters.
I initially wasn’t aware of the significance of the room symbols that I was discovering and entering, until I looked more closely at the overall map which shows the maze and the connecting zones. As you explore each zone, you will fight through corridors and open spaces, facing hordes of monsters that are coming at you hard and fast. What’s cool though is that the bullets are projectile based so you will need to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge incoming fire constantly.
This did alter how I normally play FPS games. Ordinarily I would try closing the gap and shooting the monsters in the face with a heavy weapon like a shotgun or RPG, however your first gun is a rifle with unlimited ammo and given the bullet-hell nature of the oncoming projectiles, it was better to stay back and use distance to your advantage. At first, I tried to circle strafe each group of monsters, but with the incoming bullets flying in straight lines, I quickly found myself getting shot from the side and rear or doubling back into oncoming rounds.
It’s not enough to strafe out of the way, you’ll need to be jumping around and trying to get the best angle of attack against the oncoming hordes. Also, while you may have killed a demon, it’s last shots are still going to be coming at you, so don’t stand still too long. You will quickly learn to use the environment to your advantage as even just a short reprieve from the oncoming bullet sprays are enough to get yourself into a better position, or at least create a pause between sprays to dodge out of.
It took a long time to find a second gun, almost beyond my patience level. In games like Doom and Quake, there are guns and ammo everywhere. In Scathe, ammo for various guns is everywhere, you can’t pick them up if you don’t have the gun. There are groups of zone biomes ranging from nature, industrial and temples, and each has its own variance of enemies and bullet damage, like nature having more poison. I did find the sound design of the poison critters to be irritating as there always seemed to be one left that was either stuck in a wall, or close by but I wasn’t able to see it.
You start with 10 lives and can find extra lives within the zones. When you die, you will respawn close to where you last died, which means the monsters that killed you will be there ready and waiting. Once you have lost all your lives, you start back at the entrance. From there, you can fight through the corridors you have just explored or choose to take a different path to branch off.
There are also ancient dark magic relics to discover which will help you on your journey. The first one I came across was a ring that could heal me for a small amount each use. The next I found would freeze every enemy in the vicinity. This became invaluable to counter turrets and the annoying flying monsters that would zip around making it hard to shoot them. I struggled most against flying demons.
There is drop in/drop out online multiplayer with up to three friends, and the developers state this will support crossplay. I didn’t get to test this in my time in the preview build but that will be an exciting element post-release. One thing to note though is that everyone shares the same pool of lives, so although you start with 10 total, if all four of you wipe at the same time, you’re down four lives straight away. It’s a cool concept and will promote teamwork for sure.
Overall, Scathe has great potential as a bullet-hell FPS that had elements of Doom mixed with Serious Sam and a bit of Shadow Warrior. It has some cool looking demons and the level design and environment art is really well done. I’m looking forward to playing more at the full release.
This preview utilised a Steam key provided by Mark Allen PR on behalf of Kwalee. Scathe is scheduled to release for PC via Steam and Epic Games Store on 31st August, 2022. Consoles will follow in early 2023.
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