Ctesiphon

Fun game but every 5 minutes some sound effect causes audio tearing that splits my ears apart with the force of a circular saw

Welp, for once, the description in the store say it all: A fun pick-up-and-play, vaporwave, with (not that much, at least, depending on the difficulty. Reminded me in some part of HL, actually) fast paced [i]Boomer shooter[/i] (as I like to call them). Truly, no need to say more! recommended!

A short game but quite fun.

I thought that I would not like it too much as I thought it would be a lot like Quake 1, but I was surprised that there were plenty of stealth and tactical sections where you have to approach engagements tactically. Overall a very satisfying shooter, I would really recommend everyone to give it a go

CTESIPHON is a fairly competent but repetitive boomer shooter that takes aim at emulating shooters from around the turn of the century. At face value, I assumed this would take inspiration from spy games like the 007 franchise and perfect dark, but it's ultimately a run-of-the-mill shooter with very little substance. THE GOOD: The visuals are pretty good; we're consistently placed in areas that are much more interesting than standard shooter fare, and the style is simplistic and easy on the eyes. Weapons feel good to use as well and are snappy and powerful, for the most part. Sadly, I think the praise ends here. THE REST: The gameplay is painfully lacking in variety to an alarming degree. The enemy roster is extremely small and lacks any sort of 'X factor'. things shoot at you or run at you. the enemy AI is abysmal as well. Although enemies are smart enough to path to your position, they will frequently notice you and open fire from absolutely absurd distances. Many, many times you will hear gunfire or get hit by bullets and have no clue where it came from, only to discover that you walked into the line of site of an enemy that is barely visible or hundreds of yards away. The game also likes to throw tons of mechs at you repeatedly in nearly every level, and these are the most annoying feature of the game. They are extremely slow and stupid, and just fire infinitely as soon as you are visible to them, and are total bullet sponges, to the degree that you are almost never equipped with enough ammo to deal with them. The level design seems promising early on, but devolves into one labyrinth of winding corridors after another. Having multiple approaches into arenas could've been one of the game's strengths, but every firefight plays out almost exactly the same, and the guns all pulverize enemies (aside from mechs) so fast that there's no tactical thinking about which enemies to prioritize or which guns to use in any given scenario. All in all, it's just tragic. I really wanted to like this game, since it seems to take inspiration for its tone and setting from more down-to-earth titles (vs doom/quake hellscapes) but this game has very little to say with its design, lacks variety, lacks deep enemies or weapons, lacks coherent level layouts, lacks any sort of tertiary systems, and features a final boss that is uninspired as a video game boss can be. What a huge disappointment. Lacks basic awareness of design fundamentals and is a monotonous slog despite it being rather short. Even a 4/10 is perhaps too generous.

pretty good retro fps that gives a few hours of fun and has some decent replay ability with the level selector incase you want to tackle any levels that stumped you on secrets and what not. it's got some nice quirky humor through out and levels that feel nice and satisfying.

Amazing and fun shooter, mix of half life quake my only complaint is that it was over way too soon.

Ctesiphon is a neat little boomer shooter while it doesn't do anything too crazy it is a neat and tidy game with some neat weapon and art style. while the last two level has a lot of tanky enemies and the final and only boss was a little spongy Ctesiphon doesn't overstay it's welcome. Honestly I would think this would be a good way to start someone off on boomer shooters as a whole.

A decently fun shooter with a nice aesthetic worth checking out.

A South Australian indie dev published this one to Steam back in November of 2025. His name is Stomy. This is a game that comes with a tongue twister of a name, see-tee-ee siphon? tesiphon? stesiphon? That is until you play it and spot a smartly placed billboard advertising itself. Ktess-iff-on. This one was hand built in a custom engine, and self describes as a retrowave/mecha-inspired sci-fi fps with face paced combat with old-school style level design. I do believe Ctesiphon itself was a bit of a training run for stomy on the path to developing a much more ambition cyberpunk themed immersive simulation game called Fiber Optic Pizza. All in all I had a pretty good time with this one. While it isn't breaking new ground or paving the way for the future of FPS games it does a good job retreading proven ground with a solid step and a fresh pair of shoes. It doesn't have anything like multiplayer to extend its short playtime, being about 3 hours, though I could see replaying for speedruns at higher difficulties or searching for every hidden secret across the 8 different levels. Worth picking up for fans of old shooters. full review available on video here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GplxTwNi0wU