Ctesiphon

Pretty neat game! It being native Linux is a big plus, since I've just switched to it full time. The graphics and music are well-done, the guns feel great, and Ethelyn is a fun protag. It's short but sweet and well worth the US$10.

Schönes Spiel Ansich aber die Mechs halten so gottlos viel aus... Das ist nicht euer Ernst ?!

Very fun, good level design, decent challenge. My only complaint is that it isn't longer.

the game i wish i had as a kid i wish there was voice over though. having to dialogues mid fight is pretty annoying

You play as Dax, a bounty hunter taking a well deserved vacation at a holiday resort. Naturally, things don't stay peaceful for long. The resort and the surrounding area are suddenly attacked and occupied by a group of mercenaries. While Dax is more than capable of fighting his way through them and walking away, their leader turns out to be someone from his past. It's not the most original premise, but it serves its purpose well enough. The story is delivered through text boxes at the bottom of the screen, where Dax comments on the situation or listens to conversations over the radio. The controls will feel instantly familiar to anyone who's played a first person shooter. You move around with the usual jumping and crouching, while the left mouse button handles your primary attack. Since this is very much a boomer shooter, movement is incredibly fast and aggressive. There is no need to aim for precise shots or headshots because every hit deals the same amount of damage, so the focus is entirely on staying mobile. Your effectiveness depends on the weapon you're using. You begin with a dagger that requires no ammunition, but it is really only useful for close encounters or quietly dealing with enemies that cannot shoot back. Those opportunities are rare, so I found myself relying on the first rifle for most fights and switching to the shotgun whenever tougher enemies showed up. Most firearms include a secondary function on the right mouse button, although several simply use it for aiming down a scope, so there are fewer alternate fire modes than I expected. The number of enemies feels well balanced. You will not be clearing tiny rooms packed with a hundred opponents. Instead, you face a reasonable mix of soldier grunts, flying drones, robots, and other enemy types. Individually they are not especially dangerous unless you stop moving, which the game constantly encourages you not to do. Enemies carrying firearms also drop ammunition when defeated, so it is always worth walking over their bodies to collect supplies. Health and ammo pickups can also be found scattered across tables or tucked away in corners, but having extra resources is never a bad thing. The stages were one of my favorite parts of the game thanks to their colorful environments and open layouts. Progression still revolves around finding colored keycards to unlock doors, but nothing forces you to leave until you activate the computer terminal at the end of each level. That openness also means plenty of secrets. Each stage tells you exactly how many there are, and instead of hiding them behind fake walls or invisible switches, most are cleverly placed out in the open. Finding them usually requires exploring every corner or making tricky jumps. For example, in the very first stage you can smash a window and carefully walk along a narrow ledge to reach a balcony that holds a powerful weapon you normally would not find until much later. Then, in the second stage, you might finish the level only to realize you somehow missed all six secrets. Most secrets reward you with extra ammunition, armor, or other useful supplies, although discovering them can sometimes feel a little inconsistent. One issue is that a secret does not always register immediately. You might already be standing in the correct spot, but it only counts once you step directly over the item. Another problem is that finding every secret often expects you to exploit nearly every solid surface in the environment. Tree branches, small rocks, or slightly raised terrain frequently become makeshift platforms that provide just enough height to reach hidden areas. There are no achievements tied to finding every secret, but the extra resources become much more valuable on the higher difficulty settings. Even Normal can be surprisingly punishing if you stop moving for more than a moment, something the first mech encounter demonstrates very quickly. Thankfully, the game includes quick save and quick load, making difficult fights far less frustrating while also letting you save before risky jumps or dangerous drops when hunting for secrets. Overall, it only takes a couple of hours to finish, making it a fun, fast paced shooter that never overstays its welcome.

A Retro FPS with some great art direction and setting but very lacking in the actual shoot v. enemy department. Ctesiphon is a Retro FPS developed by Stomy running on a custom engine. It follows Ethelyn Dax, a bounty hunter, preparing for some well deserved R&R on the vacation planet Ctesiphon before being rudely interrupted by the arrival of the Black Death merc. co. who have taken the city and it's resort hostage as you do. With Ethelyn having some history with that group it's up to her to storm through their forces and take them down. The game has a lot of great things going for it but also very notably lacking in other areas that make it stick out a lot in it's 7-level campaign. Yeah this is a pretty short game. Gameplay of Ctesiphon is your standard Retro FPS affair, you got your enemies, yer guns, keys to collect, and secrets to find. There's a decent amount of weaponry ranging from assault rifle and auto shotgun. to more exotic weapons like railgun and what I can describe as a rocket minigun hybrid weapon with the Gyrobuster. It's a nice variety of both familiar workhorse weapons and more wacky yet grounded stuff. While the game does a pretty decent job pacing it's level progression, the main problem comes with the enemy variety. More in the sense there's not enough enemy types and a tad too many annoying ones in the roster that is included. For example there's a Black Death assault rifle grunt, some kind of bio-cyborg with buzzsaws that lunge at you and a TV robot on legs, these are the most common enemies. Not terrible to fight but kind predictable. Especially when you can kinda bait them into walking straight into your line of fire by just holding behind cover. The main issue that kinda hampers the fun value is all the mech enemies... and the drones that shoot grenades. The former because they are used way too often for how much damage they can soak in and deal to you, and the latter simply cause they're not a fun enemy to fight. I feel like if there were a few more grunts that maybe used the player weapons that could help balance the escalation to then fighting a mech. Then whenever a mech showed up during the later levels it would be like "Oh shoot a mech!" and less like "Oh c'mon another one?" That's actually a moment that happened to me while playing. Otherwise the actual level design is pretty solid, great use of environmental detail to mark keys and having levels loop back in on itself. Only got stumped on one part of a level simply cause it needed swimming when most of the game doesn't really need you to swim. Now on the style side of things Ctesiphon is superb. The maps have this Quake engine style tone with it's very block, brush-esque architecture, but most of the maps attempt to recreate a believable place, kinda like what later Quake and GoldSrc was able to achieve but more in a colorful, and stylized way. There's even a good variety of level themes, with some tropical forests, urban streets, a whole casino, and even a oil rig. Despite the very small level pool there's absolutely a good amount of variety in scale with what's here. The 2D art, like the character designs are also superb, insanely high quality and very inspired designs. And even with having no voice acting work the character dialogue has a lot of flavor to it. you can absolutely tell each character's personality with how they talk to each other and for such a small game I think that's neat. Overall, I think Ctesiphon has a lot of good stuff going for it, with a bit of some very questionable design choices that hold it down, and ends fairly quickly which is kinda of a double-edged sword for both sides. The gunplay is solid and the movement superb, but the enemy variety is rough and the level design sometimes fights with that against you. It is also notable that the demo features 3 levels out of the whole game, which is almost like 50% of the game and it doesn't help that those levels are arguably the better parts of the game at least from my playthrough. I feel like there is ample room for the devs to either improve the foundation, maybe adding more content, or even just making a new game in the same setting, maybe the same engine too. And maybe then there could legit be something very substantial. As I do think 10$ for how much game you get is kinda iffy with the fact there's other games in the same genre, with a cheaper base price with way more content. BUT at the same time I do legit want to see this game be successful to support future work cause the people whole worked on it ARE very talented, just the game could benefit from some some polish and extra content to improve the experience.

What a fun little boomshoot! I really enjoyed my time with Ctesiphon, even if it was a little frustrating at times. Its short and sweet, the weapons feel fantastic to use, although the enemy design was limited they were all very enjoyable and made me use all the tools in my tool box and I had fun hunting for secrets when I could find them. I think my only complaint is how many mechs were in the casino level before the final boss. With the cluttered floor plan and multi layered approach to a lot of the rooms in the casino, having that many mechs in a fight was hard to deal with and was the only level where I had to actively quicksave scum my way through it, outside of that is good go play it

👍

Fun little shooter game, feels very good to play and doesn't overstay its welcome.

local aerobic instructor brings down a giant mech from Evangelion on a casino roof