SATAN

(This review is mixed, leaning on positive if only because there's neat innovations with the EFPSE engine that previous published DOSman games don't have AND it's price point. Otherwise there's better games out there) Another case of great ideas with questionable execution SATAN is a Retro FPS game developed by Gamefruit and published by DOSman Games. It follows.... I think the daughter of Satan?? as she gets attacked by his cronies at church and goes on a trek to kill his ass with guns and other demon eradication devices, and anyone else in her way. Running in the EFPSE, which is pretty familiar face if you've play most of DOSman Games's other developed and published works. It's another case of a game having really solid and potentially fun ideas, but held back either due to a lack of polish, limitations of the engine, or both. As well as suffering more and more as it goes on to the finish line. Gameplay of SATAN is your basic Retro FPS affair. Lots of levels, a variety of enemies, secrets to find, etc. however despite this very familiar formula there are some new mechanics not seen in something like this before. Well at least if you're going through DOSman Games's catalog in order. Firstly, this is the first game of the lot to include some kind of armor system, which while it isn't something new, it absolutely helps out later on in the game where the going gets tough. There's also some kind of side quest setup in the levels where you can collect artifact skulls and once obtaining 3, take them to a priest to get topped off with health and armor. The game also boast some kind of ending system with a good, bad, and a secret ending to achieve. Unfortunately there's no achievements so the motivation is purely out of curiosity, though given the short playtime you'd might to get a bit more out of it. Easily the biggest problem the game has is how quickly annoying the shooting becomes. SATAN uses a reloading system, similar to REVEREND. And while it kinda worked there since it was usually pretty leaning on how many enemies and in and beelining to you and any given time. In SATAN, there's way more stuff after you and it doesn't help that you need to reload with most of your weapons given that. It also doesn't help that weapons feel somewhat off at time, while the bullet weapons like the Pistol, Tommy Gun, and Minigun feel fine. The Shotgun feels extremely off since I believe it simply shoots a extremely powerful blast that can only hit one enemy at a time, I don't even think it has spread. This kinda leads you to mostly maining the Minigun weapon once you get it and occasionally switching to the Bombs and Cross you get when you get the opportunity as they're more powerful but more situational. The level design itself is serviceable but kinda shows that they really shouldn't have disabled the auto-map as well as various platforming challenges over damaging or insta-kill pits. (Thank goodness for the quicksave feature) Bosses are a nice change of pace since they often take place in dedicated arenas, but unfortunately don't usually take much more strategy outside of circle strafe + shoot it until it dies. SATAN's style is interesting cause there is a pretty decent sense of artstyle here but there's so many questionable aspects to it that it somewhat becomes distracting. At it's core, SATAN has a visual artstyle similar to Build engine games, where due to the style at the time, it's a mix of pre-rendered models scanned in for enemies, captured photos for props and weapons, and textures. Well, at least as photorealistic as 90s computers could render, so it's very crusty in a good way. However one of the first things that's notable is the scaling, some of the enemy sprites way too big compared to the pov of the player character. Which is fine for the demonic enemies since it's kinda fitting but makes any of the common cultist or humanoid enemies look a tad off. More in the distracting way and not adding to the game's theme. Weapons also have one weird design quirk that's somewhat distracting. As while all the sprites do look superb in this visual style, the reloading sounds are desynced with the weapon's actual lowering animation for reloading. It's nothing game breaking but it really feels slightly unpolished specifically because these are both things you'll encounter while playing a lot. Overall, while SATAN does have a lot of new stuff not seen in prior DOSman games... games, it's not enough to overcome the other glaring problems the game has. It slowly starts to get on your nerves as you reach the finish line. Previous Retro FPS games at this point from the publisher only really started to become tedious late game and was usually counterbalanced by short length and/or easier gameplay. SATAN is much longer and harder but not typically in the fun way, which is really unfortunate cause it DOES have really great ideas and a spirit with it. Fortunately, Gamefruit is working on a sequel and, from the looks of it, it's shaping up to be a potentially quality sequel. But only time can tell cause at the time of this review, it ain't out yet.

yepyepyepyepyep

A glitch where the sensitivity changes constantly makes this unplayable to me.

SATAN is a "boomer shooter", basically an attempt to recreate the 1990's glory days of shooters like DooM and Wolfenstein 3D only without being aware that it's the 21st century and such games are now obsoleted by far more contemporary takes, like DooM Eternal. Plotwise this one is an attempt to make a weak thematic ripoff of DooM meets The Exorcist as you take on satanic cults and demons, so the plot is considerably less interesting than Doom, and the gameplay is also worse, and that's a huge problem given you can get the old Doom game for free but the developer wants money for this weak ripoff. Other games from this developer showed a complete miscomprehension of how old games like DooM work, being melee heavy and with weak map layouts and so on. At least this game lets you use guns and has appropriate pickups located on the somewhat mediocre map layouts. On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers. The game lacks polish, and while movement is smooth, hitboxes are pretty bad and sensitivity and other settings aren't dialled in quite right, so it's not as fun to play as the original games this is ripping off badly, despite being the 21st century now. The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets with crap 2D retro pixel "art" textures on them, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the early 1990s. This very poor quality visual style is a method that lazy devs often use to disguise their lack of talent/interest in doing the graphics properly and trying to disguise it under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the game. It looks bad as a result of their decisions, worse, it doesn't authentically recreate the 1990's vibe the developer is hoping people will accept instead of doing their job properly, and that's just another reason to avoid it. I think it's also worth noting that while other boomer shooters from this developer at least featured "clean", if ugly pixelcrap textures, the ones on this DooM ripoff are a muddy, ugly mess. 4K support does not save this. Those technical issues put this game beneath what is expected from a contemporary, professionally developed PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only a dozen or so players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 130 million gamers on Steam and well over 140,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 140,000+ games on Steam? SATAN is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 14,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]

For essentially a bargain bin FPS, you're getting a bite sized, relatively enjoyable shooter for 3 bucks. IMO, totally worth it if you just wanna vedge out and shoot things for 90 minutes. There's not really any egregiously bad level design here outside of some of the keys dropping from enemies and clipping into their corpses, level layouts are relatively straight forward and honestly get better as the game goes. None of the weapons really wowed me but I was routinely switching through the roster even in the final sections even back to the starting pistols so obviously something here was working. Even the enemy variety was half decent with a fair mix of projectile based enemies and melee ones and there weren't any hitscanners as far as I can tell. Honestly, well done, recommended.

Yeah just don't waste your time with this. I'm not sure why it has a very positive rating right now, but this game is unbelievably unoriginal and I can't grasp anyone's praise for this game. The movement is not good, the combat is yawn-worthy, the level design is basic and boring, the plot is nowhere to be seen, the music is bland, all of the sounds feel bugged to play after any animation has concluded, the weapons aren't fun to use, the bosses are boring bullet sponges, and on and on. Just an unfinished, unpolished mess. The game does nothing to stand out in a sea of other boomer shooter inspired FPS, and you would be better off playing the original Doom from 1993 instead of playing this.

Seems very good! Really enjoying it!

Game is waay to pixelated in my opinion and i feel like it needs more options in the settings menu.

This is really a good games! Retro boomer shooter well done and with great atmosphere! It has also 3 different endings! You really should try it

The white flashing when you pick up items is so irritating that it makes the game unplayable.