GRAVELORD was not the trajectory I expected Fatbot Games to take, having discovered their Vaporum games after playing through Almost Human’s Legend of Grimrock 1 and 2 – all of them grid-based, first-person, real-time, dungeon-crawlers. Vaporum offered a more streamlined and polished take on the now niche genre – replacing multiple party members with an expanded gear and ability system – but they stuck to the creatively blocky world design, abundant puzzles, hundreds of secrets, and real-time combat that I’d best describe as a deadly grid-dance. In contrast, GRAVELORD is a retro-inspired first-person shooter competing in a saturated market – but between their knack for level design and the unexpectedly great shooting, it might have a chance of standing out.
Befitting the genre, GRAVELORD is light on story elements. The intro reveals the hulking, square-jawed, top hat-wearing gravedigger Queedo, who works in the employ of Death as his ancestors always have. The problem that you’re running and gunning towards is an alchemist by the name of Keron Husk – murderer of Queedo’s father and manufacturer of supposedly life-extending potions that have instead created an undead scourge. Unless you read through the short comic-style collectibles found in each map, that’s all the context you’ll get. Queedo’s personality boils down to barely controlled rage and a string of bad jokes in a Cockney accent that grew tiring by the end of the first map, so it’s probably for the best that narrative elements don’t interrupt the flow of gameplay too often.
Based on this first episode – with 8 maps and a boss at the end – GRAVELORD is remarkably traditional in structure and, to its benefit, distinctly Quake-like when it comes to movement, gunplay, and the visual design language. You traverse Gothic-themed maps on the hunt for coloured keys or switches, following visual cues like coloured lighting; you acquire traversal-based abilities like a spectral grapple and double-jump to reach new areas and secrets; every time you collect said key item, you can expect monster spawns; and most maps culminate in a chaotic charge to the exit or a boss fight, typically under the influence of “rage” runes that briefly buff resilience and weapon fire rate.
Despite footsteps that suggest he weighs half a ton, Queedo hurtles around the map like he’s sprinting on an ice-rink. The movement mechanics are perfect for surviving firefights in a game with no hit-scan enemies and a high default difficulty (I spent a lot of time on low health and save-scumming) but it does force you to slow down when tackling platforming sections or avoiding environmental hazards that litter many arenas.
Given their prior games, the shooting was an unexpected highlight, with a familiar but powerful arsenal ranging from a shovel to a pistol, double-barrelled shotgun, chain-gun, grenade-launcher, and, in a nod to their prior games, an arcing Fumium rifle as the special. Every weapon remained useful throughout for specific enemy types – think melee rushers, nimble flying spitters, tanky explosive users, and magic wielding sorcerers – and they both sound and feel powerful in use. Enemies react to hits with staggering animations, blood splatter, or a gory demise, and when you throw in a dynamic soundtrack that shifts between creepy ambience and thumping combat loops, GRAVELORD ensures simply shooting at something feels good, no matter what you have in hand – a feat that shouldn’t be taken for granted despite the genre.
The other highlight was Fatbot Games’ dense, intricate, and secret-packed level design. The maps can feel sprawling and maze-like, yet they’re incredibly compact and often loop back past, over, or under themselves. In addition to typical key hunts, there is no shortage of consumables tucked away, or secret buttons and rotating statues (with riddle-like clues) that lead to mega-health boosts, early access to powerful weapons, and a range of character and weapon upgrades.
Regardless of whether you’re purging graveyards, riding conveyer belts through crypts, avoiding magma pools in crematoriums, swimming through sewers, or navigating a gothic town, each map feels hand-crafted with a ton of thought going into their layout and enemy composition. I’ve no doubt most maps could be blitzed through by speed-runners in a few minutes once you know what you need to do, but compulsive secret hunters could spend upwards of half an hour scouring them fully.
The last mechanics to touch on feel like an attempt to include rogue-like elements in a traditional save-anywhere FPS, to varying degrees of success. Collecting weapon alt-fire modes on each map feels pointlessly irritating, though I’ll accept resetting movement abilities due to the map design and gating progression. The 3-tier card system, which allows you to pick one from a random draw, feels more thoughtful and impactful as you can choose to favour an aggressive or defensive build. As an example, I could massively boost my survivability by combining a card that regenerates 30 health points with cards that let me deal more damage and receive less damage at or below 30 health.
As it stands, GRAVELORD might not offer much novelty, but it looks to be a solid entry into the retro-FPS market with legitimately great shooting that emulates the classics, and fantastic level design that draws on Fatbot Games’ heritage.
That said, there is one element that might prove divisive. GRAVELORD currently has a strong visual filter enabled, far more aggressive than the marketing materials suggest, that ensures everything more than a meter from the player becomes heavily pixellated and increasingly indistinct at range. It feels similar in function to the filter seen in Prodeus, but it’s ramped up to 11 and I doubt it’s working as intended. It grew on me over time, but there seems to be no option to tone it down in this early access build, and I’m wondering if a degree of auto-aim might be due to the fact distant enemies are often reduced to a handful of moving pixels difficult to track against the background?
GRAVELORD was previewed on PC using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher.
gameblur-v2.0 