Nightmare Reaper 1.0 review: Reaping through the nightmare with random weapons

Nightmare Reaper is an interesting case of being a retro-shooter amidst tons of others in the current year. While there has been a tremendous boom of “boomershooters”, as the community likes to call them, in recent times, tons of games have come out that dip their toes in the genre with their take on it.

Blazing Bit Games, the developers took a different approach, going the rogue-lite, procedural generation route by making the most essential thing in a first-person shooter randomized: guns.

Surprisingly enough, as soon as I started getting bored of playing enough boomershooters, Nightmare Reaper reinvigorated my interest in the sub-genre altogether, and what an experience it has been.

Reaping through a hellish nightmare

Now, if you come up to me asking about the story in detail, I would struggle to explain it since the story has been presented in a non-linear way, and if one does not want to follow it, well, you do not have to.

For those interested, Nightmare Reaper follows the unnamed female protagonist, who is institutionalized in an asylum after various circumstances in her life, living through nightmares while she sleeps.

The patient reports give the story bits of the game and are voice-acted (Image via Nightmare Reaper)

Most of the story is presented through patient reports written by the doctor taking care of the protagonist, voiced by the ever-talented Gianni Matragrano. If anyone has been playing tons of modern retro games in recent times, they will recognize that name immediately.

However, as per the patient's report, it is explained that the patient had a rough childhood. This led her to start hating humans and committing a string of homicides, leading to her arrest and eventual institutionalization at the asylum.

One might find the storyline edgy for their taste, but I liked it, and it makes sense for the carnage that the player causes throughout the game.

Nightmare Reaper (Screenshot via Blazing Bit Games)

Apart from the above, the game follows a 2D-pixelated art style, which reminded me of another retro-shooter from a few years back called Project Warlock very vividly, but adds their own esthetic choices and art design. If someone wants glitz and glamor here, this is not for them, and there might be some other game to hold their interest better.

Overall, I loved the way Nightmare Reaper presents the storyline, where a player is not forced to go through it but can try making sense of the world around them if they want to.

Choose your gun, or play for some level-ups

To get into the carnage that the game offers, players need to go and sleep on their bed, which they will familiarize themselves with pretty quickly. Once asleep, the game takes players to a nightmare, where it becomes the playing field for the protagonist to cause mayhem.

The not-so-cozy bed (Image via Nightmare Reaper)

The game comes with three episodes, which are further divided into levels and parts, and depending on how quick one wants to finish them, it can take someone around 5-6 minutes to well over 15+ minutes if you are going into secret hunting, which this game has, tons of them.

Nightmare Reaper (Image via Blazing Bit Games)

Gameplay-wise, Nightmare Reaper feels like a blend between Wolfenstein and Rise of The Triad. The gameplay loop revolves around clearing various non-linear, randomly generated levels, with each room housing enemies for players to shoot while trying to find secrets, gun drops, and more.

Playing the game for the first time might make one feel that it is slower and void of features compared to the other retro-shooters available, which is where the level-up comes into play.

This is where the level-tree system comes in, presented through mini-games played on a handheld that is undoubtedly not Game Boy Advanced SP.

The skill tree mini-game (Image via Nightmare Reaper)

The coins collected from the levels can be exchanged to unlock various character upgrade abilities like dash, double jump, higher health pool, better movement speed, and more.

Players need to use coins that they get from a level run (which they get regardless of failing a level), use them to play through the mini-game, collect additional coins, and unlock their abilities in the process.

If one doesn’t want the hassle of playing through mini-games, it can be turned off from options. Sometimes, mini-games can catch one off-guard with creepy implications.

She really wasn't there (Image via Nightmare Reaper)

One thing I did not like is Episode one of the game, where the procedural generation of the levels acts against it. After a certain amount of time dying, the levels generated start becoming too familiar, which sometimes makes it dull.

This may act against the overall fun of the game, as some may get bored of seeing the same level of design repeatedly. On the brighter side, Episode 2 and Episode 3 are the strengths of this game, and all hell breaks loose once players reach future levels.

Looting and shooting

As previously mentioned, Nightmare Reaper tries to keep the retro-shooter formula fresh by adding in randomly dropped weapons, which players can get from killing enemies, breaking barrels, randomly inside chests, or from the occasional puzzle rooms.

The game features 80 weapons at launch, and each gun behaves and plays differently.

The weapons range from standard guns such as assault rifles and revolvers to spellbooks, katanas, remote bombs, shuriken, a chainsaw with a hook on it, and many more.

They are divided into rarety, and given how rare they are, the better their stats and the better they behave. Each weapon also comes with an alternate fire mode, which again adds tons of variety to how one wants to kill enemies.

At the same time, players can equip two weapons by default, which increases if one unlocks the ability in the skill tree, and at the end of the level, can bring one of the guns with them to the next one, with the rest of the collected ones getting turned into gold.

It's an interesting way to keep the gameplay fresh and promotes replaying the levels. I enjoyed replaying many of the levels to check what wacky guns this game provides.

The soundtrack from the nightmare itself

I generally do not make a whole different section to cover the soundtrack, but this game requires one, and for good measure. Nightmare Reaper features a jaw-dropping metal soundtrack made by none other than the maestro Andrew Hulshult.

For people un-initiated with his work, Hulshult is known for creating a soundtrack for most of the current modern retro-FPS available and in big-name games such as the Ancient Gods Expansions for Doom Eternal and Quake Champions.

Like his previous works, Hulshult didn't miss a single beat, and while the gameplay certainly makes the image for the game, the soundtrack gives it the identity, and both blend to become an excellent package.

In conclusion

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In the end, Nightmare Reaper doesn't leave a lot to be desired. While the first episode gets a little tedious to my taste, the rest of the two episodes show what the team envisioned with the game and are its strength.

While tons of retro-fps come and go, Nightmare Reaper left a lasting impression on me with its brilliant, randomly generated gameplay, the looter-shooter mechanic for the gun, tons of enemies to chew through and a creepy yet non-intrusive story.

I'll end the review by saying that one would be sleeping on an otherwise great shooter if visuals dictate what games they play.

Give this one a try. Blazing Bit Games certainly had fun making this game, just as much as I had fun causing mayhem in a Nightmare.