Got a hankering for some classic 90s FPS action? Indie game Hellbound is being made to suit your tastes, and it’s reached just over half of its funding goal on Kickstarter. There are 8 days left for the campaign and developer Saibot Studios are optimistic, with the free open beta Hellbound: Survival Mode getting very positive reviews on Steam.
Saibot Studios have done well to keep Hellbound‘s Kickstarter page updated with daily content, with blog entries covering everything from weapon modelling to soundtrack composition. They’re very clearly passionate about the genre, saying on the Kickstarter page that, “We’re fans of the classics so we want to get every single detail just right.” Everything down to the DOOM-style player portrait reflecting damage taken, destructible enemy corpses that indefinitely stay on the ground, and heavy metal soundtrack all reek of 90s classics.
In Hellbound, you assume the role of Hellgore, “a huge ass mother f**ker who loves killing Demons in Hell.” Hellgore has available to him a selection of suitably-brutal weaponry: Head Crusher, a flanged and spiky bat, Triple Shotgun, a flanged and spiky triple-barrel boomstick, and Rocket Launcher, a flanged and spiky launcher of rockets. There are lots of flanges and spikes throughout the entirety of Hellbound, even on the bodies and armour of the demons that you’ll be up against. Despite the marketing screaming quotes like, “Remember when gameplay was king?” we should also be expecting some kind of story in Hellbound. But according to Saibot Studios, “it doesn’t really matter for now.”
With the audience that they’re aiming for, they’re not wrong. Hellbound is for the traditional FPS aficionado, unconcerned by the narrative depth or emotional complexity of their video game. If you fit that description, you can get a feel for what to expect in the full release of Hellbound by playing the free Survival Mode on Steam right now, and check out their Kickstarter page if it tickles your fancy enough to back it.
