Ultrakill

Classic FPS in Early Access, Act 1 of 3 is out now. Also has an endless survival mode, and a map editor is forthcoming as well. I'll throw this under Action since Doom Eternal is, it's similar in many ways I feel.

This game has a ton of tech, intentional and unintentional. All projectiles are parryable, coin reflects all hitscans, you can use dash i-frames to dodge your own shotgun overcharge misfire, the list goes on. Movement is a joy and has a lot of depth with the way dashing, sliding, and stamina interact.

Here's a quick and dirty run I recorded to show the game, sloppy but you get the idea.

Got this sat in my Steam library but not got stuck in yet. Looks brilliant though. I'm all for more FPS games incorporating 3rd-person-action-style abilities and tech.

Using the dodge iframes to avoid self-damage is clever. I never thought about doing that. I know about punching your own shotgun pellets to increase damage, too.

How does "coin reflects all hitscans" work? I didn't realise there were hitscanning enemies. Do you have to time the coin toss as if it were a parry or something like that?

Pockie: >vid
I'll put it in my history. See what you gents are on about.

The only enemy hitscan right now is the stone face's explosion beam. You reflect it by throwing it so the hitscan line passes through it, same as you would do with your own attacks. The timing is quite tight so it's not really a reliable kill method, but it looks super cool.

The coin in general has a lot of tech around it, with my new favorite being its combo with the electric mode of the railcannon. By throwing a coin behind an enemy, then shooting through the enemy and onto the coin with the railcannon, you can reflect back onto the same enemy for an additional hit. This does crazy single-target damage and is how I'm melting the big statue enemies in the video. It also scales with additional coins, though using more than one gets difficult.

Been doing a couple runs every day or two of the survival mode, here's the best I've got so far:


Need to use the shotgun overcharge more, super powerful as an attack. Also need to get faster at killing the scorpions and green mages, I don't get enough practice on them.

New Ultrakill update is out, added an optional boss level for players who have gotten P rank (S rank in all categories + no mid-level checkpoints used) in every other level.

Fantastic boss, seems inspired by DMC3 Vergil 2's Beowulf moveset. Compare this to Doom Eternal boss fights, it's absolutely embarrassing.

I admit that I find it insanely hard to keep track of what's going on during the videos, pretty fast game! Does the style-meter do anything except track 'style', does it give extra resources if you perform well or something like it?

>pacing
Yeah, it's pretty fast at first, but you get used to it. Doom Eternal has a pretty comparable pace, maybe Ultrakill is a bit faster overall if you count the boss fights.

>style
No, you don't get any resources or anything. The ranking system has three categories: time taken, kills, and style points gained. To get P rank on a level, you need to get S in all categories, so you have to keep style up if you're going for that.

Luckily, the types of things that give you style points tend to be similar to things you do when playing efficiently. You get points from headshots, multikills, coin ricochet, projectile boosts, parries, environmental kills, and many other things, while switching weapons often and moving quickly multiplies your point gain.

So the style meter serves mainly as an indicator for new players on how well they are doing, while experienced players can either try to keep it high for fun, or mostly ignore it if they want. I tend to ignore it myself now that I'm pretty decent at the game, but maybe that will change later.

New Ultrakill update, great as usual. New enemies emphasize movement, space control, and careful offense and de-emphasize parrying and healing, very good move design-wise. Will chew on it more, possibly post further thoughts.

I really don't know whether to play this now or wait until its finished so I can enjoy the complete package - great to hear so many positives though.

New boss is great, haven't put too much time into it but there's a lot of little things to take advantage of in the AI and attacks. Grapple is insane, perhaps a little too much? Maybe it should cost stamina to use. Or maybe it's fine, what do I know.

>buy now or wait
I would wait, I've definitely gotten my $20's worth but the game will probably be great when it's finished, especially when higher difficulties are added.

2 years later....

>Oh man, Ultrakill slays, gave same level of excitement and fun MGR:R did.

>The Rocket Launcher addition is brilliant. It only deals damage if it hits enemies so you need considerable aim, plus the rocket is one of slower projectiles in the game. Even if you don't hit the enemy the explosion that pushes enemies into the air has its own uses. If you do hit, you are rewarded with the enemy taking explosion up their face, and it's stronger if the rocket lands on the enemy in the air.

>The Rocket Riding is another property of the rocket launcher. It's just such a good and cool mechanic, currently training to perform quick riding consistently. Really useful for saving yourself from falling to the abyss, covering great distance (horizontal or vertical), or getting close to high priority enemy (normally in air) in high stakes scenarios.



>Ultrakill also is very effective at motivating players to master the game to be really stylish, and provides very rewarding challenges in form of P ranking existing campaign and eventually conquering secret levels P-1 and P-2. The only requirements to get P rank is to complete the level quickly, while killing every single enemy on the map and gain large number of style points without dying.

>Game has ridiculous level of depth in movement tech and how you can beat enemies. I legit want more shooters have guns interact with their abilities like how shooting a coin with railcannon will redirect the railshot to a nearest weakpoint (that's barely scratching the surface wtf), or how you can punch your own shotgun bullets the moment they spawn because they work identical to enemy projectiles, turning them into a long-range hitscan weapon with explosive property.

>The game is still in-development and dev is teasing eventual Act 3 with little insights like new enemy type, new levels and music. Can't wait for it to come out of early access.