Scathe Preview

Who doesn’t love a good first-person shooter that throws hordes of enemies at you for gratuitous eradication? I, for one, relish the chance to just go postal killing everything in sight. Thankfully, Damage State Ltd have brought their Scathe demo to Steam Next Fest to sate my thirst for carnage.

There are some definite cues taken from Doom in terms of weapon and demon aesthetics I feel, which is not a bad thing at all. Anything that can successfully pay homage to the granddaddy of FPS games can only be a good thing in my book. Scathe — not only the name of the game, but also the protagonist you play as — is a non-linear FPS with a few twists up its sleeves.

Your task is simple: Collect the hellstones and escape the maze. Sounds easy in theory but the practice of this is far from it. You have to navigate this labyrinth of death in search of these runes while also trying to locate one of the several exits the zone has. From the start of this zone, you’ll collect your first weapon which is a machine gun that has an alternate firing mode of shooting small rockets. Both firing modes on this weapon have unlimited ammo with no reloading for the machine gun, but the rockets do require a small recharge time before being able to launch another volley.

Enemies are introduced quite frequently as you explore the labyrinth with our first introduction being the bog-standard soulless husks that become our cannon fodder. These humanoid shamblers pose little threat and can be easily cut down, which also serves as a tutorial on another of Scathe’s little twists; killing enemies at fairly close ranges will cause blood to be splattered on your face, which stays on screen and obscures your vision and blocks the UI from being readable. It’s a quirky take on the whole blood splattering theme and it can make things tricky in the middle of an intense combat sequence, as you need to stop shooting and manually wipe your vision clear to see everything again.

As the enemies become more varied, your task becomes more difficult as you need to fend off multiple different types at the same time, usually resulting in sheer panic as the screen is filled with flying bullets; quite literally too, due to one enemy type being what can only be described as a swarm of bullets that fly around like they’re mimicking the squid swarms from The Matrix. Added pressure is on as you’ve only got one life, although additional lives can be found around the maze. As I find one of the several exits, I’m teleported to another zone with a shotgun awaiting me as my prize for progression. I pick up the weapon, getting pumped to put the boomstick to good use, but then the demo ends and I’m left deflated. How dare you tease me like this, Damage State Ltd, you flipping penguin cats!

Not only is Scathe a treat for the bloodthirsty, it is also a treat on the eyes and ears. Weapon models are suitably sizeable and satisfying to use, with the sounds being suitably punchy and impactful. For an underground environment at the start of this maze, there’s still plenty to look at and admire, with the varied enemy models being quite bizarre. This is all backed by some tribal, almost primal-sounding vocals in the music. It honestly felt like spirits were being summoned the longer I listened to it. If you’ve seen the Hellblade 2 trailer where Senua and the tribe are singing, then you know what I mean about the vocals.

It’s safe to say that I’m looking forward to seeing more of Scathe in the future, especially the prospect of drop-in/drop-out multiplayer where I could help a friend out in their run, where the pool of spare lives is shared.

Scathe is set for a 2022 release and I strongly recommend adding this to your wishlist.