Games like Dusk recapture what made Doom and Quake so memorable back in the 1990s, even down to the visual style. Developers began wielding the term it for promotional purposes on Twitter and in press releases. While the exact origin of the term in relation to video games isn’t clear, developers like New Blood began capitalizing on the trend by early 2019. In 2018, indie developer David Szymanski and New Blood Interactive released Dusk, a grim but hectic FPS whose Steam page proudly proclaims that it’s “inspired by Doom, Quake, Blood, Heretic, Hexen, Half-Life, Redneck Rampage, and all your '90s favorites.”ĭave Oshry, who runs Dusk publisher New Blood Interactive, tells Inverse that the game’s fans quickly coined the “boomer shooter” term. The indie game scene, however, is where boomer shooters truly began to blossom. Games like Wolfenstein: The New Order and Doom (2016) proved there was a demand for first-person shooters that updated that classic format for a new era. Proto boomer shooters faded into obscurity by the early 2010s, but the indie scene wasn’t ready to let it die. And let’s not mention Duke Nukem Forever. Even Doom drastically slowed its pace down with 2004’s Doom 3. While many of these are considered some of the best FPS games ever, fads eventually began trending towards realism with franchises like Medal of Honor, Battlefield, and Call of Duty. And, of course, they all have that early 3D visual style of low-res pixelated textures and character models full of chunky and harsh edges. They have gunplay that’s very quick and responsive with wacky weapon designs to match. ![]() ![]() They had level-based campaigns that were usually designed like giant mazes. These games were all characterized by a few different features. Modern boomer shooters are trying to recapture the magic of games like Doom. Several classics like Quake, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3D, and Rise of the Triad emerged from iD, Raven Software, and 3D Realms. A few years later, iD Software would release Doom, which took the world by storm with demonic and gory visuals, bombastic weapons, compelling level design, and fast-paced gameplay.Ī surge of FPS games dubbed “ Doom clones” found success in the late ‘90s, and in many ways, these were the original boomer shooters. In 1993, iD Software changed the video game industry forever with Wolfenstein 3D, a level-based, pseudo-3D action game that introduced the world to the first-person shooter (FPS) game genre. As this fad began in the late 2010s, a new term to describe these games emerged: boomer shooter. It applies to first-person shooters that intentionally harken back to the classic PC games of the late ‘90s like Doom and Quake.Ĭall of Duty and Battlefield currently define the FPS genre, signaling a trend towards realism that’s lasted more than a decade, but some indie developers want to relive what they believe to be the glory days. “Boomer shooter” is the latest term to follow the likes of “Roguelike” or “Soulslike” in the realm of hyperspecific gaming subgenres. However, the reality of the emerging subgenre is much more nuanced, with a history going back decades. When asked to define “boomer shooter” on Twitter, Dusk developer New Blood Interactive wrote, “A shooter that goes boom.”
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