Blood Reaver is a dark fantasy first-person shooter game from developer Hell Byte Studios. Described on their Steam page as “Harness forbidden magic and weaponry to shoot, blast and slice your way through endless hordes of demons”. Let’s jump into this early access FPS shooter and see how long we can survive against the demon horde.

Blood Reaver is a standalone version of the Zombies game mode from old COD games, with its own twist, of course. You essentially have to survive waves of zombies as you progress around a map that looks like the bunkers of hell inside a ruined castle. Before loading in, I checked my loadout to see what weapons or skills were available to help me in the chaos.

There are three different grenades I could take: Centrifuge for destroying everything in front of me like a grenade, Soul Ember that sends ethereal fire igniting all the demons in front of you, or a demon fang that, once thrown, kills all demons in an arc shape in front of you.

You then have two utilities to choose from for your primary and secondary slots. Currently, there are only four buffs to choose from: Bartovs, which draws ammo automatically from a reload station; The Watcher, which gives you the ability to draw extra blood from kills for a short period; Timesplitter, which slows down time briefly; and finally Blood Splicer, which increases your speed for a short period. Single player, multiplayer or online multiplayer with randoms is your final selection, then it is time to face the demons.

It’s then onto the first wave: you start with a basic handgun, and straight away you can upgrade to a crossbow, which deals more damage and drops the demons faster. The first wave of the game breaks you in slowly; you can hear the zombies coming through holes in the castle and breaking down wood barriers.

You can actually rebuild these barriers back up, which will give you some extra time as you reach the higher hoards. Before long, you are surrounded as the demons will come from every direction, never stop moving.

As you kill the demon, you gain two items: money, which unlocks guns that are in crates around the map. There are numerous guns I have found, each different: a crossbow, a shotgun, an automatic rifle, each with its own twist. The more areas you unlock, the more weapons you will have access to. You also use the money to unlock new areas that are currently blocked off, giving you more room to maneuver against the relentless hordes, as the map is relatively small.

The second item is blood magic, which can be used for special abilities. Currently, abilities are slowing down time, rings that increase damage when you stand in them and a wave of fire to damage the demons in front of you. Managing your health can be quite difficult: you don’t have a health bar as such; your screen will increasingly be covered in blood as you take damage, and eventually you will be knocked out. In multiplayer, your friend can pick you back up before you bleed out; if it’s single player, game over.

As you survive the waves of demons, they progressively get harder, with some exploding demons making an appearance, and some even start running at you. Unfortunately, nothing is randomised, though, so all the weapons and unlocks are in the same place every time, so you know exactly where to go the more you play the game. There is no real endgame either, so you are left trying to get the most headshots and survive the most hordes, which can reduce the longevity of the title, in my opinion.

The graphics are well put together. There are nice details in the run-down castle, with all the debris on the ground and barricades built up around you. The zombies have slight variations, mainly with horns and body shapes.

When shooting them in the head or with shotguns, some nice animations when you see them explode in pools of blood and drop to the floor. The weapons seem to be based on historical World War-era weapons, with a nice demonic twist; they feature some nice detail and firing mechanisms.

The sky above you helps paint the picture as well, with the stormy clouds and blood lightning setting the hell-like atmosphere. The special abilities have some nice effects around them, like a dark magic aura. Being an early access, I only had access to one map, Final Stand, so hopefully there will be more in the future. The developers have released a roadmap, so you can see the direction they are heading, and it looks promising.

When you load in the background music, it sets the scene with eerie, demonic vampire sounds and the constant flickering of flames; it is a nice touch instead of a constant song. Each weapon has a distinctive sound when firing, and you can hear the demons smashing their way into the map as they are trying to find you. Some nice background noises as well, the rain, thunder and even a machine gun in the distance as the game tries to make you think people are fighting elsewhere in the world.

Overall, Blood Reaver is a solid demon-horde first-person shooter title. It goes back to the roots of 2000’s gaming, where it was about horde management and shooting, not all the fancy bells and whistles new titles try to bring in and reinvent the wheel. As developers add more content, you can see there will be longevity in the game in the future. If you want to relive your old COD zombie days, with hassle-free shooting and killing while trying to manage the numbers of the hordes, Blood Reaver is the game for you.