Dread Templar

Dread Templar is a retro-styled first-person shooter built in the spirit of the original Doom and Quake era, pixel art aesthetic and all. You play as a Templar dragged into hell, and the premise is thin by design: the game wants you moving, shooting, and surviving rather than reading lore. Levels are tight, enemy pressure is constant, and the movement rewards that old muscle memory of strafe-dodging and corner-peeking that modern shooters have mostly abandoned. If you have any nostalgia for flicking through floppy-disk shooters as a kid, or you have been chasing that sensation through the modern boomer-shooter revival, this one earns its place in that conversation. What separates Dread Templar from a purely cosmetic nostalgia trip is its upgrade system. Weapons can be modified across multiple branches, and skill unlocks let you shape a playstyle that feels like your own. Do you lean into the dual pistols with rapid-fire upgrades, or do you invest in the heavier arsenal and pair it with movement boosts? The Dread Force mechanic, a kind of supernatural power mode, adds another layer to that decision-making. It is not a deep RPG system, but it is deep enough that two players could finish the game with meaningfully different loadouts. For a game operating in a genre where "more shotgun" is often the only build, that counts for something. The pixel rendering is deliberate and clean. T19 Games is a small outfit, and you can feel the careful hand in the environmental design, even if the hellscape theming follows familiar visual grammar: red rock, bone architecture, burning torches. The soundtrack earns special mention. It is relentless, heavy, and mixes industrial and metal influences in a way that locks you into the tempo the game wants from you. I found myself noticing the music drop during quieter corridors as its own kind of tension signal. That kind of intentional audio pacing is rare at any budget level. Where it stumbles is largely in variety. The enemy roster, while competent, does not surprise you after the first few episodes. Boss encounters ramp in scale but not always in creativity. And if you are not already sold on the genre, the lack of any narrative tissue beyond the opening premise will feel like emptiness rather than minimalism. This is a game that knows exactly what it is, which is both its strength and its ceiling. At roughly six to eight hours on a first run, it does not overstay its welcome, and there is enough in the upgrade replay loop for a harder-difficulty second pass. For indie FPS fans who have already burned through Amid Evil, Ultrakill, or Ion Fury and are hunting for the next one, Dread Templar is a solid find. It is not reinventing the corridor, but it is walking it with real confidence.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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