Exodemon

I have a soft spot for the kind of game that arrives quietly, built by one small studio with more conviction than budget, and Exodemon fits that mold in ways that are both charming and frustrating in equal measure. Kuupu is a Brazilian solo developer who first built a following on itch.io before bringing this retro FPS to Steam, and the whole thing carries the unmistakable texture of a passion project assembled from pure love of the genre. That context matters when you sit down with it. The central hook is genuinely interesting: both of your arms are the weapon system. Your left claw handles melee, swiping through enemies when they close in, while your right hand morphs across roughly six ranged archetypes, a pistol, shotgun, sniper, rocket launcher, machine gun, and a late-game charge shot that most reviewers agree never quite earns its slot. Better still, health and ammo readouts are displayed on the claws themselves as a diegetic UI, so the screen stays clean and uncluttered. That design choice alone shows real craft. The movement is quick, no regenerating health, no cover system, no reload animations, no hand-holding. It chases the kinetic snap of Quake and Hexen and, for stretches, it lands it. The platforming is a particular surprise: tighter and less slippery than most FPS contemporaries manage, with secrets tucked into vertical spaces that reward exploration across around 18 hand-crafted levels. Where the game stumbles is harder to paper over if you are being honest. The level aesthetics lean heavily on grey laboratory corridors that stay the same drab grey from the opening level to the final act. The environments do open up somewhat toward the back half, with canyon sections adding welcome verticality, but the visual monotony gets wearing. Combat feedback is the other persistent weak point: the melee slash leaves you briefly exposed rather than feeling powerful, and the ranged weapons lack the satisfying punch-back that makes a retro shooter feel alive. The soundtrack is sparse, essentially a single looping track, which is a real shame given how much the right music would amplify the mood Kuupu is clearly reaching for. There is also a development footnote worth knowing: the team reportedly lost core project files during development and rebuilt Exodemon from a salvaged earlier build. Whether the current release fully reflects the original vision is an open question, and some of the thinness in enemy variety and weapon expressiveness may trace back to that. Steam users who did vote on it responded warmly, sitting at a very positive aggregate on a modest review count, while critical outlets were more split, with some finding it a serviceable budget boomer shooter and others calling it a missed opportunity. The truth lands somewhere between those poles. For a five-to-six-hour solo run with no complexity overhead, Exodemon is a scrappy, earnest piece of work from a developer who clearly played Doom and Hexen until the discs wore out. If you are after a polished, fully realized retro revival, Dusk and Amid Evil are in another tier. If you are curious about a rougher, smaller thing built by someone who cares, this one has quiet integrity worth respecting.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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