Project Warlock

Project Warlock is a first-person shooter that plants itself firmly in the tradition of Doom, Wolfenstein, and Hexen, then runs with that tradition at full sprint. Developed by Buckshot Software, this is one of those quietly remarkable cases where a single developer, starting as a teenager, hand-built an entire FPS campaign spanning 60 levels across five distinct episode worlds. That context matters, because the craft here is not accidental. The pixel art aesthetic, the chunky sprite enemies, the way each episode shifts its visual and sonic mood from frozen tundra to hellish cathedral, all of it has been considered and placed with intention. The core loop is pure boomer-shooter: move fast, find keys, shoot everything, find the exit. But Project Warlock layers on a light RPG system that keeps the experience from feeling purely mechanical. Between levels you return to a small hub where you spend upgrade points on passive skills across three branching trees, and you spend collected materials to research weapon upgrades. Your starting arsenal is modest, pistols and a shotgun, but it grows into a satisfying spread of conventional firearms alongside spell-based attacks. Mana management adds a resource consideration that pure-reflex shooters usually skip, and choosing which weapons to upgrade is a genuine decision that shapes how your run feels in the later episodes. What works best here is pacing variety within the retro format. Some maps are tight, claustrophobic corridor fights where every corner could hide a clustered ambush. Others open into larger arenas demanding constant lateral movement. The boss encounters are mostly fair and readable, though a couple lean on health-sponge design that drags. Enemy variety is broad enough that switching weapons stays relevant throughout the campaign rather than settling into a single dominant tactic. The soundtrack deserves specific mention: it sits in that metal-adjacent, synth-edged register that classic id Software games established, and it sustains energy across a campaign that would feel exhausting without it. The honest caveats: save-scumming is essentially required in a few particularly brutal late-game stretches unless you are seasoned with this genre. The storytelling is minimal, almost ceremonial, window dressing rather than narrative. If you come to FPS games primarily for plot, there is almost none here. The hub upgrade system, while functional, does not have quite enough depth to feel truly strategic. It nudges your build rather than defining it. And the later episodes recycle some enemy types without meaningfully escalating their threat design. For its audience, though, those caveats barely register. If you grew up with shareware Doom floppies, or you have spent time with the modern boomer-shooter wave and want something that predates some of that scene's polish but beats it on raw personality, Project Warlock holds up. At around six to eight hours for a first playthrough, it respects your time, knows what it is, and ends at the right moment. That last quality is rarer than it should be.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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