If you’re looking for a new FPS to lose your afternoons to, look no further than Selaco. Built on the Doom engine and inspired by FEAR, Selaco remembers what made classic boomer shooters so great. It’s punchy, fast, and already filled to the brim despite being in Steam Early Access. Ever since Titanfall 2’s excellent campaign trimmed the fat and showed modern shooters how it’s done, I’ve been waiting for the next best thing, and Selaco is it. With a 20% discount and a colossal update mere months after launch, now’s the time to get involved.
If you’re new to Selaco, here’s the deal. Developed by Altered Orbit Studios, it’s a sci-fi FPS built on the bones of Doom, with the set pieces of FEAR, the exploration of Half-Life, and the smart enemy AI of modern games. Set on the titular space station Selaco just as it’s rocked by an invading force, you only have the first few levels in the current early access version, but they’re more than enough to satisfy.
What sets Selaco apart for me is how destructible everything is. Every time you enter a room and start a firefight glass shatters over the floor, explosions rock your enemies, colorful visual effects flash over the screen, and innards rain over you. If Doom’s the violin, Selaco is the entire orchestra. Don’t just take my word for it, though, as Selaco is sitting at 92% positive reviews from over 2,500 players, with that number likely to go up.
Now that Selaco has been out for three months, what exactly does the anniversary update bring? To put it bluntly: an awful lot. Between quality-of-life enhancements like more checkpoints, a ‘last-used weapon’ button, reworked grenade logic, backpack reloading, smart ammo pickups, and more healing stations, there’s a lot that makes Selaco just play better.
That’s not all, though, as there are now three new gameplay mutators to enhance your experience. The first mutator gives you 50% extra ammo (apart from powerful ammo types), another adds the old ammo pickup system instead of leaving spare bullets lying around, and the last reduces the number of distractions and secrets.
Called ‘Half-Like,’ this mutator cuts back on everything that’s not shooting. It removes secrets and the intermission screen between levels, among many other exploratory extras. Altered Orbit Studios says it added this mechanic as “some players felt secrets ruined the pacing of the game,” giving everyone the option of playing Selaco without feeling bogged down by the extra content.
There are also muzzle flashes, new rain effects, and plenty of rebalancing to difficulty as well. Altered Orbit has even made some immersion improvements, so now you can expect more collision sound effects, an object bumping system so you can kick small props, the ability to rip posters off the wall, and even more ambient sounds as you play.
Altered Orbit Studios has put Selaco on sale to celebrate the big three-month anniversary update – you can grab it for 20% off until Friday September 6, so expect to pay $19.99 / £16.79. You can find the game right here.
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