Fallen Aces is an upcoming shooter from New Blood Interactive that looks like it’s from the 1930s but clearly plays like it’s from the 1990s. That’s a good thing, for the record—or at least it is in this case.
The new nine minutes of gameplay premiered today during Realms Deep 2023, and shows what seems to be a slice of Fallen Aces’ opening moments. Protagonist Mike wakes up in his apartment, clearly hungover, falls out of bed, eats a sandwich, and then he gets a phone call about how a lot of people want to kill him, apparently. What follows is a violent extravaganza as Mike combines stealth karate-chops to the neck with first-person brawling to fight his way out of the building and across the neighborhood to his friend’s place. There’s even a bit where he picks up a knocked out dude and throws him at another dude. I like that bit.
We first got a look at Fallen Aces back in 2020, when it was announced. At the time, PC Gamer’s Andy Chalk said it looked “like a combination of Condemned: Criminal Origins and Dick Tracy comics.”
“The A.C.E.S.,” begins the official game description. “Watchful guardians of Switchblade City. Being taken down, one by one. Now it’s up to one man, with two fists, to get to the bottom of it all.” Seems good to me.
I’m pretty curious about the cool pulp world they’re spinning up here. Given at least one screenshot, there are sure to be appearances by these “A.C.E.S.” people, who look more like masked pulp superheroes ala The Shadow, The Phantom, or Green Hornet than hard-boiled detective Mike, apparently Fallen Aces’ protagonist.
You can find Fallen Aces on Steam, where it doesn’t yet have a release date. It’s made by developer duo Trey Powell and Jason Bond, and has an oldish demo you can play if you like demos.