When Doom tore its way onto our screens in 2016, it marked a revival of 90s shooter motifs like blistering pace, charge-forward combat and a rejection of narrative and cutscenes. Its success stirred up indie developers, who saw that there may be merit in doubling down on that old-school spirit. After all, you didn’t need high production values or big budgets to recreate the splattery sprites, crude polygons and cuboid giblets that typified 90s shooters.
This retro shooter renaissance took hold in 2018, led by Dusk, Amid Evil, and Project Warlock – among others. The developers behind each game interpreted 90s shooter design in their own unique ways, finding ways to reconfigure it for an audience that, in many cases, wasn’t even born in the 90s.
Now, with all three developers working on their next projects, I figured it was a perfect time to catch up with them, reflecting on the making of their games, the zeitgeist they started, and where it’s all going to go from here.
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