Dusk Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave to 10/27/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Dusk

Developer: New Blood Interactive

Publisher: New Blood Interactive

Genre(s): First-Person Shooter, Horror

Platforms: PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox Series X

I take umbrage with the term “boomer shooter.” I’m not so out of touch that I’m having trouble realizing how and why the term was coined in this fashion. I can do simple internet math and deduce that “boomer” is an umbrella phrase for “old,” stemming from how pruned and uncool the massive population wave of post-WWII/pre-Vietnam babies have become in their retiree ages. While I can see how it can be applicable to the oldest living generation of people, or at least the oldest that are lucid enough to access the functions of a computer or smartphone, it does not translate sensibly to this new crop of modern indie titles that pay direct homage to the old school first-person shooters of the 1990s, like Doom and Quake. The zoomers that popularized this mocking association with our elderly folk are probably too young or too dense to realize that baby boomers fucking hate video games. Who do you think was fervently protesting these games when they were still the cutting edge of video game controversies? A true “boomer shooter” should either pertain to targeting Charlie along the Mekong Delta or accidentally shooting your friend in the back of the head with your dad’s gun while downing some PBR in 1972. I guess “xennial shooter,” or whatever generation the Columbine kids could be classified as, wasn’t catchy enough. As it is, Dusk is perceived as one of the stand-out titles in the locust swarm of titles that are classified under this borderline derisive designation. Even though I was but a literal fetus during the heyday of the genre’s earliest incarnations, I’ve still been formally acquainted with the first-person shooter’s golden era due to the efforts of preserving the first two Dooms and Duke Nukem 3D past their initial PC hardware. I’ve earned my FPS veterans badge despite not being born soon enough to fit the supposed generational demographic. Therefore, I recognize all of the genre’s tropes that Dusk wears on its sleeves as unabashedly as an ugly Christmas sweater, and can proclaim that Dusk takes all the pronounced trappings of its influences and refines them to a degree of unparalleled deliciousness.

One wouldn’t expect Dusk to greatly innovate on the classic, forgone formula of the first-person shooter genre because of how resolutely the game commits to the bit of pretending it’s 1995, like those smartass signs on restaurants with no Wi-Fi. Hell, the first mark of “authenticity” Dusk flaunts is introducing itself with the minimalist scrolling text of a PC DOS boot-up screen. If that doesn’t illustrate how deeply dedicated Dusk is to encapsulating the retro-chic aura of this specific period, then maybe its choice of aesthetic will convince you. Dusk evidently subscribes to the popular adage that looking the part is equally as essential as acting it, dressing to impress those already initiated with the genre-defining titans it wishes to emulate. Or, in this case, it's dressing down to evoke the mien of past practices, like a pioneer town actor giving a tour of a rustic village. By 2018, I think that the widespread sentiment on video game graphics had evolved past the point of lambasting anything that doesn’t knit the thread between polygons and photorealism even tighter, so I won’t belabor a defensive paragraph against hypothetical comments stating that Dusk “looks like shit.” The quasi-3D graphics of the Quake engine are as legitimate a visual style as any motion-captured cinematic epic produced by a modern triple-A studio. The scenery may resemble mold infesting both the charred interior and exterior of a building destroyed by fire, and the characters within the backdrop looking like the sentient burnt toys once owned by a former child resident who abandoned them due to the wreckage. Still, the sloppy earnestness exudes a hell of a lot more personality and artistic integrity than the dismally bland aesthetic of a modern “realistic” shooter.

In fact, Dusk still manages to arouse a genuine sense of fear using these primitive, putrid polygons. Every old school FPS game from the 1990s seems to exist on a horror spectrum, and Dusk seems to fall over yonder in the overt spooks and scares akin more to Blood than any of id Software’s output. However, whereas Blood’s thematic usage of the occult was portrayed with hyperactive hilarity like an Evil Dead film, Dusk intends to use the dark iconography of the underworld to instill perturbation. Red organic matter from an unknown origin splatters the walls of enclosed areas, which are often only lit by the narrow illumination of a flashlight. Real photographs of human beings (the developers, most likely as an easter egg) rendered on the same walls will start to change in eerie ways in an inexplicable flash, like red dots over the eyes. Not to mention, an omniscient voice as deep as the Mariana Trench will often laugh villainously and speak ominous phrases to the player as they progress, and often while they’re situated in advanced darkness. With all of these harrowing, surreal moments, I wonder if Dusk’s 1990s gaming influences extend beyond the confines of its FPS brethren and into the realm of Silent Hill. I can safely say that not all of my body hairs maintained their unstimulated, flattened rest while playing Dusk, an impressive feat considering the cheap crudeness of its visuals.

Still, Dusk’s aesthetic can’t be so rough-hewn that its environments are borderline imperceptible from a topological standpoint. Doom could get away with the blotchiness of primordial pixel graphics rendering 3D environments because no man alive has ever seen the depths of Hell or the moons of Mars for themselves (that we know of), so we could give their artistic depictions the benefit of the doubt. Thankfully, Dusk is more interested in designing maps consisting of setpieces that conjure up similarities to places in the real world. Similar to Dusk’s FPS forefathers, the game’s campaign is divided between three chapters, all of which uphold a distinct environmental motif that conceptually melds every level together. “The Foothills” exemplifies a very American fear of the solitude associated with farmland and other organic rural environments, while “The Facilities” exudes the anxiety that might come with trespassing on highly secured military complexes and the severe consequences that come with such an intrusion. It’s difficult to say whether or not “The Nameless City” conceptually circles back around to another FPS interpretation of Hell, but a realm entered via a portal with crimson skies and sections where the gravitational angles can be manipulated by an arcane device is certainly too surreal to warrant comparisons to any stretch of reality. Maybe you’ll encounter a gothic cathedral of an equally sublime grandeur to that of the one in the “Blasphemy” level somewhere in the Bohemia region of Europe.

In addition to sticking to a concise chapter theme, I’d say that Dusk’s most admirable contribution in transcribing the classic FPS formula to the modern gaming landscape is how it tweaks its level progression. Each level in Dusk may incorporate the locking of passageways through three color-coded keys to broaden the scope beyond the simple surge of running and shooting, another case of the apple not falling very far from the tree. However, having recently replayed Doom, I often found myself scurrying throughout several levels like a decapitated chicken due to certain blue, red, or yellow doors and keys being situated in cramped, concealed corridors. Dusk’s evident method of solving the design convolution is increasing the likelihood of seeing the colored door before the key can possibly ever be in the player’s reach. This way, once the coinciding key is uncovered, one’s recent recollection will lead them directly towards the next path to the finish line, provided they aren’t suffering from acute brain damage. The pronounced primary colors are especially on full display in levels modeled more like battle arenas, such as the lightpost-lit ranch in “Dead of the Night” and the industrial lava pit of “The Erebus Reactor.” We can plainly see the entrances and exits in the midst of the hectic fracas, but the point is that the player earns their egress through vanquishing all adversity that blocks it, not by painstakingly searching for it. By altering the key-coded progression paths and making them more perceptible to the player, it’s unlikely that there will be unbearably long swathes of inactivity after every enemy has already been slain. I don’t know about you, but in a game whose identity is defined by the loud blasting of gunfire, silence is the most deafening sound.

Fret not, FPS veterans, for Dusk doesn’t iron down progression so drastically that it’s been straightened like a reverse perm. Dusk still features a smattering of secrets located outside of the simplest trajectory line in various crevices, back alleys, narrow passages, etc. The player can even pick up and carry objects blocking the visibility of many secrets, a familiar physics engine exhibition that exposes Half-Life as yet another patch in Dusk’s conceptual fabric. As always, the player’s meticulous searching efforts will be rewarded handsomely with health pickups, valuable jewelry that boost the player’s “morale” (Dusk’s distinct interpretation of armor), and ammunition aplenty. Given that Dusk is bound by the conventions of the FPS genre’s traditions, the game’s selection of weapons will be an array of standards found across most examples of the genre. They include, but are not limited to, a pistol, an assault rifle, a shotgun, and its stronger, double-barreled “super” variant, an incredibly forceful hunting rifle, and a crossbow, being another asset borrowed from Half-Life for good measure. The seismically powerful Riveter and the manually-controlled bomb launching mortar fill the requirement for explosives, while two sickles and a sword will aid in offense as melee weapons if the player somehow exhausts their ammunition. Soap is an attack item found across each level so potent that it deals astronomical damage, but I never managed to find this gag juggernaut tool that comments on the obscene physical and or moral hygiene of the enemies. Judging by the tropes they all check off, Dusk doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel when it comes to the typical FPS arsenal. In saying that, the perks of gaming modernity and decades of the FPS foundation to work off of allow Dusk to efficiently scrub away the dirt caking the aged, creaky skin of its ancestors, in a manner of speaking. A modern feature in any shooter that I consider a requisite is a weapon wheel, something that the ancient FPS games of yore were lacking, which Dusk easily remedies. I became a tad annoyed that the game didn’t pause while I was perusing my arsenal in this circular menu, but I soon came to a point of clarity that allowing for a brief window of dormancy would have greatly compromised the frenetic flow of combat that Dusk fosters. Admittedly, the electric surge of shooting is nothing new to the FPS genre, but Dusk uses its advantage of hindsight to hone the mechanics behind the high-octane action to a smoother accessibility. To accentuate the lightning-fast pacing of its arena shooter speciality, Quake utilized a technique called “strafe jumping,” which was achieved through pushing the strafe key while jumping to maintain a swift rate of momentum. Dusk takes this tactic one step further by leniently letting little control hiccups not upset the execution of this maneuver, which allows the player to hop around like a fucking jackrabbit. Add an abundance of spinning air ducts that propel the player upward like a trampoline with this liberal range of movement, and Dusk feels more caffeinated than Cornholio.

Naturally, what necessitates the player’s tireless leg syndrome is the army of enemies constantly ambushing the player from all angles. As par for the classic FPS course, the enemy roster consists of several different breeds of hostiles, and some are more formidable than others. What I particularly enjoy is that the enemies vary depending on the environment surrounding the chapter, unlike Doom, where the player will be hearing the ringing of grunts and growls from the same exact demons throughout every bit of the campaign. Deranged chainsaw-wielding maniacs and sentient scarecrows with shotguns are what walk about the corn-infested quiet plains of “The Foothills,” while military men of differing ranks use lethal force while the player is intruding on their covert area of operations. Enemies found in the dimensional rift of “The Nameless City” are some demented creations that exemplify the abstractions of the realm, such as floating cow corpses, ghost-faced little gremlins that spit acid, and caged helldogs that used their wheeled entrapments to bulldoze the player like a battering ram. The white-robed cultists and their bloody red compatriots, whose fireballs have homing properties, seem to be the only overarching class of enemy in Dusk. They serve as the core instigators of conflict involving the extremist practices of the radical cult antagonizing the protagonist, muttering sinister utterances in his direction like heretic and non-believer. While I never felt threatened by the clansman freaks, one standout enemy that did make me eep like a housewife seeing a mouse scampering across her kitchen floor are the wendigos, demonic deer who are only detectable by the clopping and tracks of blood left on the ground by their bony hooves. Still, despite the characterization of each enemy and their wider diversity pool in general, shooting any of them lacks a certain visceral weight. When an enemy dies in Doom, the player feels the impact of their kill, no matter how many bullets it takes to subdue them, accented by their death animations and the impeccable crunch of the sound design. In Dusk, there’s something paper-thin in the death rattles of enemies, and it’s probably due to the cheap budgetary qualities of indie gaming.

The somewhat ineffectual weight of combat also translates to Dusk’s selection of boss battles, but there is at least an elevated sense of their scope amidst the nameless droves. Typically, the mightier foes of a classic FPS game are at least prompted appropriately when they’re situated in an arena on their lonesome, but their initial preeminence is diminished when they’re then scrambled into the mix of common enemy encounters upon their defeat. It’s almost as if Satan or another eldritch lord has demoted them for their poor performances. Despite attaching health bars to its bosses and preempting their battles with proper introductions, Dusk is ultimately guilty of the same practice. The clanky sex robots are sure to shell the player as harshly as the “Mama” boss they replicate, and the “Intoxigator’s” son shares such a striking resemblance to his father that it makes me wonder if reptiles reproduce asexually. The bosses that Dusk doesn’t relegate to the field are still admirable for their distinctiveness, and I’m not just stating this as an avenue to compliment “Big John’s” comical Arnold Schwarzenegger noises. Dusk genuinely puts more emphasis on milestone baddies more than any of its influences, and the double-featured final bosses greatly exemplify this. No classic FPS boss has required more strafe jumping skill and strategy to conquer than when fighting Jakob, the cult leader behind the menacing sweet nothings echoed into the protagonist’s ears. And since when has the player needed to solve how to expose a boss's vulnerability more than with the Lovecraftian superbeast that follows? I’ve seen critics commenting that these final foes are too undemanding and therefore unfit to serve as the game’s climax, but I ask them to recognize the effort the developers have taken to highlight the significance of these bosses. If an unrelenting challenge is what these people deem as a worthy conclusion, they should’ve stopped after attempting to survive “The Dweller in the Darkness,” an enemy gauntlet that is brutal with a capital umlaut. I understand that most games tend to test the player’s mettle at the final stretch, but this level feels as sadistic as a fraternity hazing ritual.

If it were 1998 and my friend had asked me to test out Dusk, a mod he downloaded on a floppy disc that he pieced together with the assets of popular FPS games at the time like Dr. Frankenstein’s creation, I’d implore him to seek employment at one of these developers with the same compassionate sincerity that Ben Affleck gives to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. Dusk would’ve proved to me that my friend had a profound understanding of FPS mechanics and level design, and what makes both incredibly engaging, while also taking the templates of the older titles he performed surgery on and streamlining all the coarse attributes into an accessible smoothness. Still, the subtle connotations behind the scenario of a hypothetical friend creating this game with digital twigs and glue allude to a certain amateurishness draped over Dusk’s awesomeness. Its specific shortcomings would be more forgivable if it didn’t feel like a regression compared to the presentations of the original FPS lineup. Then again, FPS games with more polished bells and whistles are the Halos and Call of Dutys of the world that I’ve professed bore me to tears, so I’d ultimately rather indulge in the energy of earnestness. At the end of the day, did Dusk allow me to kick ass and chew bubblegum, sans the bubblegum, like its equally chapped predecessors? You bet your sweet ass it did!