A little patience to get used to

Before talking about this game’s craziness that breaks the lines between the classic andmodern, I’ll introduce it properly. Nightmare Reaper is a single-player gamer, produced by Blazing Bit Games, its main quest is to explore the nightmares of a woman hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital, while we collect deadly weapons and do a bloodbath with dozens of different monsters, but wait, that’s not all.

Now, properly presented, here our first challenge is to get used to the game graphics and don’t let this affect us, because the main story of the game, the dreams of our character, is a direct inspiration from the classic Doom, scenario, combat style and much more are extremely similar, besides that, the arts follow this pattern and are rude and bad optimized, we can’t criticize that, because this probably was the intention of the developer.




Did you overcome this issue? Well, now you have to get used to different gameplay and learn a lot with this process, this game is full of mini-games for us to win abilities, benefices, and unblock parts (these parts are in the hospital when we are awake) that are going to get you to confuse in the beginning and yet get you curious and turned on the gameplay to complete everything. Just a detail: although is in beta mode, it’s a substantial long game and very challenging with an insane style of combat and destruction.

A huge arsenal

To begin the massacre of the stages of Nightmare, first, we need to sleep interacting with the bed of the psychiatric hospital, this fact about the place is to be able to discover about our character from the medical reports, that has these insane nightmares and even laughs when gets a new weapon or explodes a monster.

After this interaction, we are automatically transported toa new phase (it’s possible to monitor the history’s progression with a board inside the room), a curious fact is that these locals never repeat themselves, so, even with our death, when we return to the same phase, the map will be different, and you’ll need to discover new paths again. Already inside these dreams, besides being able to kick, that is very important to find secret rooms with treasures breaking cracked walls (they don’t break with guns), our first item would be a knife, excellent in the beginning and if you dodge well, you can escape without a scratch and any hit in the first phases.

But, as we advance, the game starts to get serious, the monsters start to get strong and boring, that’s why it’s important to collect and keep a strong weapon, among dozens of options, bazookas, swords, whips, shuriken, magic books, and many others, that’s because we can keep one collected weapon in the map while we sell the others for gold, so choose wisely. Regards the ammunition and the magic power (that is also ammunition, but to magic weapons, like books and staffs), these can easily be collected when we kill the monsters, so you will rarely be unloaded, but here’s a tip: always keep a melee weapon (of short distance, swords and electric saws for example) next to you, it can help a lot.

Mini-games and nostalgia

Besides the main story, that is shots, punches, and bombs, Nightmare Reaper brings mini-games into the gameplay, each one is activated by a command and playable in a type of game boy of our character. Now let’s divide it into parts: the first that we met is identical to Super Mario Bros, yes, the one you probably played on Super Nintendo. In this one we can cover different phases (with that famous path that unblock new parts of the map as we continue) and, when we finish it, we win more benefices like more health, more damage, and others. It’s important to say that is possible to play this mini-game when we buy the phase with golden coins, dropped by monsters of nightmares.

And it didn’t stop here, do you remember Space Wars? Yes, that arcade. So, the second one is exactly like Space Wars, we go through a galaxy between mines, pirates and different maps and phases bonus, in this one we use a different kind of coin, the emerald, in this one is possible to use this item to upgrade our spaceship but also buy buffs for our character. Finally, the last but not least, the third one is a direct reference to Pokémon FireRed / LeafGreen, in which we can capture monsters and use them in battles, as well fight with other “Pokémon” to upgrade our own, these fights are bought with another coin, the Topaz, e they also bring us benefices.


 

And more

As if all that we do in the gameplay were not enough, the hospital in which we are interned is exploitable as we advance in the main story. In the beginning, we are stuck in the room, but as soon as we access the outside corridor, where we find a card that gives us access to this local, after that, the other block part will take us to a door located on the left of this corridor, there we’ll find two new places, one that is useless where the access key would stay and the other with a different function because it is a room with one bed available to us, but this time this won’t take us to the story but to a new game mode, the arena, which we stay in a little map facing different monsters by rounds and trying to get as far as we can before we die.

Continuing, the next part is unblocked and on the down floor, the cafeteria, where we’ll find a collectible item that will give us access to a new map in the arena mode (it’s possible to unblock 4 different), besides, of course, the access key. As you continue, you can unblock all the parts of this creepy place, going through the nightmare phases.



The sound contributes and varies with the environment

Let’s also talk about the sound of the game, during the nightmares, in the insane and extreme combats that make the players go wild, the game plays rock/metal songs produced by Andrew Hulshult and makes the atmosphere go insane, looking like a concert with a lot of screams, and in this case, an all-out slugfest. Not only that, but the developers are also concerned to give different sounds to each part of the game, in the hospital we heard screams and laughs all the time, besides sporadic storms, and the mini-games have sons related to the inspiration of the game, jump, shoots and others sounds.

 

Nightmare Reaper is available for PC, on Stream, and GOG platforms.

We thank the studio PR that provide us with Nightmare Reaper and made it possible to create this content.