Fancy some blood-soaked first-person carnage? Blood Reaver blends old-school shooter sensibilities with dark fantasy—and lets you make life miserable for demons with up to three friends.

Dear Blood Reaver, I’ll admit I had my doubts at first. Why? Because your developer, Hell Byte Studios, clearly knows the marketing playbook by heart. You were described as a co-op shooter somewhere between Call of Duty and Sker Ritual. That’s the kind of keyword soup that makes me break out in a cold sweat—especially Call of Duty, whose last good entry came out in 2005 (at least in my book).

But hey, being a games journalist, I gave the trailer a look anyway (see below), and it actually won me over. I’m pretty fed up with dark fantasy at this point, but Blood Reaver does at least let me shoot my way through it. And it looks the part, too: grimy visuals, chunky guns, and blood flying everywhere give the whole thing some lovely old-school Painkiller vibes.

Better yet, the game is still due out this month, even if only in Early Access. "This month," by the way, is the official release window; Hell Byte Studios apparently doesn’t want to nail down a specific date just yet.

Alone or with four players against the demon spawn

I mentioned Painkiller—that FPS classic from People Can Fly—very deliberately earlier. Blood Reaver isn’t an arena shooter or a horde shooter, but it does borrow that demonic dark-fantasy aesthetic and sic waves of hell-creatures on you. So yes, calling it a wave shooter feels fair enough; similar to Galactic Vault, another first-person shooter that only just came out.

As touched on already, Blood Reaver is a single-player shooter with a co-op mode for up to four players total, all of them happily waving around oversized firearms. To that end, there are four heroes on offer: Artemis, Saxon, Edward, and Wren. They all belong to an ancient order called—the height of originality, I know—the Blood Reavers, who’ve been battling the forces of Hell for thousands of years. The lads have stamina, I’ll give them that.

Then again, they’re also cursed warriors meant to uncover the order’s forgotten history and stop the demonic invasion. Whether the single-player side includes anything resembling a campaign or a proper story isn’t clear from the press material. The co-op mode is only described in broad terms as well, and it seems to boil down to surviving demon waves for as long as possible.

How about a little blood magic on top?

Blood Reaver doesn’t just shove the usual firearms into your hands, including heavy explosive weaponry. No—if you really want to lean into the game’s morbid streak, you’ll also get to use blood magic. On top of that, there are deck-like in-run buffs (the Deck of Fates), weapon upgrades via the "Blood Infuser," secrets, and lore collectibles.

The battles play out across several maps that still haven’t been described in detail, each with its own challenges. According to the devs, the initial Early Access build will include 3 maps, 12 blood-magic abilities, Steam achievements, and leaderboards. For now, you’ll only be able to buy Blood Reaver on Steam.