Selaco

Selaco will kick you in the teeth and make you enjoy it. It's a shockingly complicated game built off GZDoom, featuring intense gun battles against scarily intelligent enemies, plenty of customization options, and numerous secrets to uncover. It's unforgiving and ruthless, but it's still fun at the end of the day. It might be missing the other 2 chapters of its campaign, but the chapter included as of February 2026 can take you 7-8 hours on a first run. It balances most aspects well, from its length to its shooting to its puzzle solving. Selaco is set aboard the titular space colony years after an extinction-level event on Earth. You play as Dawn, an officer in Selaco's security force known as ACES. While recovering from a leg injury at a hospital, Dawn comes under attack by an unknown military force massacring the citizens of Selaco. Against overwhelming odds, she dons her combat suit and fights to link up with surviving ACES members, battling an increasingly advanced enemy in locales like a solar research lab or a ruined city street. Selaco might be built off Doom, but it's closer to FEAR or Trepang2. Every gunfight is a desperate struggle where one false move will kill you. Enemies are extremely aggressive and very intelligent, communicating about your position and strategizing on how to kill you. They'll flank you, throw grenades to force you out of hiding, bait you into their lines of fire, and more. To top it off, their "invasion tier" increases as you progress through the game, giving them enhanced stats or new abilities like deploying shields. Enemy variety ranges from standard soldiers to flying "Siegers" and explosive drones. Though Selaco has elements of boomer shooters, like obscure secrets and heavy usage of sprites, it plays like a modern FPS. You can slide using Shift to avoid gunfire, and you can jump while sliding to greatly extend your distance covered. You can aim your guns with right-click or replace that feature with other upgrades, like dual-wielding your SMGs or loading a slug round into your Shotgun. You have separate health and armor meters, and your can regenerate up to 35 health when you fall below that limit. Upgrades for health points can be found alongside credits, weapon parts, melee damage boosts, and more. You can carry every weapon in the game at once, too. Selaco isn't an immersive sim, and it pokes fun at that genre a few times, but it offers a lot of options for tackling enemies. Aside from ammo scarcity problems in the first few sections, you'll have plenty of ammunition to spare for your weapons. Stealth isn't an option (aside from rare chances to one-tap unaware enemies with melee hits), but you can often choose when and how to start engagements. Setting landmines in cramped hallways, blocking chokepoints with props to force enemies down certain routes...hey, [b]you[/b] didn't ask for this invasion, so anything goes! There's a lot to praise about Selaco, especially the music and enemy banter. The biggest problems I have for it are with the difficulty and story. Whatever your typical difficulty is for a shooter - lower it one setting for Selaco. This game is [i]hard[/i]. It can be painfully difficult at times, especially when throwing frustrating enemies like Siegers alongside powerful ones like Juggernauts in wide-open areas. I had to skip one fight by stacking boxes simply because I didn't have the ammo to beat it, and the dozen or so attempts I made all ended in death. Selaco can still be a fun challenge on lower difficulties, so don't get fixated on plowing through on whatever your current setting is. It isn't worth it. The story of Selaco basically goes nowhere. There are a ton of datapads containing lore about the setting, but the basic plot isn't addressed, and the 1st chapter ends on a cliffhanger. You never even learn the name of the invading aliens or why they're attacking Selaco! I know that the campaign is incomplete, but the sheer lack of answers given is a letdown. At least a few of the Datapads could have been used to shed more light on the story or the reasons why certain events are happening. It was a wasted opportunity to have so little storytelling happen in the 1st chapter. Those gripes aside, Selaco is a great game. It will scratch that itch for a challenging shooter where your enemies are smart and pull no punches. I enjoyed the weapon variety and how unique the upgrades could get. Aside from a confusing section about dealing with electrified water about 1/3rd into the game, the level design makes sense and flows well. The voice acting is great, the combat never stops being thrilling or intense, and the upgrade system makes exploration fun. I would recommend it on sale.