Strafe is the goriest, most realistic shooter of 1996

Children, avert your eyes

I am tempted to just post the email we got about Strafe (stylized as STRAFE®), because it is a masterpiece of videogame marketing. With phrases like “not for the faint of heart” and “we understand if our game is too realistic and violent for your readers,” it leads to the game’s website that feels incredibly appropriate for the title. Make sure you click “No” at the primitive age gate.

I remember sitting in my sixth grade technology class and building websites just like that one, complete with scrolling text, tables with thick borders, and low fidelity animated GIFs. It really takes me back. So congratulations to the developer are in order; I probably would have ignored this if it were not for the nostalgia-heavy website and over-the-top description.

As far as the game goes, it sounds like a decent concept, though it seems pretty early in development still. As a procedurally generated single-player shooter, one of the mechanics that the team has dealt with is helping to keep the player from getting lost in the randomized series of rooms. The way Strafe does that: paint the walls red with absurd blood spurts to keep track of previously trodden ground. Sorry, not absurd; “hyper realistic graphics and gameplay.”

Any looking for a more modern or informative presentation of Strafe may prefer the vastly inferior dev blog.