Severed Steel
This indie FPS is a cut above
PC, PS4
Matt Larrabee had been teaching computer science to middleschoolers for years when he came up with the idea for Severed Steel. Having picked up an assortment of development skills over time, he began to think about “what my dream game would be,” considering elements from a variety of games he’d loved since childhood. Now we’ve played it, it’s hard to credit the notion that it all came together while Larrabee was on a long, leisurely bike ride; the action here is lean, exciting and blisteringly fast. This is a short, sharp shock of an FPS, one that clearly benefits from having been stripped back from its original form.
Formerly called Impact – until Larrabee realised another game on Steam shared that title, so it had to go – the game was very different at first. “When it started, I pictured these large, sprawling worlds, like Half-Life or Bioshock style, with a lot of physical objectives and puzzles,” he says. “But as time went on, testers were like, ‘The combat’s where it’s at – just give us more of that.’”
Those testers, on this evidence, were right. Combat has pace, and a combo system that incentivises replays. We’re reminded of the breach-and-clear focus of Ground Shatter’s interestingly flawed Rico, as you kick open doors before taking out the guards inside. But the rooms are larger here, and you won’t get far by methodically advancing through them. Rather, you need to be in constant motion, wall-running, diving and sliding to avoid incoming fire. Movement lines let you know you’re mid-stunt, and so can’t be damaged; meanwhile, you can squeeze the left trigger to enter slow-motion, giving you more time to refine your aim for a score-boosting headshot. And to keep your bullet-time equivalent topped up, you’ll need to keep dealing damage. In other words, if you want to slow things down, you can’t afford to slow down.
FEAR is a clear touchstone, as is Criterion’s Black. A less obvious influence is Half-Life mod The Specialists, which Larrabee credits as a significant inspiration, while nodding to Superhot’s weapon-throwing mechanics, and Mirror’s Edge’s parkour. Yet it feels distinctly its own thing. That’s partly down to its one-armed protagonist, Steel: without the ability to reload, she must grab guns from her opponents, whether sliding them out from their holster as she skids past in slo-mo, or grabbing them as they’re flung out by a falling guard who’s just taken a volley of SMG fire to the gut.
This is a revenge mission of sorts, then, with Steel fighting back against the megacorporation responsible for abandoning her after the accident that caused her injury. “There’s certainly a trope with [FPS] heroes of generic tough guys that gets boring after a time, so I definitely wanted to explore different ideas about interesting personalities,” Larrabee says. But it was partly a mechanical decision, too. “It hit me while fiddling with the game that reloading is boring, so what about making a character where reloading wouldn’t be an option for them?”
That in turn led to a shift in focus, as Larrabee refined the control scheme to make it more inclusive. “It struck me that if someone with one arm is starring in the game, it would be pretty weird if someone with one arm couldn’t play it,” he says. “From initial testing it seems to work but it’s definitely something we want to explore more.”
It’s a thoughtful refinement in a game that feels instinctive in its moment-to-moment play, as you slide and dive around these compact environments, shattering windows with your feet and guns before launching yourself through them. With speed and style to spare, there’s a chance Larrabee’s dream game could well be yours, too.
“What about making a character where reloading wouldn’t be an option?”