DUSK's crosshair is the glowing tip of a cigar

A self-proclaimed heir to Quake and Blood, David Szymanski's shooter wins over almost everyone — and it takes until the third episode for the faithful and the quitters to finally agree on something.

A crosshair that's the tip of a cigar

In DUSK, the rifle's crosshair is the glowing tip of a cigar. Through it you gauge the distance between you and the backwoods cultist, the possessed militiaman behind the pillar, the thing that lives underground — the very ground the game spends three campaigns digging into.

The store page makes no secret of the debt: the game bills itself as an heir to Quake, Blood and Doom, among other '90s shooters. It's the work of a single person, David Szymanski, and it arrived through New Blood Interactive on October 3, 2019, with a soundtrack composed by metal musician Andrew Hulshult.

The arsenal runs on excess: scythes and swords for close quarters, a crossbow, double-barreled shotguns wielded in pairs, a grenade launcher and a rocket launcher that the store itself calls indispensable — an adjective borrowed straight from the sales pitch. Beyond the three-episode campaign, Endless Survival Mode throws the player against unending waves of enemies, while DUSKWorld carries the fight into an arena multiplayer mode that works across different platforms. The version GOG distributes carries an extra found nowhere else: GOGATIORUM, a store-exclusive map for the endless mode.

Mods of this game on Clairo

• DUSK HD

Each of them requires this game, according to the store itself.

A kinship with Quake that no one denies

Those who wrote in right after release, in October 2019, kept reaching for the same comparison review after review: this is Quake and Blood reborn with little more than shadow and the right kind of noise, a precise aim and a zigzagging run — the sort of flawless movement you feel in your hands without quite being able to put it into words. The atmosphere takes hold in spite of the deliberately crude graphics: more than one player notes that the heavy mood survives levels built from plain blocks, proof that the sound and lighting design carry the weight the polygons don't.

The detail that runs through all of it is always the same small object: the cigar that doubles as a reticle, the one the player lights again after killing a boss — no one explains why it works, they just report that it does. Andrew Hulshult's metal soundtrack draws the same kind of praise, split between the dark ambient stretches and the heavier guitar passages, and it rings a bell for anyone who also plays Painkiller.

One review published in December 2019, months after the launch euphoria, shifts tone at the end: amid praise for the gameplay and the dark atmosphere, that same writer points out that the third episode turns psychedelic and grates — a caveat that looks isolated, yet resurfaces later, under a different byline, from someone who liked the whole game a good deal less.

The point where the third episode collects its due

The one dissenting review the file holds was written in March 2021, long after the launch wave, and it recounts an experience that starts out like everyone else's: the first episode wins you over. From the second on, the account changes shape — it becomes a chore to get through rather than a pleasure to chase. The writer complains about the loose aim, the rifle whose sight shrinks to a single dot, the wall-climbing that jams without warning, and the total darkness the game uses with no flashlight, to the point of becoming an irritation instead of tension.

The sharpest complaint, though, lands exactly where the fans hesitate too: the third episode pushes you to wander aimlessly, guessing at the next step, circling the same corridor without finding the way out — platforming inside a first-person shooter, a task the same writer doubts belongs there at all. Even so, they finished it. Not for pleasure: just to be able to say they had.

Who it works for, and where it stops working

DUSK is for anyone who misses the narrow corridor, the counted ammo and the enemy that appears from behind without warning — anyone raised on Quake and Blood recognizes home the moment the first shot goes off, and the cigar that aims on the player's behalf becomes a gesture of intimacy, not a gimmick. It isn't for anyone who needs a clear pointer to the next step, or darkness that a flashlight click can fix: the game itself pushes the player toward the fright of not knowing where to step, and that's by design, not a flaw in the finish.

The first and second episodes win almost everyone over — it's in the third that the game bets everything, and there it separates those who still want more from those who just want to be done. If you get there and feel the floor vanished on purpose, DUSK kept its promise. If you feel you lost your way by accident, the game has already told you who you are: someone who should have stopped at the second episode.