Gravelord Review – One of the Best Boomer Shooters

Boomer shooter fans have had it good lately. Great games like Wizordum, Only Lead Can Stop Them, and Forgive me Father – to name just 3 – have all brought us interesting takes on the genre in recent years. But none have impressed me so much as Gravelord, which manages to grab Doom in one hand and Darkest Dungeon in the other, and crash them together to make one of the most engaging boomer shooters I’ve ever played, with a few caveats of course. 

Gravelord is a first-person shooter that draws heavy inspiration from 90s classics like Doom and Quake, which is something that can be said about almost every game in this retro shooter genre. However, that’s where similarities end, because Gravelord is unique in its concept. You play as Queedo, a gravedigger who happens to be a hulking brute of a man. Unfortunately, he’s not all that smart.

The story of Gravelord starts with Queedo noticing that the people he is burying start coming back to life with the help of a tonic made by someone named Keron Husk, who is the proponent of an “anti death” movement sweeping the town of Starham. Keron Husk also happens to be Queedo’s father’s murderer, and so he embarks on a mission to fight the minions of evil, make the dead stay dead, and uncover just what Husk is up to. 

Gravelord has a full modern suite of options that support all resolutions, high refresh rates, and although fairly barebones, the game allows you to adjust everything you need to adjust to get you gibbing zombies smoothly on your PC. The game does away with the overdone pixel art and instead has a more modern, stylised graphical style that those who have played games like Darkest Dungeon will be familiar with. It has a dark and gloomy palette of colours that fits the premise of the game, and the graphics are fantastic and ooze personality. Enemy designs range from zombies to demonic soldiers with buckets on their heads to full on demons and more. So it’s safe to say that while Gravelord does take its cues from retro classics, it doesn’t simply emulate them to capitalize on your nostalgia. Instead, it carves its own unique style and it works very well. 

When it comes to actually playing the game, Gravelord feels amazing to play. The controls are responsive, and your in-game movement is lightning quick. You can aim up and down, as well as just left or right, so it’s a full 3D boomer shooter. Slick is the one word that comes to mind when I think about how to describe playing Gravelord, and that translates into a great moment-to-moment experience. It’s a difficult game, but you feel like you’re in full control at all times. It’s easy to dodge projectiles coming at you with the quick tap of a movement key, and mouse aiming is spot on, so when you succumb to the hordes of undead gunning for you, you have only yourself to blame. 

While Fatbot’s retro shooter might first appear similar to other games in the genre, those with a keen eye will notice a whole host of interesting differences. Gravelord is paced well, and it drip feeds you new abilities each level as you play.  For example, in level 2 you get the spectral shovel. This allows you to press E and make Queedo throw the shovel at one of the blue portals spread throughout the levels, which then teleports you to that location. This makes your fights suddenly even more dynamic as the bullet hell increases. Then, In level 3, you get the ability to double jump. It’s this spread out pacing of new abilities that allows you to master each one instead of just being overwhelmed, and it makes Gravelord feel like more of an adventure that you’re embarking on rather than a shooter to play for 5 minutes at a time.

The major feature that makes Gravelord unique, however, is its tarot card system. As you wander the gloomy streets and tunnels of Starham, you’ll pick up tarot cards that alter your abilities. When you find one of these powers-ups, you’re given a choice of picking one card from a hand of three options. The cards are rated tier 1, 2 or 3 and you can only have one of each tier of card at once. Some of these cards buff your extra damage when low on health, some make enemies drop armor, while others do things like make your bullets set enemies on fire or pierce through them. You’ll periodically encounter these pickups, and you’ll be given the option to swap your equipped cards for other cards you encounter too. This tarot card feature is excellent and adds a really clever take on being able to build out your character to fit your play style. Do you want to tank up with more armour or have better crowd control? The only downside to this feature is that the same cards had a tendency to keep cropping up and the game could do with having a few more cards available to choose from, but hopefully they will add more in an update. More on that later.

Gravelord features your standard coloured keys that we’re used to seeing in Doom-like games that open the corresponding doors to progress, but what surprised me the most was that it also has a very Metroidvania aspect to its levels. You’ll spot items like armour and health in a hard-to-reach place and wonder how to get there, only for you to reach the end of the level and unlock shortcuts that allow you to finally reach that location. The game has lots of narrow alleyways and looping corridors, and it rewards exploration, so the creativity with which Gravelord uses its maps is excellent and some of the best level design I’ve seen in a boomer shooter. On top of that, there are lots of puzzles to solve, like deciphering riddles and turning statues to face the correct direction, or working out which platforms to throw your spectral shovel at to get to find secrets and open new shortcuts. Gravelord, then, is definitely more than just a generic FPS game when it comes to design and how well thought out it is.

Gravelord wouldn’t be complete without collectibles, and I’m happy to say that it features some of the most interesting collectibles I’ve ever encountered in a game. Sprinkled throughout the game’s levels are pages of a comic book that is based on Queedo and the world of Starham. Each page features full artwork and lets you piece together the backstory of the game. These comics have absolutely gorgeous artwork, and I really looked forward to picking up a collectible for once, which isn’t something that I say very often, because I usually don’t care about them. It was fun to stop and read the compelling lore of the universe. These comics are so good that I would actually buy a physical version of them, and I’m not joking.  

The elephant in the room when it comes to Gravelord is that the game is currently in Early Access on Steam. The game will eventually have 3 full episodes that make up the entire game, but right now only episode 1 is available, which is comprised of 8 game levels and a bonus level. Other episodes are set to come at a later date and there is also a level editor being added on full release, but there is currently around 4 to six hours of play time right now based on how hard you find the game and whether you want to chase down its secrets. And when Gravelord is fully released, this should be a comprehensive game that is a sizable length for a boomer shooter. I couldn’t find a roadmap anywhere stating when more episodes will be available, however, Gravelord is exceptionally polished and I can state with a good degree of confidence that the team seems to be taking the game’s development seriously.