Taking a look at new releases on Steam I saw something that caught my eye. Severed Steel as a name certainly stands out, and when I clicked on the listing, the visual style and gameplay also captured my interest – horrible electronic music aside. So, how is this indie? Is it all style, no sizzle?
Story
There isn’t too much to the story: you wake up with a missing arm and a burning need for vengeance. You know, the usual. It’s told in quite a nice comic book panel style. Simple and straightforward, it’s all a game like this needs.
Music
I’m going to get this out of the way quickly, I abhorred the music. Now, full disclosure: I am not a fan of electronic music in any sense, so I was pretty biased against this and the first thing I did was to mute the music. I imagine if you do like electronic music, it might be perfectly fine, maybe even good. Your mileage may vary.
Gameplay
Now, this is where I think the game shines. Though it is by no means flawless, it goes for a specific aesthetic and mainly pulls it off. Kinda Matrix-like and I really dig it. You can wall run, slow down time, kick, slide, and dive in the air. All very cool. The campaign consists of rather short levels that take 3-5 minutes to complete, with simple objectives such as destroying a generator and then making your escape. This may sound very mundane but given the stylized nature of the gameplay, the multiple difficulty settings, and how difficult the game is overall, it’s much more fun than I expected despite its somewhat generic nature. This is thanks to how the game can make you feel like such a badass, with my only complaint being that there’s just a bit of an over-reliance on slow-mo.
That said, It feels really good to go into a wall run, slow down time, pop a headshot, then double jump into a dive, dodging bullets and taking as many enemies down as possible. There is decent weapon variety, even if enemy variety is a bit sparse. There’s also an arcade mode with multiple mutators. It’s suggested that you complete the campaign before tackling arcade mode, and while finishing the campaign does give you some nifty unlocks, it’s not essential to play this mode.
You unlock levels in arcade mode by earning points and the points you earn from successfully clearing a level carries over. Levels also have challenges you can complete in addition to mutators that help keep things fresh. It’s a nice little way of just enjoying being a slow-mo badass while also killing a little time.
There’s also a momentum system for you to master. Certain movements such as sliding downstairs increases momentum and there’s a little bit of depth here if you want to go for top scores and perfect runs, which is great as it adds a bit to the longevity. There’s also a level editor mode currently in beta and I cannot wait to see what the community will come up with. This may solve the game’s replayability issue entirely.
Visuals
The game achieves a unique visual flair through its use of colours, even if the graphics are very simple. It also supports RTX reflections and DLSS. DLSS implementation in this game is actually pretty good, which I imagine is due to the simplistic nature of the graphics. The RTX reflections don’t add too much, but they are nice to witness in slow-mo, and performance on a 3080 is actually very good, staying above 60 FPS for the most part with no DLSS at 1440P, and generally 80-140 with DLSS on quality. Although, my 8700K got quite hot, peaking at 81°C during loading…
Conclusion
Severed Steel is a great little indie title that offers a bit of Matrix-like gunplay and movement. It’s relatively unique and tries to do something a bit different amongst a slew of generic trend-chasing indies. One downside is that it’s rather short on the campaign front and the price is a bit too steep, keeping that in mind. On Steam, it’s priced at £17.54 at the time of this writing with 10% off, or 26.09 CAD and 22.49 USD. It’s not grossly overpriced, but it shouldn’t be more than £15, in my opinion. A minor nitpick, I know, but pricing is key and I think they may have been a tad too optimistic here.
All that being said, it is a very fun game and if you are in the mood for some Matrix-y action, or just love wall jumping, sliding, and slow-mo headshots, then this is definitely the game for you.