3 hours ago
5
Here's hoping the endboss is robot Hitler
Wolfhound is a game that I've kept my eyes on for quite some time, listing it on both our 2025 and 2026 most anticipated lists. While an exact release date for this retro-inspired indie is still forthcoming, indications hint that it may arrive at the tail end of this year, and a build that I've recently played provided more reasons to be excited.
The sophomore effort from indie developer Bit Kit, Wolfhound is similar to Metroid, but with a solid helping of Wolfenstein thrown into the mix. You play a WWII all-American captain named Chuck Rosetti who's sent to investigate a Bermuda island where the Nazis are doing their usual nasty experiments. Your plane gets shot down on the way over, and you end up in a lovingly-designed 8-bit jungle with all manner of foes hunting you down, including zombies, killer bees, sentient slimes, and retrofuturist mechs.
I say 8-bit as an easy descriptor, since Wolfhound's colour palette, Emulogic-style font, and punchy chiptunes bring to mind memories of blowing on an old cartridge to get it to work. But Wolfhound actually feels more higher-grade than the NES, though it's not quite Super NES level. The Sega Master System and NEC PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 are better comparisons, since the colourful tilesets on display, the smooth movement of Chuck as he hops around, and often-huge enemy sprites are far beyond what Nintendo's first home console could handle. As this is a PC-centric site, I'm also going to compare Wolfhound's visuals favourably to the 1987 PC-88 and MS-DOS classic Zeliard. (An Allied powers salute to you if you've played that one.)
While it might look like yesteryear, Wolfhound possesses level design that radiates modern Metroidvania, with the build I played featuring three areas: the island's jungle, a dank purple mine, and the beginning corridors of the Nazi castle sitting atop it all. The levels are interconnected with the usual intersecting paths, and while Chuck starts with an underpowered peashooter, he'll pick up better weapons like a shotgun soon enough. As you unlock save rooms, you'll also get upgrades like tactical kneepads and gloves, which respectively enable Chuck to perform rolls, cling onto ledges, and enter parts of the map previously inaccessible.
Speaking of modern games, Wolfhound's difficulty level is more along the lines of Hollow Knight than say, Super Metroid. If you're familiar with the wavy motion of the Medusa Heads in Castlevania or those annoying eagles that would swoop down and kill you in the original Ninja Gaiden, you'll know what to expect from the killer bees and slimes that torment Chuck. And yes, these bastards will all saunter towards you when you're navigating tricky platform sections, knocking you to your death more often than not.
I saw the GAME OVER screen much more than I expected over the course of my four hour demo playthrough, but I also never broke my desk in frustration, as Wolfhound feels fair despite its toughness. While Bit Kid's previous effort Chasm was a randomly generated roguelite, every platform that Chuck traverses has been deliberately laid out, meaning that the levels feel more surmountable the more you play, as long as you keep pattern recognition and timing in mind.
The same goes for sticking ammo into your firearms. In an interesting decision, Chuck has unlimited ammo for his base pistol, but can only fire a certain number of times before he has to reload a clip. Figuring out when to time that reload is key to surviving against the foes in your path and tackling the larger-than-life bosses, which are good fun and ranged from a giant spider to a drill tank piloted by an Indiana Jones-style Nazi Unteroffizier.
As this was still a work-in-progress version of Wolfhound, there were minor areas for improvement that I noticed. While the reload mechanic was novel, I suspect that some might struggle with its rhythms, especially for the heavier weapons. Chuck's ammo wasn't unlimited for the bolt-action rifle and shotgun that I found in the demo, and the game forces you to load up a new magazine before you can pick up extra rounds you find on the ground. This was probably done to discourage ammo-hoarding, but felt slightly unintuitive.
Chuck also gets grenades that do a wonderful tonne of damage, but it would've been helpful to see some kind of arc trajectory for where he was going to throw them. I often chucked them in the wrong direction by accident and succeeded in blowing myself up more than once, much to the delight of the Axis asshats who were gunning me down.
All in all, though, playing Wolfhound transported me back to the olden days of sitting in front of a CRT and a beige box monitor with my brother, with the two of us gripping our controllers tight as we tried to make a little more progress in an ultra hard game. If you're nostalgic for that era and long to see what a 2D Wolfenstein might look like, put Wolfhound on your list as one to watch out for.
English (US) ·