Reflex Early Access Preview

Australian developer Turbopixel has a simple, but interesting goal: resurrect the glory days of the arena first-person shooter. As someone who grew up playing the likes of Quake and Unreal Tournament, their promises of a fast-paced multiplayer shooter focused on the fundamentals and precision of the subgenre’s glory days caught my eye. Their game is Reflex, and they’ve made more than a few promises about just what it’s capable of doing. Since Epic confirmed that they are working on a new Unreal Tournament, and other developers are producing games such as the upcoming Toxikk, Reflex will have some stiff competition, so I decided to pick it up on Steam’s Early Access to see if it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Reflex is being developed exclusively for PC, and it shows as soon as I boot up the game. There’s no lobbies, only a server list, and despite the game’s early stage of development, players are already creating their own maps and game types, something that Turbopixel is encouraging. Deciding to keep it simple, I started on basic 8-man Free For All server, figuring it’d be a good place to get my bearings.

The first thing I noticed once I got into the match is that the game is definitely not anywhere near finished. Turbopixel isn’t throwing around words like ‘Alpha’ or ‘Beta’, but Reflex is still in its early stages, and many features are not implemented yet. Every player looks like the same generic robot and the majority of the guns don’t even have their own models yet, instead sharing differently-colored reskins of a simple, box-like shape. The levels themselves are mostly made up of colorless blocks. Don’t let the fact that the game is available for purchase confuse you; it’s still a long way from completion.

Despite this, I was having fun by the time I got my very first kill…which took me nearly a dozen deaths to do. If one is judging Reflex’s similarity to old shooters by the fact that skilled players can utterly crush newcomers without so much as taking a single hit, the game is succeeding wildly. I lost my first few matches horribly, scoring maybe two or three kills to the leader’s thirty, but I was still enjoying myself, and learned a bit about the kind of shooter that Turbopixel is making.

First off, true to the ‘classic’ formula, instead of regenerating health, there are healing and armored pickups scattered about, there’s no crouching or prone position, and you can’t scope – nor do you need to, because every shot fired with every gun has pixel-perfect accuracy. As someone who never liked ADS (aim down sights) or hip-fire mechanics, I was pleased to find myself back in the old habits of learning to bounce projectiles off walls to hit people around the corner, making pinpoint headshots mid-jump with the game’s sniper rifle equivalent (a lightning gun almost identical to Unreal’s), and frantically strafing back and forth during shootouts. The gameplay is fast, frenetic, and already very polished; there’s plenty of fluff missing, but the fundamentals already feel as complete and pristine as any other shooter out there.

By the end of my third or fourth match, I was fairly convinced that I had found a promising new shooter on the horizon, albeit one with which I have a couple quibbles. For one, despite the ability to chain jumps, the height on each is abysmal; characters feel overly heavy in the air, making vertical mobility difficult. I also found the lack of alt-fire modes on each gun surprisingly absent, considering how heavily Reflex borrows from games like Unreal Tournament and Quake in its weapon design. Still, nothing is set in stone, and Turbopixel has a long list of planned features, a few of which can be found at the end of this article.

It’s a bit soon to say if Reflex is going to be everything that I could possibly want and it’s going to be facing some pretty stiff competition in its attempts to bring back the Arena FPS. But after putting a few hours into the game,  I’m already convinced that it’s worth keeping an eye on, and certainly I don’t regret spending the ten dollars to get access now.

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Here’s what they have to say about their game on the Early Access page:

Why Early Access?

“Early access allows us to work with the community while we are developing the game. It allows players to begin making maps, host their own competitions and make frag films while assisting with development costs.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“Reflex will remain in early access as long as it takes to bring the game up to the standard both we and the community expect.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“We will be actively updating the early access version right up until the full version ships.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The current version is very much a prototype. We have a start on solid feeling gameplay, and a proof of concept shown. The game is fully playable in multiplayer, has a multiplayer map editor, replay editor, ffa/duel/tdm gamemodes.

We don’t yet have customizations, bots, stats, matchmaking, multiview, CTF/arena/other gamemodes and training.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“Yet to be decided.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“We’ll be listening to all feedback given by the community to tweak gameplay, add features, and squash bugs. We’ll be involving the community in the map development process, we’ll be prioritising features based on community demand.”