Image: Perfect Random

While I've always bounced off the more hardcore PvP iterations of the genre, there's something to be said for extraction shooters as a single-player affair. SULFUR has been on my regular playlist since it rolled out into early access exactly two years ago today. It's a hideously compelling roguelike FPS dungeon crawl through a weird, haunted world of ghouls, goblins and witches, each successful run bringing back a pile of loot to hoard in your personal stash to be wagered on your next trip out. Die, and your gear is lost with you.

There are easier difficulty settings if the thought of losing your stuff is a bit too much, but Sulfur is a surprisingly forgiving game, and even if you're only decent at FPS games, you'll find yourself with mountains of gear to pick from each run. And what gear it is - the world of Sulfur is very silly, like a gothic Adventure Time. The guns here are frequently just absurd. Almost realistic, but gone wrong somehow.

You've got a belt-fed shotgun that charges up many shells at once to fire in one blast. You've got a .50 Caliber sniper rifle that you load by sliding the magazine down the entire length of the gun like a crossbow. You've got an assault rifle with two diagonally-mounted magazines that it alternates bullets from. You've got a folding pistol hidden inside a lighter that loads teensy-tiny magazines.

And all of these can be customized and mutated with spells and modules. Convert a revolver to fire slow sniper bullets that bounce off the floor then explode? Sure, why not - the reload animations even change to show the oversized bullets.

While V1.0 finally puts a neat little bow on Sulfur's main story and adds some nice quality-of-life stuff (including a proper quest log), the game has been enough of a success for developers Perfect Random to already be drawing up plans for the future. The two big things they've got cooking are online co-op (which I can see being great fun) and possible expansions.

For those who played the update a few weeks ago, there's not a HUGE amount of new stuff, with v1.0 here being treated as a final polish-and-tuning release, but that makes this the best place to start. That's not to say that this is a small update either. The patch notes stretch on forever - they've been really fine-tuning the balance here and focusing on making it the shiniest version of the game it can be.

There are a few new bits, including some new enchantment spells and refined melee combat, but again, this one's story was wrapped up a while back. And once that's done, there's an endless mode, of course. This one's a beefy game for sure, and I've lost a good couple dozen hours to it already, with the potential to spend FAR more.

Sulfur is out now for £24.50/$30, finally at its full price for once. Expect regular discounts though - the game was a mere £8/$10 just a couple of weeks ago. It's also available in a ridiculous 52 discount bundles, so if you own just about any cool indie game of the past few years, you'll probably be able to get a few bucks off. Other stores do have it going significantly cheaper, too.