Image: Eschatology Entertainment & 4Divinity

Much as I'd like it to be, I do not think that Guns of Eschaton is going to be a big mainstream hit. It's a real looker for sure. A first-person shooter souls-like set in an apocalyptic Weird Western world, but if you think you're going to just be whipping out your revolver and downing six hombres from hell with six squeezes of the trigger, you've got another thing coming. It is, however, extremely compelling gaming for a particular brand of sickos (it's me, I'm the sickos), and you can see if its unusual flavor of rot-gut works for you, as developers Eschatology Entertainment just rolled out a beefy demo.

See, the vast majority of enemies in Guns of Eschaton are either undead, demonic, or otherwise sorta weird, and a bullet to the face is going to just piss most of them off. This is especially bad given that you are rather fragile, and your old-timey guns take an age to reload. The heart of the combat here is your book of monster-lore. Looking towards a target and hitting the button for it brings up an illustration showing you what you're fighting, and highlighting several weak points along with numbers on them.

Hit those points in that specific order, and you'll do critical damage, probably putting down the enemy straight away unless it's a mini-boss or tougher. You can also deal extra damage by parrying oncoming bullets, bringing up a second pair of spectral arms to take the hit if you tap the button just as you see the flash just before an enemy takes the shot. Countering after that will hurt, but not as much as completing that multi-target ritual sharpshooting. This is a game about being a ritualist trick-shooter, not just a gunslinger, and that's rare to see in any game.

It makes for a flow unlike any I've really seen before in a shooter. The world's structure here is firmly souls-like, with bonfires, resources dropped on death, and enemies respawning when you rest. But the combat here is some of the slowest but tensest FPS gameplay I've ever experienced, and it's a hell of an environment to creep through, picking off one enemy at a time, squaring off against each one and whittling them down. The demo area has you sneaking around a town literally in the shadow of a colossal demon worm-god, with worm-infested disciples wandering the streets.

Apparently, the game's stellar art is due to the involvement of Viktor Antonov, famous for his work on Half-Life 2, Dishonored, and many other games. He co-founded Eschatology Entertainment in 2022 and did much of the design work on this game before he sadly passed away last year, so this is likely his final work.

There's a steep learning curve here that I don't think that many are going to have the patience to master. I sure died a lot at first before I found my footing and squared away my first few upgrades. But there's just something refreshing about this one. This game isn't just visually bold, but it's trying something fully weird with its combat, and I'm excited to see how the full game pans out.

The Guns of Eschaton demo is live now on Steam, with the full game due later in the year. No release date yet, but it's not like there are very many months left in 2026.