Severed Steel is a modern first-person shooter video game using elements from titles such as Superhot and Get To The Orange Door, while also featuring its own unique mechanics that put a spin on the usual shooter formula. In this fast-paced shooter, play as Steel, a one-armed protagonist with a cannon replacing her missing limb.

In Severed Steel, you will start your journey by waking up at the bottom of Edensys HQ, a mega-corporation with a grand building. With nothing to lose, your objective is to eliminate the CEO of Edensys and escape the complex.

Severed Steel offers two game modes to play through, “Campaign” and “Arcade.” In each mode, you will play through the same levels filled with enemies and unique rooms, each with its own layout and objective.

Throughout the campaign mode, you will continuously elevate towards the top of the compound, encountering harder levels and enemies as you progress. However, in arcade mode, you play through the campaign levels, and you are scored based on your performance and then placed on the leader boards. Arcade mode offers lots of replayability and comes with mutations (score multipliers that alter the gameplay), challenges, as well as a workshop to play community-made levels.

The game also features a destructible environment, slick movement mechanics, interesting weapon mechanics, bullet time, a fitting breakbeat soundtrack, and a simplistic yet beautiful art style. Instead of the usual health bar, you have “luck,” represented by the 4- leaf clover at the side of the screen. Movement is vital to staying alive which is why Severed Steel introduces “stunts” into the gameplay loop to keep you from dying.

Slide downstairs, dive through windows, run on walls, kick down doors–do all of these to keep the flow of the mission and stay alive. With your arm-cannon equipped, you will also create new openings in walls to surprise your enemies and reach the target objective quicker. Reloading is not prominent within Severed Steel due to your disability, instead, you will chain through different weapons dropped by guards found in the levels. Lastly, the game features a bullet time mechanic, the ability to slow down time to position yourself in interesting places or to save yourself from the masses of enemies.

Playing this game feels incredibly smooth. Each level flows nicely and the short length of the game leaves a lot of speedrunning potential for the future. While short as far as time goes, it’s definitely a great game for those looking for new shooters to play.

Severed Steel is out now on Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, and Playstation in the future.