Kvark demands you escape a secret underground complex
Turns out "any means necessary" just means blasting dudes and pulling levers.
I enjoyed my seven hours with Kvark. It’s got lots of great set dressing, tons of places to run around, an ever-growing list of enemies, and a massive arsenal of weapons. But I don’t know if everyone’s going to like it. It’s not a Half-Life clone, a Quake-like, or a... Duke-like? (People say that, right?) Instead, it’s just a never-ending series of hubs and hallways to blast enemies in until the credits roll.
Unless you strictly want to clear rooms, Kvark quickly wears thin. Without puzzles to break up the pacing or unique set pieces to anchor the maps, the gameplay loop feels incredibly flat—and pressing 'F' on useless environmental objects doesn't fix that.
On paper, a shooter that keeps its foot on the gas sounds ideal, but Kvark proves that non-stop action can eventually backfire. Sometime’s it’s three enemies in a room, other times it’s four. Then you turn another hallways and boom—exact same trolly problem. The game never really switches this up, in fact it doesn’t really like to switch anything up. A door is always locked and you always need to find a way to unlock. That’s the golden rule here and won’t ever be challenged across this three episode campaign.
What’s missing are the essential palette cleansers that define the genre’s greats. In classic shooters from yesteryear, simple puzzles, navigation challenges, or quiet moments of exploration aren’t just filler—they are structural design choices meant to give the player a micro-reset. Kvark uses exploring ‘wrong turns’ to gain ammo, health and these little chunks of a radioactive substance that lets you unlock perks. as these moments. At the end of each level, you’ll be informed of all the secret areas you missed and to the opposite of my surprise, the spot under the stairs was almost always one of those secrets.
On the skill tree upgrades, to be honest they felt a little unnecessary. Most of them have an imperceptable impact on gameplay like +5% damage dealt or +10hp. These things are meaningless in a with as many ammo/health pickups as this. One perk gave you a 1% chance of an enemy exploding after being shot. I burned through probably a a couple thousand rounds of ammo after purchasing this one and never once was I certain that the perk caused any gibbing. Imagine shooting at three enemies at the same time and one of them happens to die a little quickly—that’s the whoopdie-do moment of this perk in action.
I did really enjoy the level design in this one. All the maps have a good ebb and flow to them were you don’t need to question if you’re backtracking or not, nor do you have to wonder if you missed anything. They all have a decent mix of verticality as well, which adds a bit of depth as to how fights can play out. As for platform, our main character has the most minuscule jump I think I’ve ever seen in a boomer shooter, and the fact that every you can jump on almost requires a crouch jump is… well, it’s kind of funny reading Steam reviews that compain about this. I don’t have a problem with crouch jumping but some people certainly thing it’s the worst thing you can do with your thumb and pinky.
We don’t have enough games that ask you to run through an underground complex and packed with visually interesting set dressing, they ultimately feel more like combat playgrounds than real, cohesive places. The layout is clearly built around combat geometry—designed to give you and the enemies space to maneuver—rather than immersing you in a world with a distinct structural identity. Because the environments don’t do much to tell a story or ground you in a specific reality, the various hubs and hallways quickly begin to bleed together into one continuous, blurry corridor.
I still think this game was lacking in any striking set pieces games like this are known for. The most you’ll experience is a couple timed explosives where the game becomes a wave shooter. No giant green tentacle monsters coming out of the floor, no over powered enemies blocking progression. Each episode does end in a boss fight but I only enjoyed one of the three because of its creativity. Not to spoil it, but it kind of reminds me of Motorslice. Every one of them is a classic dump and dodge—fire everything you’ve got while dodging attacks. Pretty generic stuff.
Ultimately, the game falls into the trap of prioritizing quantity over genuine curation. I get the feeling the devs did a ‘make as we go’ maneuver with release, as they used the Early Access model to publish episodically. It’s a shame because the final episode is clearly the most varied and realized. It’s also shown off a lot in the games marketing which I’d argue skewed what I thought this game was going to be when I bought it.
Still, it’s a pretty enjoyable experience if you just want to turn your brain off and blast through a giant complex. I’m a little burned at how much of this game takes place in the same underground looking areas, but I guess in the future I’ll just refer to these under performing titles as Kvark-likes.