For all their excellence, Half-Life and Half-Life 2 share one significant shortcoming: there’s not enough blood. The story is tight, the levels are fantastically designed and built, and the physics-driven set pieces, especially the collapsed railway bridge during Highway 17, are all spectacular. But Valve’s shooters need more nastiness. FEAR, by Monolith, has this in spades. And of course Doom, and its 2016 reboot, and Doom Eternal, bring the bloodshed to almost comical levels. But if you want an FPS that looks, feels, and plays like Half-Life, but with more gleeful brutality, you need Selaco. A throwback boomer shooter with almost spotless Steam reviews, it’s just been totally transformed with a new campaign, fresh combat mechanics, and even some ARPG elements, all for free.
On board the eponymous space station Selaco, you play Dawn, a high-ranking security officer who’s convinced that her employers are up to something evil. Before she can crack the case, however, Selaco is invaded by armed goons intent on smashing the whole place into dust. It’s fast, furious, and fizzing with glorious gore and destruction effects. Take the narrative focus and level design of Half-Life and splice it with FEAR’s violence and combat, and you get Selaco, an FPS game that wears its inspirations on its sleeve but still feels distinctive and unique.
Of all the Selaco reviews posted to Steam so far, a huge 93% are positive. Now, a sizable free update transforms the shooter into something much more playful and expansive. Primarily, developer Altered Orbit has introduced an entirely fresh way to play the campaign. There are new enemy variants, new random spawns and dynamic encounters, and weapons and other gear are now governed by an ARPG-style drop system, so what you get from each battle is more variable. There are also new weapon traits for different effects and damage types and you can activate a randomizer to make your next playthrough completely different from your last.
More upgrades are available, gun sounds have been reworked and improved, and every single weapon has been adjusted and rebalanced. Enemies now react realistically to being shot in the legs and melee attacks have increased lunge distance. Selaco’s goons are smarter now, too, and their patrol behaviors have been improved significantly.
This reworked version of the Selaco campaign was meant to arrive in late 2025 or early 2026, but Altered Orbit has brought it right forward and released it now in beta form. Alongside all the other improvements, the developer admits it “went nuts on the audio design for bullet impacts and whizzes.”
The new story material for Selaco was supposed to be launched in December, but it’s been pushed back slightly to either January or February. Nevertheless, Altered Orbit says that development of the game’s second chapter is proceeding as planned. If you haven’t played Selaco yet, as well as the new version of the campaign, there’s a lot more still to come. And if that’s not enough to convince you, the shooter is now available for $18.74 / £15.74, its lowest price ever. Just head here.
Otherwise, try some of the best old games, if you miss the heyday of the boomer shooter, or perhaps the best new PC games available today.
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