Muka

A retro boomer shooter that starts the night Chernobyl blows

MUKA is a retro boomer shooter built like the dark PC shooters of the late 1990s. Fast, grim and mean. Low light, loud guns, levels that hide things from you, and violence that stays on the floor. The light is raytraced, and the darkness is something you play with.

From Chernobyl all the way home

A technician from Plzeň goes to Chernobyl for a safety test with a crate of beer as a gift. The test is delayed, the crate gets opened and the Russians add vodka. At 1:23 reactor four blows. Moscow says nothing happened and starts looking for a saboteur. A foreigner who got the crew drunk is perfect.

The way out leads through Pripyat, a hospital full of things that used to be patients, the reactor itself and the railway, and back home to Czechoslovakia: Prague Castle at night, the Art Nouveau halls of the main station, Karlštejn. "Muka" is Czech for torment. Here it's the hangover, the radiation and a guilt nobody will admit exists.

Light and darkness

The lighting is raytraced, and it's part of the gameplay. Enemies see you by how lit you are. Shoot out a bulb and the corridor goes black for them and for you.

Guns, gore and things that break

Fast movement with bunny hopping. You start with a pitchfork and a vz. 52 pistol and end up with more than 20 weapons, from shotguns and a hairspray flamethrower to a Tesla gun, a minigun and an atomic bomb. Bodies come apart where you shoot them, and what's left stays where it fell. Enemies flank and lay down suppressing fire: soldiers in gas masks, mutated dogs, rats and spiders, radioactive firemen, a mad surgeon and a granny with a pram full of explosives.

Crates, glass, lamps and propaganda posters break into planks, shards and sheet metal. And the levels keep secrets: hidden places behind wardrobes, vent fans and walls only an explosion opens, and one super secret in every level.

More than the campaign

Overtime throws waves of enemies at you with a daily leaderboard. There's deathmatch against bots and a whole pile of unlockable minigames: a dodgem derby against drunk soldiers, a bicycle downhill, football, a hand car ride, a climb, and a piano recital where you play Kalinka for drunk soldiers who shoot when you miss a note.