Kvark [Review]
Fight your way out of a dingy facility in the retro-modern first-person shooter Kvark.
Kvark. Credit: Latest Past / Perun Creative
Kvark, a retro-inspired FPS by Latest Past and Perun Creative, is fresh out of Early Access on Steam after its initial release on the platform in June 2023. Set in the 1980s in a fictional version of the Czech Republic, the game has the player escape from the underground power and research facility where they are “employed” without wages and kept in a cell. Kvark has a great sense of style and a compelling setting but has a frustratingly high difficulty thanks to its unforgiving checkpoint system.
Kvark plays like you’d expect from most retro-modern FPS games. You run, jump, crouch, shoot with various weapons, and solve puzzles to open your way. You’ll fight for your life as guards in hazmat suits, sentry bots, mutated animals, and zombie-like radioactive experimental subjects try to murder you.
Kvark. Credit: Latest Past / Perun Creative
Gun-feel in the game is nice, with a decent variety of punchy weapons. Ammo isn’t plentiful, so it’s important to take shots carefully. While the game supports controllers, features like aim assist are not yet implemented, which could be one reason the game was challenging for me. I played on my Steam Deck connected to a TV.
The enemies, however, have excellent aim, which made the game especially unforgiving, thanks to limited checkpoints. Kvark doesn’t allow you to save manually; saves only happen when you find tape-driven data computers that don’t appear frequently. If you die, this is where you’ll respawn.
Kvark. Credit: Latest Past / Perun Creative
Even with its retro graphics, the game’s setting has plenty of atmosphere, thanks to the developer’s attention to detail and effective lighting. The believably designed environments include some nice touches, such as workplace posters. Beside the posters, you’ll find scattered notes and recordings illuminating the game’s story.
Kvark is an atmospheric, challenging shooter best played with a mouse and keyboard. The developers have stated that better controller-based gameplay will be added to the game when its console versions are released, and I look forward to checking the game out again when that happens.
Kvark is available now on Steam for PC.
Overall Score: 6/10
Played on: Steam Deck
