Today marks the 30th anniversary of Quake... It feels like the perfect excuse to talk about a project I've been quietly working on for quite some time.

So... meet Guntlet.

Now, before anyone jumps to conclusions, yes, it's an arena shooter at its core. But whenever I call it a Party Shooter and there's a reason for that.

Like a lot of you, I grew up spending countless hours on Quake and the games it inspired throughout the 2000s and 2010s. I have incredible memories of LAN parties, voice chats, making lifelong friends and staying up way too late playing "just one more match" with the boys.

Looking back at it, they were our meeting place. Some people met at the mall. Some went to the park. We met on a server. We'd laugh, joke around, pull off ridiculous plays and just enjoy hanging out together. Nobody cared about climbing ranked ladders or sweating every single match. We were there because it was fun.

That's the feeling I want Guntlet to bring back.

The game is built on classic arena shooter foundations, but instead of rewarding only raw skill, it also rewards putting on a show. Guntlet takes place inside a brutal televised sport where every arena is surrounded by a live audience watching the carnage unfold. The crowd reacts to everything you do and putting on a show is just as important as getting kills.

Pull off stylish mid air shots, Rocket jump across the arena, send an entire pile of corpses flying with a well placed explosion! Make the audience lose their minds. Because sometimes the coolest player isn't the one with the best aim.

The game runs on HyperCube Engine, (aka my engine, we'll talk about it later), and one of my favorite features is something that started as a technical experiment is Permanent Corpses and Stains. Meaning Bodies don't disappear. Blood doesn't magically clean itself up.

Matches slowly transform the arena into an absolute disaster, with hundreds of corpses piling up, permanent blood stains covering the floor and explosions sending body parts everywhere. The longer a match goes, the more it tells the story of everything that happened before.

I just think that's pretty cool.

Another feature I'm really excited about is the level editor. Instead of relying on complicated tools, maps are built by placing cubes, very much like Minecraft. If you've spent time building in Minecraft then creating custom arenas should feel immediately familiar.

As for development itself, HyperCube is mostly finished now. I'm still polishing and optimizing parts of it, but the engine and editor are in a really solid place. Right now my focus has shifted toward gameplay systems and creating the game's actual content.

Ironically, the hardest challenge hasn't been programming. It's been making the 3D assets. I'm definitely a programmer pretending to be a 3D artist, and it shows. That's also why everything you see right now uses placeholder visuals. The final art direction hasn't been decided yet, so don't get too attached to the current look.

The plan is to release a playable version on Itch.io sometime during 2026. My goal is simple: let people play it, gather feedback and see if the idea resonates. If people enjoy it enough, I'll keep expanding it and bring it to Steam.

One thing I can already say with confidence, though, is how happy I am with HyperCube's movement. After spending so much time tweaking acceleration, jumping and every tiny movement value imaginable, I've reached the point where no other FPS feels as good as Guntlet does. I genuinely love how it feels to move around in Guntlet. While my goal is not to make an esport game, just the movement alone feels worthy of being one.

At the end of the day, I don't want players finishing a match asking, "Who won?"
I want them asking, "Did you see what just happened?"

This is only Devlog #001, and it's not ready yet but I'm excited to finally share this project with you all.

More soon and if you'd like to follow Guntlet's development, consider following this subreddit. I'd love to have you along for the ride.