Unyielder feels like a boss-rush version of Doom Eternal and that's rad

The show floor is the great equalizer. It doesn’t matter how big your booth is, how well-known your game is, or how many setups you have. If you put something cool on the show floor at PAX West, people will line up to play it. And as I played Unyielder on one of the two setups on the show floor at PAX West, people started lining up behind me. It wasn’t because of me; my play was solid, but not incredible. It’s because Unyielder looks so damn cool. It’s the kind of game you see that makes you say “I want to play that.”

If you’ve never seen Unyielder, imagine a very bright, colorful, cyberpunky, boss-rush version of Doom Eternal. Oh, and it’s also a roguelite. That may sound a little weird, but trust me, it works. My demo for Unyielder started by dropping me into a big room full of weapons and upgrades. After getting my loadout together — I used a revolver, high-powered pistol, and rocket launcher — I chose from a number of temporary upgrades that did things like increase burn damage, increase the drop rate for heavy weapon ammo, or increase my clip capacity at the cost of reload speed. Then it was off to the boss arena.

The first boss I fought was a kind of spider bot that shot lasers and filled the area with missiles, so I had to make sure I was always moving to avoid getting hit. Thankfully, Unyielder has all the movement tools you need to get out of sticky situations. You’ve got a jump, two dashes, a slide, and a grappling hook that can all cancel into and out of one another. It can take a second to get used to, but once you do, you’re constantly on the move, avoiding attacks and positioning yourself to retaliate. At its best, Unyielder’s movement feels like a beautiful dance, with you and the bosses moving in time with one another.

And then there are the guns. Man, do Unyielder’s guns feel good, whether it’s the superb and kinetic reload animations (throwing the bolt on the rifle looks and feels incredible) or the kick when you fire that rocket launcher and the boom of the impact when it hits. I didn’t beat the spiderbot boss on my first try, so on my second, I went back and swapped my loadout for a shotgun, explosive rifle, and rocket launcher. It wasn’t that the other guns felt bad; fanning the hammer on that revolver ruled, and that other pistol felt good to fire. I just hadn’t planned my loadout well and needed a bit more oomph and a little more variety. And when I got it? That spider bot went down hard.

I had about 30 seconds to grab ammo and health, reload my weapons, and choose from some of the upgrades the boss had dropped before a robot wielding a giant hammer jumped into the fray. This is a good time to talk about the other cool thing Unyielder does: you can interrupt certain attacks during their startup animations with melee attacks or shots, and if you do, you’ll stun the boss, leaving them open for counterattacks. Landing a melee hit while they’re in this state triggers a special animation that looks cool, deals massive damage, and drops health and ammo, which you’ll need to stay in the fight.

That second, hammer-wielding boss was much harder than the first. To stay alive, I had to stay moving, interrupt his attacks every chance I got so I could land those big hits and restore my health and ammo, and stay on top of my reloads so I wasn’t dry in key spots. It took a while, but by then I’d found my groove, and he was barely touching me. This is about the time the crowd started to show up.

After he went down, my demo ended. Apparently, there was a secret third boss you could only get to if you hit a certain score, and I was just short. But there were only two demo stations, and I’d seen enough to know developer Trueworld Games was onto something with Unyielder. I’d get that third boss another day. Other people had seen what Unyielder was and wanted a shot at it, and there’s nothing more impressive a game can accomplish than that.

This preview is based on the demo provided by the publisher on the show floor at PAX West 2024.

Will Borger

Contributing Editor

Will Borger is a Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction writer and essayist who has been covering games since 2013. His fiction and essays have appeared in YourTango, Veteran Life, Marathon Literary Review, Purple Wall Stories, and Abergavenny Small Press. His games writing has also appeared at IGN, TechRadar, Into the Spine, Lifebar, PCGamesN, The Loadout, and elsewhere. He lives in New York with his wife and dreams of owning a dog. You can find him on X @bywillborger.