Join The Club
I'll keep this brief: I played some Boltgun 2 and I'm still buzzing about it. It's extremely similar to the first Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, but more and different. It could be a perfect sequel.
I already consider the original Boltgun a nearly perfect throwback FPS (or boomer shooter if you prefer) for the way it walks a fine line between modern convenience and '90s sensibilities, so developer Auroch Digital is starting from a great place. Boltgun 2 is more escalation than reinvention: more weapons, more biomes, and double the protagonists.
New to the party is Nyra Veyrath, an Adepta Sororitas battle sister with two signature weapons I got to play with: a crossbow and a flamethrower. Nyra has a springy slide ability on cooldown that she can chain into a big jump that triggers bullet time. Returning space marine Malum Caedo is the more aggressive of the pair—his charge ability lets you plow clean through soft mobs, plus he wields a crowd clearing plasma gun and shotgun.
Auroch is angling its dual protags as a great excuse to replay Boltgun 2 at least once, and I think it'll work as intended. I'll play first as Nyra to test drive the more agile playstyle, but honestly, I just want to use that crossbow more. Bolts fling out of the bow with a heavy, intimidating "thwip", cleaving through every being in its path. A single shot can easily decimate six poxwalkers (a new enemy type for Boltgun) before finding a wall—its long range capability is so great that I hardly missed the comfort of Malum's shotgun.
Her other unique gun in the demo, the flamer, immediately joins the videogame flamethrower hall of fame. When a flamethrower has more in common with a fireman's hose, you've got something special on your hands. Observe:
Playing as Malum is like stepping back into comfortable shoes. His boltgun, shotgun, plasma gun, and heavy bolter are right where I left them (even assigned to the same hotkeys), but with noticeable tweaks—I haven't confirmed this yet, but I swear the shotgun cycles a bit slower while the plasma shoots faster. While I'll happily slay 40,000 more chaos knights with these ol' reliables, I hope the rest of his weapon wheel holds some surprises.
My demo covered two missions that lasted around 30 mins—one in a swampy jungle infested with poxwalker zombies, and another in a frozen industrial complex hiding a bloody demon den. Auroch chose to show off these missions to send a message: We heard that players wanted more environmental variety in Boltgun. That's not a complaint I ever held of the original—the first game wasn't exclusively hallways and steel girders, but Malum sure didn't get out much—but Boltgun 2 should be better for it.
The other theme of the demo was simplifications: Auroch has simplified grenades into a single type for both characters and the toughness system that made some enemies resistant to certain weapons is largely gone. I also noticed both missions were more linear (and less Doom-y) than Boltgun 1. There was no backtracking and only a single red key across the demo. I asked Auroch if this represents the whole of Boltgun 2's campaign and they said levels do get more complex.
If that holds up, we're in business. Boltgun 2 is out sometime in 2026.
