Author
01 Beginning
I have played FPS games for as long as I can remember. It all started with games like Duke Nukem 3D, Quake II and Wolfenstein. The real breakthrough for me, however, came in 1999, when I discovered the Unreal Tournament demo.
That game took FPS design to a completely new level. It was groundbreaking in almost every way: fast, dynamic, brutal, spectacular and incredibly playable. I could spend long hours with it, unable to pull myself away from one duel after another.
Years passed, and I remained connected to different FPS games. I watched new series appear, evolve in front of me, reach their best moments and sometimes gradually lose what had once made them special. I saw their strengths and weaknesses, their rise and their decline.
02 The missing game
After Unreal Tournament 4 was killed off, a void appeared that no other game could fill. For a while, Call of Duty came closest to that ideal, but over the years its quality also began to decline. Year after year another installment appears, and more often it feels like a weaker copy of the previous one.
Fresh ideas are missing. The same approach is repeated again and again. On top of that come flat gameplay, short fights, very low TTD and TTK, frustrating SBMM and many other elements that drain modern FPS games of their old energy.
03 Decision
For as long as I can remember, I dreamed of creating my own game. From time to time I opened Unreal Engine and tried to build something on my own. For a long time these were mostly experiments, tests and small attempts, but with each one I learned more.
The breakthrough year was 2021, when something finally clicked. I started gaining experience by creating smaller projects and understanding the game development process better and better. In 2022 I felt confident enough to try to fulfill my dream: to create a unique FPS, the best one according to my own vision. Not one that blindly follows current trends. Not another copy of popular shooters. I wanted to create a game I would truly want to play myself, one that would fill the void left by the now forgotten Unreal Tournament series.
04 Cybermetal
At the end of 2023, Ali joined me — a beginner developer from Bangladesh. It was one of the key moments in the development of Cybermetal, because the project stopped being only a solo attempt to create a game and began to take shape as teamwork. I developed the concept, designed the assumptions and direction of the game, and Ali helped turn those ideas into working mechanics.
Although we have never met in person, his presence mattered a great deal. Thanks to our cooperation the project gained momentum, and new elements of the game began to appear much faster and more consistently. Several other people were also involved in the development of Cybermetal, and I sincerely thank them for their time, help and contribution to this project.
That is how Cybermetal was born.
05 Pre-alpha
After four years of work, I can finally present the first playable version of the game. At the time of writing this text, Cybermetal is in pre-alpha. The game already has most of its key mechanics in place and, most importantly, delivers the joy of gameplay that I have been looking for myself for years.
It is still an early version of the project, but the foundation already exists. Cybermetal works, it can be played, tested and checked in practice. Now it is time to show it to you.
Download it, test it, review it, report bugs and share it further. Every opinion matters and will help develop Cybermetal toward the game I have always wanted to create.