HUNTDOWN

HUNTDOWN drops you into a neon-soaked 80s cityscape where criminal gangs have outmuscled the police and the only people willing to clean the streets are bounty hunters. The aesthetic is hand-painted 16-bit pixel art running at fluid 60 FPS with a synthesized soundtrack thick with that decade's specific energy — and the action is the kind of arcade-shooter side-scrolling that the look promises.

Three playable hunters split the roster. Anna Conda is an ex-commando and firearms expert with no patience for collateral damage discussions. John Sawyer is a former Special Forces cop, scarred and partly cybernetic after too many engagements. Mow Man is a modified reconnaissance droid loaded with banned software and not interested in taking anyone alive. Each plays differently, and the writing makes them distinct without forcing a long story onto the action.

Twenty levels run through four gang territories, each with their own boss and bounty: the feral Hoodlum Dolls punks, the hockey-themed Misconducts, the Roman-centurion-styled Heatseekers motorcycle club, and the casino-running No.1 Suspects. Weapons get confiscated from enemies and turned on their owners — machine guns, laser weapons, katanas, grenades — and the moment-to-moment combat is built around taking cover, switching targets and stringing actions together.

Local couch co-op and Steam Remote Play co-op both work, so a second hunter can drop in whether they're sitting next to you or on the other side of the planet. A new arcade mode pits players from across the world against each other on the leaderboards, with scoring rewards for combo kills, quickdraw weapon swaps, and creative dispatching like throwing criminals off rooftops.