Citing Halo, FEAR, and Half-Life 2 as inspirations, Sprawl: Zero waves goodbye to boomer shooters and heralds the arrival of the Millennial FPS

Citing Halo, FEAR, and Half-Life 2 as inspirations, Sprawl: Zero waves goodbye to boomer shooters and heralds the arrival of the Millennial FPS | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Puzzle Devs behind GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and TimeSplitters are done with big shooters after getting burned by Embracer, so their next game is a Balatro-like twist on Scrabble—and you can try the demo now FPS If you’re hoping to make friends in Marathon like you can in Arc Raiders, expect a knife in the back FPS Hours before its open preview weekend, Marathon is suddenly very close to the top of Steam’s top sellers list FPS Is Marathon’s time-to-kill too fast, or am I too Arc Raiders-pilled? FPS If you love Marathon’s vectorheart style but not its PvP, get your aesthetic fix from the gorgeously overstimulating demo for this time trial FPS instead Racing The creators of Rain World were tired of making something so depressing, so their next game is a ‘loud and dumb and fast’ cyberpunk racer you can try in the Steam Next Fest Action Desert Strike spiritual successor Cleared Hot’s next update brings better Steam Deck support and arcade missions, but I’m more excited about using my winch to slingshot missiles back at enemies: ‘I’ve been waiting months to work on this again’ FPS The best FPS games on PC FPS The many-boxed roadmap represents everything I hate about shooters right now FPS This co-op FPS Steam demo feels poised to do for spellslinging robot cowboys what Deep Rock Galactic did for space dwarves FPS Get 7 serious shooters for just $17, or 4 hidden gems for a fiver, in a pair of packages from new game bundle seller Digiphile RPG ‘We lost things such as physics in games:’ The dev behind my most anticipated RPG thinks players are craving more interactive games, not just ‘moving around in a static 3D environment’ FPS High on Life 2 review FPS Devil Daggers 2 is in development, as its creator confirms fewer than 1,500 people survived longer than 8 minutes in the original FPS Highguard review PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!Resident EvilArc RaidersBest PC gearGame Quizzes Games FPS Citing Halo, FEAR, and Half-Life 2 as inspirations, Sprawl: Zero waves goodbye to boomer shooters and heralds the arrival of the Millennial FPS News By Rick Lane published 1 March 2026 The sequel to Sprawl parties like it’s 2004. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: MAETH) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter PC Gamer Get the PC Gamer Newsletter Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday GamesRadar+ Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you’re going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Signup + Every Thursday GTA 6 O’clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O’clock experts. Signup + Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what’s on the horizon. Signup + Every Thursday The Setup Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more. Signup + Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo’s new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play. Signup + Every Saturday The Watchlist Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter Indie gaming has spent the last decade slowly working its way through the visual and mechanical styles of yore, starting with 2D pixel platformers before moving to boomer shooters and then PS1-era horror games. As such, it was only a matter of time before they began gazing lasciviously at early noughties blockbusters. I was only chatting to someone the other day about when we’d see our first retro shooter either running in or inspired by the Source engine.It turns out the answer to that was “today.” Sprawl Zero is a newly announced FPS that cites games like Halo: Combat Evolved, FEAR, and Half-Life 2 as inspirations. It features time manipulation, gravity manipulation, and graphics so sepia you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a Hollywood film depicting a Middle Eastern country. Move over, boomer shooters, the Millennial shooter has arrived!Sprawl Zero is actually a sequel (or some kind of follow-up) to 2023’s Sprawl, which likewise had the look of a post-2000 shooter, but was inspired specifically by Quake. Zero, on the other hand, directly invokes the era when the FPS began to proliferate on consoles, and when “the genre evolved from shooting in corridors to building worlds.” Related articles ‘I consider it a millennial shooter’: The FPS dev making hit shooters by leaning into ‘2007-core’ Early access multiplayer shooter Out of Action is, ironically, full of action, with cyborg ninjas blasting each other in a mix of Titanfall and Max Payne The creator of popular animated short The Backwater Gospel is making an FPS inspired by ‘Half-Life and the golden age of narrative first person shooters’ You play as a cybernetically enhanced super soldier (what else?) called Five, tasked with eliminating the leader of a “techno-religious group” named Imago-Dei. Combat is designed to be fast paced, but less hyper-twitchy than the more extreme end of the boom