Palladium is a one-man team videogame designed to mix classical FPS and metroidvania elements. The gameplay revolves around battling hordes of enemies paying particular attention to movement and positioning, almost dancing around the various fight challenges placed in the levels.
The most prominent features of Palladium are:
- 10 interconnected levels plus the tutorial one for about 4 and a half hours of gameplay.
- 12 different enemies in the current early access content.
- 6 different weapon variants in early access content: 2 variants of pistols, 2 of shotguns, an SMG and a grenade launcher.
- Frantic action and fights: both in terms of "ordinary" fights while exploring the levels and in confined arenas that pose an higher challenge to the player
- No hitscans: the game is all about movement, dodging and evading threats and bullets
- Exploration and secret hunting: secrets are not hidden in a random wall that you have to click. Their presence is hinted by visual and audio clues. Some secrets require a specific weapon to unlock or to beat a (simple) platforming section or hunt for switches (that are well visible but placed out of sight).
- Power ups and weapon variants: each weapon has power ups and variants that can be found and unlocked
- Interconnected levels: the player will need to traverse parts of explored levels to progress through the game. Once a level has been cleared, enemies will appear in limited numbers but it won't be a walk simulation
- 3D level map and global map to not get lost in the abovementioned interconnected levels.
- A lot of gibbing!: total and partial gibbing effects for each enemy.
- Autosaves, bunny hopping and key rebind (no controller support right now)
Power ups are acquirable by exploring different paths or paying attention to the surroundings, graphical clues will give away the presence of a secret in the area and most of the time the player must solve a light platforming section, a quick switch-hunt or a short maze to reach the power up. Such power ups are used to modify the behaviour of the weapons and enhance the player movement capabilities.
The player is free to move back and forth between levels and areas as s/he will often find a closed path that requires a key, a tool or a powerup in order to be unlocked.
The action takes place in a dystopian world inspired by 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 and the narrative of the levels is expanded by tomes of lore scattered through the levels.
The whole experience is framed by a magnificent soundtrack composed specifically for each level, that dynamically changes in the most tense situations. The soundtrack was composed by Giordano Aisa, who joined the development of Palladium with his music and his passion for boomer shooters.
Last but not least, if anyone did not notice from the screenshots, the whole point of the game is to simply paint the level red.
