If Straftat ever has no fans, that means PC Gamer is dead. We named the throwback arena shooter the best FPS of 2024, and its lump-faced, cigarette-smoking combatants have only risen in our estimation with every return we’ve made to its countless brutalist combat dreamscapes. Today, Straftat ascends to an even higher tier of peerlessness, adding 2v2 and free-for-all game modes for all players.
And as always, you can play it right now for free on Steam.
We could extoll Straftat’s virtues for hours. We’ve done it before. It’s like discovering a distillation of FPS deathmatch combat that crystallized in a French alley some time around 2001, with the kind of maps you’d only hope to find from a community of terminal brain sickos. It’s blisteringly fast, without any frills to interrupt the mere seconds separating each round of sprinting and sliding into vending machines that dispense rusty katanas, MAC-10s, and inscrutable gun-shapes that can scatter your friends’ mangled chunks across a concrete superstructure. Or tech noir underpass. Or the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks.
And now you can mangle as many as three of your friends at once!
But just as admirable is how the Lemaitre brothers have decided to monetize the game. As I’ve said before, and will say again, Straftat is free to play. If you open Steam right now, you’d be just seconds away from getting mangled by a grungy, cap-wearing rifle goblin on one of more than 150 maps.
If you want even more maps, you can pay $7 for over 150 more—and you’ll get some new weapons and character hats for your trouble. Straftat updates have regularly added more maps, too, and those expansions to the map pool have always added both free and DLC maps—the latter of which you’ll get immediate access to if you’ve already bought the map DLC.
Motivated by a general contempt for the current live service environment, Straftat’s map DLC has been its only available microtransaction since its launch last October. That changed today.
If you think the Lemaitre brothers deserve even more support, and I’m inclined to agree, they’ve introduced a Supporter Edition alongside today’s update. It doesn’t include any DLC maps to ensure new arenas are tied to the existing purchase. Instead, it adds a few exclusive suits and hats, an artbook PDF, and a link to blender files of Straftat’s environments.
“By purchasing this DLC you help us fund the development of our next game (Babbdi2), as we will need external help from a freelance sound designer, animator, and more,” Lemaitre Bros said. “This helps us grow as a studio and speeds up the development.”
Alongside the 2v2 and free-for-all game modes, today’s Straftat patch notes also include new maps and weapons, weapon randomizer improvements, and UI overhauls and updates.
Once again, you can play Straftat for free now on Steam. I’m running out of ways to tell you to do so without just saying “go play Straftat.” So, y’know: Go play Straftat.