Steam Next Fest serves up a brutal FPS with no live service nonsense, just pure 1v1 arena shooting with Call of Duty's sweaty slides

Straftat is a fast-paced 1v1 arena shooter where you can quickly die without seeing your opponent, with dozens of unique maps, brutalist concrete environments, and a focus on fast-paced combat and map knowledge.

Straftat is a game I love. Straftat is a game I suck at. Straftat is an exclusively 1v1 arena shooter where you can easily die without ever seeing your foe. Straftat is a cat and mouse FPS where you can bully strangers around dozens of concrete maps. And Straftat is my favorite demo so far in Steam Next Fest.

Let's rewind a little. Straftat comes from the Lemiatre Bros, the duo who previously released first-person explore-a-thon Babbdi, which also had a very similar low-poly style and focus on brutalist concrete architecture. The team's new effort is wildly different, much faster, and immediately heart-thumping.  

The Straftat Steam demo has a whopping 25 maps that'll soon balloon to 100 when the game properly launches on October 24, but none of them are filler. Most of them have a specific gimmick that gives Straftat a quick party game feel. One put me and my foe on two opposite rooftops with snipers nearby. Another spawned us in a concrete maze with a bunch of equippable mines, gently encouraging us to turn our friendly playground into a explosive deathtrap. 

Others are more straightforward arenas that encourage the sweaty slides you might be accustomed to from modern Call of Duties, with the more classic twitchy shooting from FPS giants of yesteryear, all designed to get you shooting within mere seconds and to get someone consistently dead within less than a minute.

What I love most is how it jettisons the live service fluff that has slowly turned every big game in the genre - including the ones I love - into busywork. Chores. Weekly to-do tasks. There aren't any signs of microtransactions, daily challenges, or unholy loadouts. All you have is a mic, whatever hope you have left, a little adrenaline, and your knowledge of the mini-map you spawn into. 

Straftat is very Halo-like in that sense, too, in that its learning curve is all about how intimately familiar you are with the environment. Game one had me running away, hiding under stairs, begging my opponent over proximity chat to teach me how to use a weird alien crossbow I found. He eventually relented to my screams and showed me his ways before brutally chopping away at me with a machete because he's a good person, sure, but good people still need a win. 

Game two then had me feeling wiser than before. Winning isn't just based on who can pull the trigger first or who can slide into cover fastest - it's also who knows the maps better, who can race to the power weapons first, who can take advantage of the shortcuts if all else fails. 

I'd definitely recommend jumping into a game or two since they only last a couple minutes a pop, literally. Plus, even if you don't gel with its combat, you might appreciate how the characters sprint like they're in Naruto.

Check out some other upcoming indie games to not miss a single release.