Video Game / The Citadel 2020

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The Citadel is an anime-styled First-Person Shooter game for Windows developed by doekuramori and published by Top Hat Studios. It is a genre throwback game that was largely inspired by 1980's anime, classic first-person shooter games such as Marathon and Doom (1993), the Sharp X68000 game Relics, and the works of H. R. Giger.

The story is set in a dark, dystopian cyberpunk setting as players assumes the role of the Martyr, a human female who finds herself being called forth on a holy mission to "free" the seven Guardian Angels and kill the Sleeping God. This mission, however, is easier said than done as she must fight her way through a legion of rogue cyborgs and machines under the Sleeping God's influence. The game features over thirty levels that are divided between six episodes, where players can create a path of visceral carnage with fourteen possible weapons- ranging from pistols, automatic rifles, a whalegun, and rocket launcher- while managing their supply of blood, oxygen, and food. Players can also use the gold acquired from slain enemies to buy upgrades, weapons, and supplies from the merchant Tycho at the hub area or at certain levels. Similarly to the Marathon games, weapons do not have an endless magazine and must be reloaded manually, and the game features the option to toggle the ability to lean from cover and weapon jamming during gunfights.

The game was released on August 5, 2020 and is available on Steam along with a demo of the first episode. A sequel titled Beyond Citadel was released on January 2nd, 2025. Not to be confused with the film of the same name or the 1995 Amiga game Citadel.

The Citadel features trope examples of:

• Action Bomb: The Sufferer enemy, whose body will begin to smoke around her and eventually explode if they detect the player's presence. Players, however, can utilize them against enemies by shooting them so they'll explode immediately or decapitate them to use them as an impromptu bomb.
• Anti-Frustration Feature:
  • Players can return to the hub area at any time from the pause menu and access previously cleared Acts.
  • Ladders are much safer than they tend to be in the older FPS games that The Citadel takes cues from, easing platforming segments involving jumping towards one to catch yourself. Making any kind of contact with a ladder locks you to it with only up or down movement until you reach either end of the ladder, instead of forcing you to keep pressing yourself against it to stay on and allowing sideways movement (both of which leads to possible deaths by falling). This mechanic is preserved in Beyond Citadel.
• Animesque: The game features a dark and gritty 1980's anime artstyle, justified as the game's developer is from Japan.
• Arms Dealer: Tycho, who can offer weapons, supplies, and upgrades to the player's arsenal with gold they can spend.
• Attack Drone: There are two Drone type enemies that attack you with energy bolts.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Although it's possible to dual-wield the Flechette SMG, reloading them both takes an obscene amount of time and leaves you open to enemy fire longer than most guns, especially compared to ones where you have to manually reload the ammunition individually.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The English translation in the first game generally suffers from shaky grammar, typos, and outright missing words, making its plot hard to understand in some parts.
• Blob Monster: The aptly-named Goo enemy. Don't let their innocent appearance fool you, they have maws with razor-sharp teeth ready to chew you out.
• Bloodless Carnage: Shockingly played straight in a game with guts and limbs flying everywhere but nary a drop of the red stuff is shed during combat.
• Boom, Headshot!: Shooting the head of the humanoid enemies does much more damage than shooting their body, which results in a cranial explosion.
• Boss-Only Level: The seventh and final Act only consists of a gauntlet to kill Delirium before finally confronting the Sleeping God.
• Boss Subtitles: The boss levels at the end of each Act uses the "[Boss Name], The Angel of [Deadly Sin]" naming convention.
• Bottomless Magazines: Averted for the player, who has to manually reload their weapons with the Reload key after emptying its magazine.
• Bottomless Pits: Some of the outdoor areas of some levels feature a bottomless pit that can kill the player or enemies instantly if they fallen into one.
• Breakable Weapons: If players enable the Weapon Jamming option from the gameplay settings, their weapons will not only have a chance to jam during gunfights, but they also have a limited durability represented by a percentage counter on the weapon as well; if it reaches 0%, the weapon will permanently break. This is preserved in Beyond Citadel, but the player can also repair their weapons at workbenches.
• Bullet Time: After obtaining the Reflex Booster upgrade, players can invoke a bullet time effect after using an O2 Canister to overdose their Oxygen Meter. The Reflex Booster also has a Lv. 2 upgrade that disables reloading during bullet time.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Some stages have no checkpoints and you can't save your progress mid-level, and dying results in starting the level over. The only way to circumvent this is to use an Extra Life on a Pattern Buffer (if available) to save your mid-level progress.
• Cut and Paste Environments: A common criticism of the first game is its reuse of the same cyan-colored palette for all its levels.
• Critical Existence Failure: In the first game, you and the enemies look normal if they have any point of health left, but once it hits 0, you or the enemies explode in a pile of mechanical and/or organic parts.
• Cyborg: Lysander, and the various enemies and some of Guardian Angels you'll encounter in the game.
• Death Seeker: If players interact with Celeste, they'll find that she wants the player to kill her and free her from the Sleeping God's control.
• Diegetic Interface: The player's HUD (health bar, ammo display, etc.) comes from the Martyr's helmet display, and the helmet can be removed in both games. This will disable the entire interface until the helmet is re-equipped.
• Double Jump: The Martyr is capable of jumping twice in the air, but a double jump uses some oxygen.
• Drop Dead Gorgeous: Many of the enemies in the series are cute women fully clad in armor, with the game fixating on their anguished dead expressions once you slaughter them and their helmets break off. Sometimes torn naked torsos or crotches will fly into the air, with their posing avoiding explicit nudity. If the protagonist dies, you'll likewise get a close view of her desecrated half-naked corpse.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Lysander is apparently a guy, as Tycho refers to him as such, though he's drawn in the same Moe art style as all the female characters, so you wouldn't know by looking at him.
• Elite Mooks: The Enforcer and Flamer enemies, whom possess a 3-way energy cannon and flamethrower, respectively, and can withstand a lot of punishment from conventional firearms. The Tanks, and Mech Pilots are also dangerous enemies with high-powered weapons and durable armor.
• Essence Drop: Slain enemies leave behind pieces of gold/silver that can be used to purchase supplies, weapons, and upgrades from Tycho, while some others drop ammunition or armor pieces.
• Excuse Plot: The first game's plot boils down to "hunt down the seven Guardian Angels and kill the Sleeping God", with a few dialogue scenes between levels and some occasional exposition coming from Tycho in the levels (if you can find him).
• Explosive Stupidity: It's possible to accidentally toss a grenade and have it land somewhere near you before it explodes, mistime cooking a grenade and have it blow up in your face instead, or detonate a nearby Remote Detonator and blow yourself up with it. Similarly, the Sufferer enemy may accidentally toss grenades among other enemies or at their own feet.
• Exploding Barrels: Red combustible barrels can be found in some levels, and shooting them will cause them to explode and harm anything around them. The player can also grab a barrel with the Use key and throw them at enemies with the Fire key.
• Face–Heel Turn: From Intermission 2 onwards Lysander slowly loses his mind from the Sleeping God's influence, eventually becoming the boss of Act 4.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Many of your enemies are cute anime girls like yourself and you will constantly see their innards, brains and appendages strewn everywhere; sometimes with their anguished expressions clearly visible on their (very rare) intact faces.
  • Lysander has a gorgeous face... on a completely mechanical, non-human body.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Chaingun's secondary fire is a flamethrower that burns enemies into cinder. The Flamer enemies also wield a flamethrower that is just as deadly to you.
• First-Person Ghost: Averted in both games entirely. You can see the Martyr's arms, body, and legs if you look down.
• Flunky Boss: Celeste's boss battle only has enemies trying to defend her while she doesn't fight back, justified that she doesn't want to hurt you and wants to be killed to be free from the Sleeping God's control. Also, as the Angel of Sloth it makes sense she can't be bothered to actually do any of the fighting herself.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The Sleeping God was summoned into existence by the Martyr's church to bring light back to their forsaken world, but it quickly became a global threat due to its dreams causing violent insanity, let alone what could happen if it actually wakes up.
• The Goomba: The Cultist enemy, whom pose very little threat to the player as their axes do relatively weak damage and can easily be dispatched with weaker weapons (or melee if you can't be bothered to waste bullets on them).
• Goomba Stomp: It's possible to crush your enemies under your mech suit's feet by jumping on top of them.
• Gorn: Every death results in a variety of lovingly drawn organs and gnarled body parts that never fade away from the battlefield. Ironically, the game's lack of blood highlights the gruesome detail.
• Guns Akimbo: The Flechette SMG can be dual-wielded if the player can possess two of them.
• High-Voltage Death: Killing a humanoid enemy with an energy weapon will electrocute them, complete with their skeleton being visible as their bodies are being shocked until they explode.
• Hitscan: Averted, all enemies' and player's weapons shoot visible projectiles, and they need to physically hit in order to do damage. The projectiles from the player's weapons also drop as they travel over distances.
• Hive Mind: The cyborgs in the first game besides Lysander are under the control of the Sleeping God.
• Homage: To the Sharp X68000 game Relics, classic 90's first-person shooters, 80's action anime, and the works of H. R. Giger.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: The Martyr can hold 14 weapons on her person, from a large battle axe, a pistol, a pair of Thompson machine guns, satchel bombs, and a rocket launcher. How is she able to carry such weapons all at once with little pocket space (and clothing) is a mystery.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The game's difficulty levels are as follows from easiest to hardest: Faith, Devotion, and Zealot.
• Improbably Female Cast:
  • With the exception of two, all of the enemies and bosses faced in The Citadel are female. This includes soldiers decked in full-body bulky combat armor who, at first glance, look like men... until their helmets get shot off.
• Interface Spoiler: One of the selectable Acts in the Hub area reveals name of the bosses, including Lysander, who succumbs to the Sleeping God's control after Act 3.
• Kill It with Fire: Shooting a humanoid enemy with the Chaingun's flamethrower will result in them burning alive and screaming in agony until they eventually die and burn to cinders.
• Lead the Target: None of the kinetic guns in either game are Hitscan, and their bullets have to physically travel to the target in order to hit them.
• Level-Map Display: The rightmost portion of the HUD features a mini-map of the current level, and pressing the Tab key by default will open an automap of the level. The map also displays living enemies indicated by the red blips.
• Lethal Lava Land: The fourth level of Act 4, The Sinking City, which is a dilapidated city-like level flooded with volcanic lava.
• Ludicrous Gibs: You can splatter your enemies into pieces when killing them, especially with a well-placed headshot or high-powered weapon, resulting in piles of strewn body parts, organs, and mechanical parts, yet no bloodshed can be found outside of some of the cyborgs bleeding from their mouth or severed body parts after death. This also applies to the player upon dying as well.
• Mecha-Mook: Besides the cyborg enemies, there are some robots and mech suited enemies in the game.
• Mini-Mecha: Some of the enemies in later levels pilot a miniature mech suit armed with high-powered weapons, and a few cases you can pilot one yourself and use its immense firepower against the Citadel's denizens.
• My Brain Is Big: Vectra, The Angel of Gluttony and the game's first boss, has been reduced to only their brain and has mutated to a massive size.
• New Game Plus: After clearing the final level, players can start the game anew or choose the New Game Plus option and carry over their equipment and upgrades from the previous playthrough.
• No Ending: Once you reach the final level, Tycho hands you a bomb to kill the Sleeping God. After activating the bomb, a white light engulfs the area, killing you, Tycho and the Sleeping God. Cue some text and the word END. Back to the title screen.
• Non-Malicious Monster:
  • In the first game, The Sleeping God is a sleeping, unborn fetus and not even self-aware, but its dreams alone affect everyone in the Citadel with incurable insanity. The remaining sane members of the nameless church sent the Martyr to destroy it before the whole world is undone by its mere presence.
• Non-Standard Character Design: While most of the cyborgs look humanoid in design, some of the other cyborgs (such as Lysander) look a lot more robotic.
• Organic Technology: Some levels feature Giger-esque biotech. The first boss you face is a giant brain powering several turrets.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: The game's outdoor areas feature a hellish red/orange sky.
• Retraux: The Citadel uses hand drawn, sprite-based graphics and low-res textures for the levels to mimic the style of 1990's first-person shooter games it was inspired by. The characters are also drawn similar to older anime series from the 1980's.
• Sanity Slippage: After clearing Act 2, Lysander's speech patterns begins to veer off into the deep end.
• Save Point: Pattern Buffers found in some levels will save your mid-level progress at the cost of an Extra Life.
• Save Token: The Extra Life item function as one for the Pattern Buffers found in some levels, acting as a checkpoint for the level.
• Secondary Fire: Most of the weapons feature the ability to zoom/aim from the sights and/or alternate attack at the cost of either the gun's own ammo, grenades, or energy cells.
  • Forgiver: Alt-fire performs overhead axe swing.
  • Meta-Magnum: Alt-fire converts a grenade into an RPG and attaches it onto the weapon's muzzle. A 2-round burst upgrade is available and is toggled with the fire mode selector.
  • Shotgun: Alt-fire loads a slug into the chamber (costs 1 grenade).
  • Auto-Rifle: Alt-fire fires the underslung laser (uses energy cells). Installing the burst fire upgrade allows for toggling between full-auto and burst with the fire mode selector.
  • Chaingun: An underslung flamethrower (uses energy cells).
  • Flechette SMG: Can be dual-wielded and fired independently.
  • Whale Gun: Fire mode selector toggles the zoom level (between 4x and 8x) on the variable zoom scope (needs to be purchased as an upgrade). Installing the heavy barrel allows alt-fire to swap between standard AP shells and high-explosive shells, both of which are carried separately.
• Secret Level: Each Act besides Act 7 has a secret EX level that can be found in one of the normal levels.
• Seven Deadly Sins:
  • The seven Guardian Angels are based on and named after them, and their individual fights take cues from their sin (i.e. Gausia, the Angel of Wrath, has far more indiscriminate attacks and firepower then the other bosses).
  • Beyond Citadel frames the seven sins as virtues instead, and the Martyr's stats revolve around all of them. The Guardian Angels were responsible for helping the remains of humanity to survive the Trumpeters, and the sins are accordingly regarded as holy sacrament. As an example, humanity was so deprived by the apocalypse that Celeste (the Angel of Sloth) became a sainted figure for giving people homes and shelters to rest.
• Shout-Out:
  • When unarmed/holstering a weapon, the words "IN THE WORLD OF THE CITADEL" occupies the weapon information of HUD and mimics the HUD from Relics.
  • The game's HUD is reminiscent to Marathon's with a portrait of the Martyr indicating her health status similar to Doom's.
  • The game's way of having the player select the difficulty level is handled in a similar manner to Quake.
  • The Martyr's outfit mimics Æon Flux's own skimpy outfit. In addition, her haircut and visor are that of 2B's.
  • The design of Celeste, Act 2's boss, looks similar to a xenomorph.
  • Some of EX Levels' names feature nods to classic FPS games. To wit: Act 1: "Get Psyched", Act 3: "Gate of Doom", Act 4: "Entryway", Act 5: "Deadly Simple".
• Shown Their Work:
  • In general, the kinetic weaponry in both games have a high level of detail and animations. They function as their real-life equivalents do on the default "Unload, Lock, and Cock" settings, requiring that the player complete all the steps to reload/chamber the gun before firing again; this changes depending on the gun's design^note this is optional and can be changed to function like the typical "hit the reload button with no issues" seen in most games with gunplay, but it will be slower than if the player manually performs all the steps. Toggling "Weapons Jamming" causes them to degrade and malfunction in mechanically-accurate ways, such as becoming more inaccurate and forcing the player to manually clear jams.
  • Doing a Dramatic Gun Cock on a loaded shotgun will rack the slide and eject the first shell without firing it, and using a speed-loader on a fully-loaded revolver will just dump all the bullets in the cylinder onto the ground. You can pick these up off the ground and they will be re-added to your ammo counter.
  • Using the Whalegun (i.e. the sniper rifle) accurately requires that the player reads their scope's range notations to account for their distance from the target and the bullet drop.
• Standard FPS Guns: Forgiver (axe), Meta-Magnum (handgun), Auto-Rifle w/ Bombast Laser (assault rifle with a laser beam), Blunderbuss (pump-action shotgun) and Shockhammer (automatic shotgun), Flechette SMG (submachine gun), Chaingun w/ Flamer (Gatling gun with a flamethrower), SSM Launcher (RPG) and Flash (quad RPG), Whalegun (sniper rifle), Remote Detonator (demolition pack), Laser Designator (remote air strike), ZEUS Cannon (energy cannon), and Redeemer (ditto). There are also Grenades, and the disposable DieselGun (flamethrower), Hyper Blaster (energy cannon), and Hyper Bolter (mini-gun).
• Stat Meters: The Martyr has four stat meters that all need to be managed for survival.
  • The Armor Meter, the smaller white meter next to the Blood Meter serving as an extension to it. It will take damage before the Blood Meter does until it runs out.
  • Your Blood Meter, serves as your health and is represented by the red meter. The player will die if this runs out, and relies on Blood Packs to replenish and Food to keep at its highest possible value.
  • The Oxygen Meter, represented by the blue meter and depletes when certain actions such as sprinting, double-jump, kicking, and swinging melee weapons are performed. This can be refilled with O2 bottles.
  • The Food Meter, represented by the green meter, which players must keep an eye on otherwise their maximum Blood and Oxygen will diminish unless it is replenished. As food pickups are considerably rarer than blood packs or O2 bottles, it's a good idea to focus on purchasing food at vending machines rather than the other two restoration items.
• Spikes of Doom: Some levels feature pits of spikes, which is instant death to the player and enemies if they fallen into one.
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: Although the game was made in Unreal Engine 4, the games uses 2D sprites for the player, the enemies, NPCs, and pick-ups, while the levels and effects are rendered in 3D.
• Stripperiffic: The Martyr, whose outfit consists of a leather military top that doesn't hide anything below her chest, a belt that barely covers her unmentionables and doubling as a thong, thigh-highs and metal knee-high boots. Beyond Citadel shows that it (somehow) protects her by reducing incoming damage and she receives more durable versions of this outfit, but she also gets a lot more protection from actual armor suits that cover her entire body.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Players can use grenades, either found laying around the levels, purchased from Tycho, or dropped from a Sufferer, to clear out areas littered with enemies. Players can cook the grenades but it will explode after four ticks. The Sufferer also lobs grenades at the player.
• Unorthodox Reload: Some weapons are reloaded by switching out the empty magazine for a new one, or loading each bullet for the gun individually, all of which the player can see from the Martyr's perspective.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Taking cues from Brutal Doom, The Citadel gives players various ways to eviscerate and brutalize their enemies, ranging from blowing their heads into pieces, cleaving their bodies apart with the Forgiver, setting them on fire and watch them scream and burn with the Chaingun's flamethrower, and kicking them off a ledge into a pit of spikes/lava or bottomless pits.
  • Beyond Citadel makes it even worse by increasing the amount of possible injuries and simply having enemies possibly survive if their injury doesn't include a clean headshot. You can blow off someone's limbs and they might be still alive afterwards, giving you the choice of giving them a Mercy Kill or just leaving them in agony until they die of hemorrhage.
• Your Head A-Splode: Shooting a humanoid enemy's head will result in their heads being blown from their shoulders or explode into pieces. You can do this even after they're dead.