Nailcrown, the upcoming boomer shooter from Destructive Creations, is a gory blast. After going hands-on with it at Gamescom 2026 for the better part of an hour, getting killed, mowing my way through multiple enemies and getting killed again, I was equal parts impressed with how they’d returned us to a point in time where OG DOOM felt fresh, and also modernised the experience.
If you’re unaware of Nailcrown, it’s a first-person shooter set in dark-fantasy where a range of deranged and devilish creatures only have one task, to kill you. It’s very much in the same vein as the original DOOM, as Lucas Niedzwiecki, Lead QA at Destructive Creations admitted to me, and it was very much intentional. You’ll be heading around multiple rooms throughout the map, looking for keys, solving puzzles and all the while gunning down a variety of enemies with an even bigger variety of guns and swords.
There was plenty of levels and slices of the game on offer for game journalists to preview, but I chose to spend my time working my way through a level titled ‘Sewers’. It’s self-explanatory where I was, right? The sewers were littered with locked doors, flooded floors, and more enemies than you could shake a stick at. I had access to several guns, from the trusty shotgun to the grenade launcher, and even a machine gun, as well as my melee weapon longsword.
I have to say, for the longsword especially, it felt clunky. That may be intentional, but it felt heavy, sluggish and hard to use properly. If it hit, which it didn’t every time, it was satisfying though. Whereas the guns would turn the enemies into bullet-riddled red mist when they died, the sword allowed me to carve and chop limbs off. The amount of times I used the last enemy as little more than a test for the amputation system that the developers have put in Nailcrown is probably unhealthy, but it’s incredibly detailed. You can take off their arms and legs in multiple places, and of course their head, but get used to seeing them still coming for you, as I found out after foolishly assuming they were dead the first time around. It was arguably my favourite mechanic in the game.
Gun wise, whether I was using the Nailcrown equivalent of a machine gun, gatling gun (seriously powerful) or any other weapon, it felt snappy and responsive, which, when you’re getting hunted by crowds of enemies that can quickly pin you in place and kill you before you know it, is needed.
As already mentioned, the Sewers were flooded in various places, which highlighted one of the more interesting mechanics, and one that I can’t remember being done elsewhere, but if you go into the water, and your gunpowder gets wet, you’re unable to shoot your gun. As gunpowder is a finite resource separate to your ammo, and you need both to use your weapons, this proves a real stumbling block, and made me constantly evaluate my area, path to my destination and if going in the water to save some time was a risk I was willing to take. Genuinely fun, if inconsiderate at times, mechanic.
The devs promised me that Nailcrown will be coming with several difficulty levels, even taking over to showcase the frankly absurdly difficult highest difficulty, which most of us won’t be able to touch, I think, as well as more guns and melee weapons at launch than I got to go hands-on with.
The whole thing is fast, frenetic, a little bit mental and surprisingly funny. There were moments of genuine humour, not so much in the immediate setting, but in the animations on offer. You’ll see what I mean come the time. It also doesn’t hold back on the gore. As mentioned with the limb system allowing you to take them off at will, there’s also glorious amounts of blood and viscera involved as you massacre wave after wave of enemies of all shapes and sizes.
Another well-developed mechanic was the almost Pokemon-esque attitude towards weaknesses. In another level, I ran into enemies with full sets of armour on, with the smallest weakspots in their armpits and knees. I could swing my weapon at them and aim for those spots, which, as they were moving, obviously proved difficult, or pick up the nearby gatling gun and unload on them, puncturing their armor set in seconds. I eventually chose the latter.
Nailcrown definitely harkens back to a simpler time of FPS boomer shooters, with a focus on maximum carnage, ‘simple’ puzzles and a wide variety of weapons, but what it does it does brilliantly from top to bottom, especially the detailed limb system, which I won’t shut up about to anyone that’ll listen.
For your next read, check out our thoughts on Inferius, the horror deckbuilder from Lucid Rain Studios, or our Gamescom 2026 preview of SAW: Genesis.
Luke Addison is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Thumb Wars. Having previously been a part of multiple outlets over the years, including building an entire gaming team from nothing to something, he thought it best to forge his own path and answer only to himself. As likely to be found playing the latest game as he is in the kitchen relaxing (by cooking), he always brings the same bold and brash attitude to everything he does, with a heavy leaning on sarcasm and dry wit!
