1994’s Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders and its 1995 sequel, Hexen: Beyond Heretic forged new frontiers in first-person shooter games. Experience these pivotal games today with Heretic + Hexen, a collaboration between id Software and Nightdive Studios bringing an enhanced re-release of Raven Software’s legendary games to a new generation of players.

Play Video

From demonic sci-fi to dark fantasy

“As one of the original developers back in the ’90s, it’s honestly kind of surreal to see Heretic and Hexen coming back like this,” says Brian Raffel, studio co-founder and co-head of Raven Software. “We built those games on a heavily modified Doom (1993) engine and tried to push the boundaries wherever we could, adding things like character classes, inventory systems, vertical aiming…stuff that was pretty wild for the time.  

“We were also lucky to be working with our friends at id Software, especially John Romero and John Carmack. Their support and engine tech gave us the chance to build something different. There’s something cool about knowing these worlds still mean something to people after all these years.” 

Players embark on a journey through monster-filled halls, trap-laden arenas and arcane realms in a unique blend of classic FPS combat with dungeon delving inspired by fantasy tabletop role-playing games. 

“Both Heretic and Hexen hail from the kind of fantasy that was common in 80s and 90s PC gaming but had yet to be explored much in a first-person shooter,” shares Mike Rubits, Senior Programmer at id Software. “There were a lot of shooters with war, sci-fi, and aliens, but not a lot of maces and wands.” 

“It was actually Romero’s idea to add character classes in Hexen—a move that really took the franchise to the next level,” says Raffel. “At the time, that kind of RPG element in an FPS was almost unheard of. Each class had its own weapons, stats, and playstyle – that blend of shooter mechanics with fantasy roleplaying was risky, but it worked. It helped set Hexen apart from everything else out there and made the world feel richer and more personal. I think that’s a big part of why people still remember it so fondly.” 

Heretic + Hexen features include local split-screen and cross-platform online multiplayer modes, the option to toggle the enhanced “Tome of Power” soundtrack from Andrew Hulshult, all-new accessibility options and quality-of-life improvements, behind-the-scenes materials in the Raven Vault and more. That’s not all: in addition to previously released expansion packs for the original release, Heretic + Hexen also features brand-new content! 

New content for Heretic + Hexen

“The two new episodes in Heretic + Hexen cover both games – ‘Faith Renewed’ is a new Heretic episode while ‘Vestigues of Grandeur’ was created in Hexen,” Rubits explains. “They followed in the spirit of the new episodes in our previous re-releases: a whole new experience that uses the original technology, but is not bound by having to run on 30-year-old computers with a very small amount of memory.” 

“During the planning phases, we figured we’d only have time to do one or the other,” says Xaser Acheron, Senior Developer at Nightdive Studios, “and it dawned on me that these are some of the fastest mappers in the West.” 

“I already knew there was going to be additional content for Heretic + Hexen, so I started making maps in my free time for fun,” adds Samuel “Kaiser” Villarreal, Level Designer at Nightdive Studios. “By the time the whole thing was greenlit, I had nearly a whole episode’s worth of maps done already.” 

“Sure enough, each mapper produced nearly an entire episode’s worth of content on their own, with community legend Not Jabba contributing a couple of gigantic maps to round out the set. I also got to sneak in one of my own,” says Xaser. “The gambit paid off, but in hindsight it’s really not that much of a surprise since those folks are absolute powerhouses.” 

Delve into the fantasy FPS classics today

Whether you’re returning to the mystical realm of Cronos or setting foot in its shadowy halls for the first time, the combined teams at Raven Software, id Software and Nightdive Studios invite you to experience Heretic + Hexen and the legacy that helped define a genre. 

“To the fans—those who were there in the early days and those discovering these games for the first time now—thank you,” says Raffel. “Your enthusiasm, modding, memories and support have kept these worlds alive far longer than we ever imagined. Seeing the community still care about this work after all these years means more than I can say.” 

Heretic + Hexen releases today for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4.

Hey everyone, this is Mike Tucker, Design Director and Programmer at Bitmap Bureau. We hope you’re all excited for Terminator 2D: No Fate, coming October 31, 2025. On behalf of everyone at the Bitmap team, we’re thrilled to reveal the new Gameplay Overview Trailer! The trailer gives an in-depth summary of T2D’s various gameplay systems, including info about game modes, pickups, the scoring system and more.

Play Video

Difficulty levels explained

Beyond what’s covered in the trailer, we thought this blog would be a great chance to delve into the game even further, specifically covering the different difficulty settings. Hopefully this overview will help you decide which difficulty to choose when picking up the game for the first time.

First things first, when you start the game, you’ll be asked to choose your preferred difficulty setting. From easiest to hardest, the difficulties are:

• Easy Money
• No Problemo
• Hasta La Vista
• Judgment Day (Unlocked only after completing Mother of the Future Mode. Completing Story Mode on Judgment Day unlocks the Cheats Menu.)

These difficulty settings are available for all game modes, but for Story Mode in particular, the choice means that the complete T2D story can be enjoyed by everyone regardless of skill level. We recommend first-time players start with the No Problemo difficulty setting for the most balanced experience, while those more experienced with the genre can try their hand at Hasta La Vista; that’s the one most of us here at Bitmap use as our Normal difficulty.

Broadly speaking, the differences between the difficulties revolve around enemy placement and damage output, the number of continues and whether the time limit is turned on. The Easy Money difficulty features no time limit (except for one level) and unlimited continues. However, there are more specific differences between the difficulties, affecting enemy placement, environmental trap timings and more. While it would be impossible to go over all of these changes in the span of this blog, below are a few examples to help you get a sense of the kind of differences you can expect between difficulties.

The Cyberdyne Factory level is a little different from the more run n’ gun levels in the game, testing players’ platforming and timing abilities with various environmental hazards. This level, set within a top-secret Cyberdyne facility, features automated welding arms, used by Cyberdyne in their early terminator experiments. These arms periodically drop down and ignite their torches, causing damage to the player if they come into contact with the sparks created by the arms or the arms themselves. These arms are scattered throughout the level, but how many of them are active will depend on the difficulty the player has chosen.

​​

This isn’t the only difference between difficulties in this level, however. There is also a section of the level in which flames will periodically shoot out of jet engines. The player must evade these flames to avoid taking damage, and time their upward jumps in the periods in which the flames are inactive. You can see below that choosing harder difficulties increases the number of active jet engines and reduces the period of time between bursts of fire, greatly altering the level of challenge.

Here is an example from another level, Freeway Chase, a recreation of the classic chase sequence in Terminator 2: Judgment Day in which John, Sarah, and the T-800 are trying to escape from the T-1000 piloting a stolen police helicopter. In this level, the encounter with the helicopter alternates between two gameplay sections, driving and shooting. In the shooting section, there is a crosshair visible which illustrates the helicopter’s weak spots. As the difficulties get harder, the size of the crosshair gets smaller, meaning that the player has to be much more precise with their aiming to do damage.

Your choice in difficulty will also result in differences in the game’s boss fights, including changes to attack patterns, tighter timing windows and more. At the end of the first Future War level, the player will have to battle a Centurion, a behemoth Hunter-Killer quadruped built by Skynet. Below, you can see that in harder difficulties, the Centurion’s ground-sweeping machine-gun attack moves faster, meaning quicker reactions are needed to avoid taking damage.

These are just some examples of the kind of the differences you can expect to see between Terminator 2D: No Fate’s difficulties. When developing the game, we aimed to give it a sense of challenge that would feel authentic to the feeling of old-school arcade games. However, we realise that controller-smashing difficulty isn’t for everyone, so we implemented these difficulty choices to ensure that everyone can pick their desired level of challenge, regardless of skill level or experience.

Whichever way you choose to play, thank you for reading and we hope you look forward to Terminator 2D: No Fate, coming October 31, 2025.