.kkrieger Ch. 1

Technological advancements in gaming have come far. Just look at how games looked a scant 10 years ago compared to games today, and you'll see a massive change in almost every area, from sound design to graphics. However, some technical marvels were created in the 2000s that haven't been matched to this day. .kkrieger is one of them.

To play .kkrieger, simply unzip the files into any folder you want and run the executable.

The game itself isn't that fantastic. It's a short 10 minute game that has you wandering around a spaceship, blasting aliens as you go. You have a choice of 5 weapons and you can also move and jump around as you like.

What makes this game truly impressive is that it is only 96 kilobytes large. For reference, the original Super Mario Bros 3 NES ROM is over double the size of this game, and that was all pixels and bit music. This game has relatively high resolution 3D textures, a variety of enemies and weapons, 3D movement, and also a choir like soundtrack. How did they manage to do this?

The tricks used are extraordinary - it uses some groundbreaking procedural generation. Meshes, textures, music, the level, and the enemies all use some groundbreaking generation to keep the file size down, with the music being created in real time by a synthesizer. 

So while the game isn't that fun to play, its technical side is truly impressive. If you want to experience the smallest FPS in the world, you should give .kkrieger a try.