Black Future '88

Black Future '88

SUPERSCARYSNAKES · 2019 · Action, Action Roguelike, Roguelite, Cyberpunk, Adventure

PC
Mostly Positive74% · 49174Metacritic
Best price 69 Great deal
$0.62-90%
lowest tracked $0.45
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Screenshots

About Black Future '88

✦ AI summary

Climb a procedurally-generated tower in this synth-punk roguelike shooter, blasting through deadly traps and bosses while your heart ticks down to explosion. Choose from five characters and 50+ weapons, combining strategic upgrades and curses to survive the relentless onslaught in a darkly stylish 1988 frozen in nuclear winter.

https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/751820/extras/Copy_of_BF88_GIF_Steam.gif
Black Future ’88 is a Synth-Punk roguelike 2D action Shooter. Vertically climb an always evolving procedural tower to reach the top and kill its insane owner…before your heart explodes. Shoot, slash, dash and upgrade yourself to survive the endless waves of deadly traps, homicidal AI, crazed junkies and colossal Wardens standing in your way in a stylish alternative version of 1988.

https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/751820/extras/Copy_of_Steam_BF88_5_4.gif
The world is reeling from a nuclear cataclysm, created by Duncan, the tower architect. The First of his bombs fell in the summer of 1988, and by December they had blacked-out the sun with endless rain. We decided to stop keeping time after this, and it’s been 1988 ever since. Everything that lived through the initial attack will die in the extreme floods that followed. These are the times after, where there are no more months, or even weeks…everything is measured in minutes left to live.

https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/751820/extras/Copy_of_Steam_BF88_4_2.gif
Take on the mantle of one of the last remaining misfit survivors, and fight your way to the top of the tower to kill the architect and stop the endless nuclear rain. Ascend to die, and die to survive.

Game Features

  • Death Ascendant: Climb an always evolving procedural tower and fight for survival through a constant onslaught of death by fire, lasers, and slashes.
  • Unique Synth-Punk World: Play through a unique take on a retro cyberpunk dystopia, and fight to survive through 5 distinct zones each with their own challenges.
  • Pick Your Poison: Play as one of 5 playable characters, each with their own unique buffs- and weaknesses.
  • Ruin Friendships: Test your wits and reflexes with a friend in couch co-op, and experience a completely unique take on the co-op roguelike.
  • Kill the Wardens: Fight for survival by challenging the numerous unique bosses that guard each one of the game’s zones.
  • Fog Machines and Laser Beams: Bring a gun and laser sword to a fire fight by arming yourself with a selection of the 50 unique weapons available in the game, each with their own unique effects.
  • Evolve to Survive: The only way to survive when everything, including your own heart, is trying to kill you is to carefully boost or curse yourself by strategically choosing- and combining from 30 distinct buffs and curses.
  • Dailies: Every day, a new challenge is generated with unique attributes that will test your mettle and allow you to see how your skills compare against other players in a global Leaderboard. Fight for not just survival, but supremacy!
  • Ear Candy: Death never sounded so good thanks to an all killer original analog-synth soundtrack.

DLC & expansions

🎁 Complete the collection

Base game + 1 of 1 DLC at today's best prices.

$1.66
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What Steam players say

Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.

Recommended Mar 21, 2026
Black Future ’88, developed by SUPERSCARYSNAKES and published by Good Shepherd Entertainment and Surefire.Games, is a roguelike action-platformer that thrives on pressure, speed, and repetition, wrapping its entire design philosophy around urgency and decay. Set in a dystopian, synth-soaked alternate 1988 where time has effectively stalled after a catastrophic event, the game drops you into a crumbling tower with one clear objective: climb, survive, and reach the top before your own failing heart gives out. This ticking-clock premise is not just thematic flavor—it is the central force shaping every aspect of the experience. The most defining mechanic is the strict time limit imposed on every run. From the moment you begin, you are working against an inevitable end, which transforms the usual roguelike rhythm into something far more aggressive. There is no room for slow, methodical exploration; every second matters, and hesitation can cost you the entire run. This creates a constant tension between risk and efficiency. Do you push forward with minimal upgrades and hope to outpace the clock, or do you take detours for better gear at the expense of precious time? That balancing act b…
1 found this helpful
Not recommended Feb 19, 2026
I've enjoyed certain roguelikes in the past, but this one just didn't grab me early enough to want to keep banging my head against the wall
1 found this helpful
Not recommended Nov 4, 2025
Super stylish, super buggy, it's like an unfinished good game ! which makes it bad :(
1 found this helpful
Recommended May 17, 2026
Incredible arcade styled game with countless ability and equipment unlocks - that in addition to a quality synth themed OST - still amazing in 2026.
Recommended Jan 25, 2026
It's not bad but there could be more to it. Sometimes the gameplay feels too fast and the screen has so many effects it can be hard to avoid damage or you'll be hurt but unsure how it even happened. There are multiple characters but they don't really play different, just start with a different gun that you'll stop using pretty soon and they usually have less health and like a single perk ability. Also you fight the same bosses in the same order and all the environments look the same so it gets repetitive pretty fast. Nothing in the game is described, as there are portals to go through, help to ask for, obelisks, curses, secret areas, and more, and you have no idea what any of it is or does and theres no real wiki online for it. So you may screw yourself without even realizing what you're doing, there should be better descriptors of what things do if theres so many different things. There also are very few perks and I had seen most of them after like 10 runs. The forced time limit also seems dumb, as it goes against the whole point of the genre as it limits your ability to upgrade and explore the environments, and really adds nothing to the game besides another way to kill you w…
Recommended Dec 2, 2025
Good but on a massive discount, at least 80% is fair imho. After 10 hours I've beaten it multiple times and open almost all unlockables. No replayability value, but it is somewhat fun. Fast paced, flashy, simple run and gun, even simpler with gamepad cause of autoaim. Has even simpler "Assist mode", dunno for what purpose =) 5 bosses, repetitive level generation, few weapon/perk combos that doesnt really matter. Somewhat buggy: softlocked after killing bosses couple of times (including final one, lol); sprites of killed enemies dont disappear, menu points disappear instead =) Achievements are horrible, "10000 dashes" is sooooooo dumb, worse than that HM2 one, doubt that I'll grind it anytime soon.

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