John Romero's Dangerous Dave gets a spiritual successor next week

Id Software's early history hides a surprising number of games. Before Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons became the studio's first official release, its founders—still partly tied to Softdisk—made Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, a side-scrolling shooter released in late 1990 that followed John Romero's 1988 original, Dangerous Dave in the Deserted Pirate's Hideout.

Haunted Lands, billed as a spiritual successor, recreates the look and feel of the Dave games while dialing up the brutality. The demo has you splitting cultists in half, eviscerating goblins and shredding floating cat‑blobs with snake‑tongues, showing an 8‑bit‑style level of reactivity the project leans into.

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