A short Star Wars fan game about a stormtrooper fighting off his undead comrades (and its sequel set on Endor) have both gone viral online as fans realize that a horror game set in the popular sci-fi franchise would be awesome.

Deathtroopers is a short, fan-developed Unreal Engine game that seems partially inspired by an old Star Wars book of the same name. And like that book, the basic plot of the game is that a ship filled with Imperial stormtroopers is overrun by a zombie-like plague that turns the soldiers into undead monsters. In the game, you play as a lone trooper who arrives on the ship after it has been infested. You have to survive the zombie stormtroopers who now inhabit the vessel. Good luck!

Developed by Stefano Cagnani, Deathtroopers is available on indie storefront Itch.io when it launched back in November 2023. But it recently blew up after popular content creator GmanLives tweeted about the short game, exposing the fan creation to a large audience.

However, while the original Deathtroopers is going viral, don’t sleep on Cagnani’s sequel, which launched earlier this year. Deathtroopers - The Outpost follows a different stormtrooper who lands on the forested moon of Endor and discovers that a similar zombie plague has spread across the world, turning both troopers and Ewoks into nasty monsters.

Here’s some gameplay courtesy of Itch.io’s official YouTube account:

While the game’s overly long (and unskippable) intro is annoying, once I got into the action I had a great time blasting away zombie stormtroopers using Star Wars weapons. It’s definitely not the most polished game I’ve played, but it’s a solid example of how a horror game could be a perfect addition to the franchise. I’d play a bigger version of this fan game, for sure!

I’m not alone, as plenty of other players have left positive comments on the official Itch.io pages for both Star Wars games. Others have posted online about how they didn’t realize how much they wanted a genuinely scary horror game set in the Star Wars universe until checking out Deathtroopers. Personally, I’d love to see a Resident Evil 4-like zombie game set in Star Wars. Make it non-canon, have fun with it, and if it’s a hit, turn it into a whole franchise. People loved that fun-but-kind-of-creepy Ewok hunt mode in EA’s Battlefront II. And folks are digging these two short fan games. Give the people what they want and make an official, non-canon Star Wars horror game.

Deathtroopers and its Endor-based sequel are both out now on Itch.io on PC. You can download them for free or pay whatever price you want.

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