Any day is a jolly good day to kill a Nazi, and the most contemporary example of that is Nekome Nazi Hunter, a brand new game made by Probably Monsters, the publisher co-helmed by ex Bungie CEO Harold Ryan. You remember Bungie, right? Of Marathon and Anthem fame? Also a little thing called “Halo”?
Right now, all we have is a teaser — but boy, what a teaser. You can be your own judge after watching it below:
According to the fine folk at PCGamesN, Nekome Nazi Hunter is a single-player action title that puts you in the shoes of Vano Nastasu, a Romani man who lost his family to Nazi soldiers. The outline of the plot is simple enough — Vano pursues Nazis in a path of vengeance not unlike Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo in Kill Bill (in fact, PCGamesN do make a Quentin Tarantino reference in their story).
One cool, albeit small, detail that got me is that “nekome”, while very Japanese-kawaii sounding, is actually the Hebrew word for “revenge”.
While the setting of World War II in an action-adventure game is by no means an innovation at this point, Ryan tells that every enemy encounter will have lasting consequences, and gameplay will involve more than just “find Nazi-stab Nazi- find next Nazi”: enemy routes will need scouting and the initial combat approach will most likely need a thought-out strategy, which could’ve fooled me if I went by the looks alone — Nekome Nazi Hunter is laughably stylized, to the point of giving chuckles at how some objects in the video above are presented. Intentionally silly still works, after all.
And the Romani background of the main character also paves the way for representation: it is a well-documented fact that the Nazi regime systematically persecuted and killed the European Roma, Sinti and related peoples during World War II — some of them through forced sterilization, others from outright murder. This entire part of History is known as “Romani Genocide” and is one of the reasons why “gypsy” became a pejorative label.
And yet, few are the examples of Romani people represented in gaming: the Elder Scrolls series often see the Khajit feline race as Romani metaphors, Dragon Quest IV had Maya and Meena described as of Romani ancestry, the same goes for Crimson Skies’ Nathan Zachary, but most of these were anecdotal details, not a firm part of a character’s motivation.
As of now, there is not much to go on about the game, other than it’s currently in development — we can speculate a PS5 and Xbox Series release just to be safe. There is a Discord server from where the team behind it will share updates and Ryan himself has promised more stuff to come during GDC next March. While we wait for it, here’s a gallery:
