"We love punching Nazis," Jeronimo Barrera says. That's why Nekome: Nazi Hunter is all about killing them

"Nekome is a very powerful word," game director Jeronimo Barrera tells me. "It's vengeance: spiritual revenge." Revenge is, perhaps, the most powerful of all emotions. It's an amalgamation of pure rage; hate - it's a driving force, yet it's inherently terrifying. That emotional turmoil is what Nekome: Nazi Hunter seeks to explore; this isn't a game about happy endings. This is a game about inflicting pain upon those who inflict pain upon others. There are no holds barred here: this is World War II; The Holocaust is happening, people are being murdered. As someone with a degree in War Studies, that's what attracted me to ProbablyMonsters' debut title: it's raw, brutal, violent. Yet it doesn't miss, and hit the metaphorical wall.

At its core Nekome: Nazi Hunter is a story game, akin to the likes of A Plague Tale or God of War. But its hyper-violent combat and comic-book-esque stylings set it apart from anything else on the market; if my mom watched the trailer, she'd probably want to ban me from playing it. In some ways, I'd understand why.

Cast as Vano Nastasu, a young Romani who's left devastated by the brutal, needless murder of his family, you set out on a mission to obliterate any Nazi that gets in your way - the more violently, the better. Inspired by grindhouse cinema and the likes of Inglorious Basterds, Barrera describes it as a "symphony of violence," borrowed from the game's lead designer. That description fits perfectly.

"We're big fans of Inglorious Basterds and Sisu, and we thought that kind of player fantasy was missing in games," Barrera tells me. "Look, we love punching Nazis in the face, it's so much fun in games. We're taking it to the next level, though - if you thought it was fun punching Nazis, it's even more fun to kill 'em."

Beneath the bloodied, fascist-hunting veneer, however, there is an intimate game that deals with "heavy subject matter." As Barrera mentions, the murder of the Roma and Sinti people is oftentimes overshadowed by the sheer scale of depravity suffered by the Jews. He notes that "on this journey, you are going to see those other humans that were also treated poorly - poorly's a terrible word to use. The level we showed at GDC happens to be our Tripoli level - Northern Africa, what was happening there? There was a stronghold of fascism in Africa long before World War II, before the Nazis came in. We tell that side of it, and what's happening to those people."

He stresses that the game is "in no way trying to be historically accurate," but that it "will be grounded in something that really happened. This is the darkest time in our history," he laments. "The Nazis are the fucking worst people that ever lived as far as I'm concerned, and so that's the path we've chosen to take."

Hyperviolence can often be seen as mindless, however. Whether it's plowing through hordes of demons in Doom, smashing them to a pulp just because you can, or popping heads in a Call of Duty lobby to get your rank up - violence in videogames has long been a talking point. We've seen the resurgence in the 'hyperviolent' genre in recent years with the explosion of boomer shooters, and the upcoming Hellraiser: Revival promising some of the goriest, most explicit action that we've seen in years. I ask how Nekome fits into that world, and how it straddles these incredibly complex, delicate themes and ultra-bloody action.

"Obviously we're not just trying to make a gratuitous, violent videogame," Barrera stresses. "There is a story, there's a reason why you're doing this stuff. We're working with consultants to make sure that we're being respectful of how this violence is being played out. We also made an artistic decision early on that we wanted to go for a graphic novel, stylized kind of look for this. We don't think this had a place in photorealism. That would have pushed it a little bit far. But we're happy with how we've stylized the violence to emphasise the narrative: you are getting that reward, the synapses are firing because you're getting to close a chapter on this character's life."

The game's notoriety system plays a part here, too, with the Nazis reacting differently according to your combat approach. Go in knife-first and soldiers will become a little more cautious, while if fear takes hold, they may just rush you and hope for the best. "We've thrown around the term 'symphony of violence.' When we were first starting to design Nekome, we knew we wanted a combat-heavy game - we knew that there were going to be button presses and timings, dodges, parries, and blocks, but we wanted to add another layer that's our own. Our lead designer Danko came to me and was like, 'wouldn't it be cool if you were the conductor in a symphony of violence?' To me, this kind of allowed the game to kind of open up in a new direction."

This inspired the game's Focus system, which works similarly to bullet time. You can target different parts of the body, and depending upon your choices you'll generate Fear. Going into a room and murdering the commander will send grunts scattering, for example. "It gives you that moment to do something brutal, and everybody reacts to it," he says. "It gives you a moment to strategize and consider how you're going to proceed with the fight. It's very satisfying."

It's an interesting decision, however, to release a game about killing Nazis in 2026. I don't think it's a secret that, politically, the world is perhaps in the most unstable state that we've seen since, well, World War II. In many ways, it's genuinely terrifying. I see requests for a new Wolfenstein relatively frequently on X, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle certainly satisfies that Nazi-punching itch (even though, rightly or wrongly, it's been embroiled in its own controversies).

I ask Barrera about the timing of the game's release. "I think everyone can look at it and draw conclusions," he says. "Killing Nazis is fun. That's where we started. We don't have any kind of agenda or anything like that. We're making this for us to tell this story about this character, Vano, and his anguish, the destruction, and where hatred leads you. What does revenge really mean? What is Nekome?"

Nekome: Nazi Hunter doesn't currently have a release date. You can wishlist it right now on Steam.