Six years after its announcement, SiN Reloaded finally has a Steam demo

The '90s were a utopia for 3D shooter fanatics. The likes of Doom, Duke Nukem, and Quake were king, and even Star Wars got pulled in with the amazing Dark Forces. As the decade drew to a close, Ritual Entertainment delivered its own mutant-mashing experience, SiN. It's certainly not an all-timer like many of its contemporaries, but SiN had its own, rugged charm. In 2020, remaster maestro Nightdive Studios revealed SiN Reloaded, and now it's finally ready to let you get hands-on with its latest refresh as part of Steam Next Fest.

Forget the Doomslayer, it's time to meet John SiN - I mean John Blade, as he seeks to foil the devious designs of evil CEO Elexis Sinclair. Sinclair's been pumping the people full of DNA-altering drugs, transforming them into mutants, and only Blade can put an end to her schemes. As you can probably tell, SiN is very much a product of its time, but the remaster brings with it some modern bells and whistles.

Nightdive's KEX Engine is a true piece of wizardry, allowing the studio to take classic game code and juice it up. SiN Reloaded sports higher resolution textures, 4K resolution and 144 FPS support, as well as a modernized UI. You'll also find an overhauled control scheme, better maps, and even some brand new achievements if you're all about the hunt. Obviously, you're not getting photorealistic fidelity here, and seeing the models go from PS1 Hagrid to a FaceApp'd PS1 Hagrid in its latest trailer is quite funny, but it's still a marked improvement to the FPS game that you should definitely try out.

SiN Reloaded has had more than a tricky development cycle. Speaking to freelance critic Peter Glagowski last year, Nightdive studio head Stephen Kick explained that, initially, the remaster was being co-developed with 3D Realms. Its slated 2021 launch window, however, became untenable after its partner in polygonal shine was snapped up by Embracer Group. According to Kick, "there just wasn't enough bandwidth" on either side to make it work, so they "called it quits on that particular iteration of the game."

By the time 2023 rolled around, the project was in limbo. Nightdive was full-throttle on getting its splendid System Shock remake over the line, and it had clearly reached its already limited capacity. At the time, it posted on SiN Reloaded's Steam page that it would return to the remaster "at a later date." Judging from Kick's comment in the Glagowski interview, that Nightdive had picked development back up "not too long ago," as of July 2025, I can't imagine that this version of the remaster was in the oven for more than a couple of years.

That is, however, all in the past - put to bed after Nightdive formally announced SiN Reloaded back in March. The SiN Reloaded demo is now available on Steam, and you can head here to check it out. Nightdive has yet to slap on a full launch date, but we do know that it's due before the year's out.