BLACKWOOD Review

Atrito M7 Productions mixes a DVD store simulator with aggressive third-person combat, detailed weapons, and a crime-driven double life, but rough edges hold back some of its strongest ideas.

BLACKWOOD is an unusual action game because it does not simply focus on shooting enemies from one mission to the next. Developed by Atrito M7 Productions, the team behind Zero Hour, it puts you in the shoes of Anton BLACKWOOD, a professional gun for hire who also tries to maintain a normal life by running a DVD store in Brooklyn.

The game takes place in 2012 New York City, giving the whole experience a very specific period setting where the DVD business still feels like a believable part of everyday life. Atrito M7 Productions is based in Bangladesh, and BLACKWOOD represents a much more ambitious direction for the studio after Zero Hour. 

BLACKWOOD was released on PC through Steam on September 16, 2026, and was published by Iszilla Games alongside Atrito M7 Productions.

The supplied material describes it as a third-person action thriller that combines contract missions with a much quieter business-management side. That mix immediately sets it apart from a conventional shooter. You are not only thinking about your next firefight. You're also running a store, managing money, organizing equipment, customizing your surroundings, and maintaining the civilian side of Anton's life.

The idea is ambitious for an indie project because several systems have to work together. You have gunplay, melee combat, takedowns, movement mechanics, weapon customization, a separate economy, store management, an apartment, a basement hideout, contracts, deliveries, and everyday routines. 

The story puts you in the shoes of Anton BLACKWOOD, a gun-for-hire in New York in 2012. During the day, you operate a Brooklyn DVD store with Emily, dealing with customers and trying to keep the business running. At night, Anton returns to his other life, using a basement hideout to manage contracts and accept jobs that bring in dirty money. 

The opening throws you into Anton's life with very little explanation. You begin in the sewers wearing a torn and bloody tuxedo while carrying a pistol, creating the impression that something has already gone badly wrong before you even understand who Anton is or what happened. 

After that opening, you return home and start dealing with the more ordinary parts of his routine. You can change clothes, take a drink from the refrigerator, shower, turn on the news, and eventually head down to the DVD store. From there, the game gradually introduces the relationship between Anton's legitimate business and his criminal work.

The supplied sources provide limited narrative material, especially since one source doesn't progress far into the story. 

What is clear is that Anton is operating as a registered gun for hire while trying to maintain a believable civilian existence. Emily is an important part of the store side of that life, although the supplied material does not establish the exact direction of their relationship. 

Rather than inventing details about where the story goes, it is safer to say BLACKWOOD sets up a character caught between the quiet routine of running a business and the dangerous work that happens after hours. That double identity is arguably more important to the game's structure than any individual plot twist described in the sources.

The daytime side of BLACKWOOD revolves around the DVD store, and its role is much more than a decorative location. You need to keep the store organized, stock shelves, clean dusty surfaces, deal with spills, manage DVDs, and look after customers. You can purchase DVDs online and choose what you want available in the store, while magazines and popcorn racks add more small tasks to the business. 

Customers are where the store management becomes more demanding. Some visitors want specific genres or a particular level of movie quality, so you need to become familiar with the catalog rather than simply clicking a recommendation whenever a customer appears. 

The supplied material describes customers allowing you only a few seconds to notice a recommendation prompt and respond before they leave, which puts pressure on a task that initially sounds basic. Stock can change unexpectedly, so DVDs you thought were available may not always be where you expect. 

Time management is another important part of the store. 

The business operates from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and one of the supplied texts says a full day takes around 20 minutes of real time. You can perform other activities during the day, including missions or contracts, although the source encountered a problem when attempting to leave the store for one of these activities. 

The length of the working day can therefore become noticeable, especially when you are eager to return to the action. This is one of the clearest differences between BLACKWOOD's two halves: the contract missions build momentum, while the store deliberately slows you down.

Outside the store, Anton has an apartment and a basement hideout where he runs much of his criminal operation. You can manage equipment, clothing, purchases, deliveries, and loadouts, and you can customize and expand both the store and the basement. Purchases can be delivered directly to your locations, with faster delivery costing more. 

These small interactions give the game a physical feel because equipment and other purchases aren't always treated as abstract inventory screens. The basement also becomes the place where you organize your weapons and prepare for upcoming contracts.

The economy ties all of these activities together. BLACKWOOD separates Anton's money into clean and dirty income. You use money from the DVD store for things tied to your legitimate life, including storefront upgrades, outfits, and civilian firearms. Instead, you can spend money earned from contracts through the black market on military-grade modifications, illegal equipment, and untraceable ammunition. 

Weapon management goes far beyond simply buying the strongest gun available. 

Weapons are treated as individual possessions, and you can own multiple versions of the same firearm with different configurations. You can buy damaged weapons and strip them for useful components and transfer compatible parts between weapons. Military variants and illegal modifications give you more ways to build equipment around your preferred setup, and the basement can hold your collection and loadouts. 

The amount of physical detail in these systems is one of BLACKWOOD's most compelling features. Installing and managing equipment can involve actual animations instead of simply opening a menu and watching a number change. Weapons can be maintained, rebuilt, and configured as individual objects, making your collection feel more personal. 

Progression is therefore less about a traditional level-based system and more about building Anton's two lives. The supplied texts do not describe a conventional XP grinding system where repeated kills steadily increase a character level. Instead, progression ties to money, shop improvements, weapons, modifications, equipment, and managing Anton's resources. 

That approach also means the slower parts of the game have a purpose. The DVD store can feel like a chore when you are more interested in shooting, but it connects to the larger progression loop. You cannot simply treat the store as a background location if you want to develop Anton's civilian life. 

BLACKWOOD doesn't seem built around traditional puzzles, and the supplied texts don't describe a dedicated puzzle system. 

Instead, the main challenge is understanding how its combat mechanics fit together. The game initially feels more awkward than a polished, large-budget third-person shooter, with clunky animations, rough transitions, and occasional bugs that affect how actions connect. 

The combat gives you several ways to maintain momentum. You can empty a rifle and quickly switch to your secondary weapon instead of stopping to reload. You can dive across a room, aim during the dive to briefly slow time, close the distance for a takedown, steal an enemy's weapon, or use something in the environment during an attack.

The health system supports that aggressive approach. BLACKWOOD does not rely on the familiar system where you hide behind cover and wait for your health to regenerate. Health is divided into stages, and regaining momentum means getting close enough to enemies to land takedowns, finishers, or environmental attacks.

Dives, rolls, and slides give you tools to close distance or escape danger, while the momentum-based diving system allows movement speed to influence how far Anton travels. When these mechanics connect, encounters can become fast and physical rather than simply a matter of crouching behind cover and shooting over a barrier.

The firearm mechanics are another strong part of the combat design.

BLACKWOOD tracks whether a round remains in the chamber, so reloading while a chambered round is available lets you retain that extra shot. You can physically check ammunition, and on the highest difficulty the standard ammunition counter disappears, making that knowledge more important.

The problem is that these ideas do not always feel as smooth in practice as they sound on paper. The sources mention rough animations, inconsistent interactions, bugs, and combat that takes time to understand. Another source also describes issues with cover behavior and enemy AI, including situations where enemies behave strangely or follow one another out of areas after seeing another enemy get attacked.

That unevenness means you sometimes need to learn how BLACKWOOD wants you to play instead of assuming its systems will naturally work the way they do in more polished action games. Once you stop treating it like a standard cover shooter and start combining dives, weapon switching, takedowns, enemy weapons, and environmental interactions, the combat becomes more enjoyable.

Visually, BLACKWOOD has a mixed presentation. The 3D environments can look reasonably impressive, and the 2012 New York setting gives the game a recognizable atmosphere. The sources describe the environments as one of the stronger parts of the presentation, with relatively few visual glitches in some areas.

At the same time, character presentation is noticeably weaker, particularly during cutscenes. Facial and mouth movements can look stiff, and the limited number of character models means you see the same appearances repeatedly among gangsters and customers.

The broader visual quality also varies depending on what you are looking at.

Some effects and environmental elements work well enough, but other areas lack detail and sharpness. Hair movement is passable, while facial expressions don't add much life to conversations. This creates an odd contrast: the environments can give you a convincing sense of place, but the people in those spaces sometimes look much less developed.

Voice acting also seems restrained, particularly Anton's performance, which one source describes as having little variation or energy. The supplied material also criticizes the dialogue and writing, with some exchanges feeling more forced than natural.

BLACKWOOD is compelling because its most significant strength is also the reason it can feel uneven. The developers are trying to combine several different games into one experience: a third-person action game, a contract-based crime story, a small business simulator, a weapon-management system, and a life-management routine.

The DVD store is probably the clearest example. It is not just filler between missions because the clean-money economy makes it part of progression, and the customer interactions, stock management, cleaning, purchases, and customization give it a real gameplay purpose.

The combat has a similar contradiction.

The combat has a similar contradiction. When these systems line up, Anton can move through an encounter with a rhythm that feels very different from a traditional cover shooter. The problem is that the rough animations, bugs, AI behavior, cover issues, and inconsistent feedback can interrupt that rhythm.

The weapon system is perhaps where the game's ambition is easiest to appreciate. Treating firearms as individual possessions, allowing compatible parts to move between weapons, letting you rebuild damaged guns, and giving you a shooting range all add depth without relying on a conventional XP system.

It's refreshing that BLACKWOOD doesn't try to make every minute an unstoppable action-hero moment. You can spend part of the game organizing DVDs and helping customers, then later take a contract where you dive across rooms, switch weapons, perform takedowns, and use the environment to survive.

At the same time, the supplied texts make it clear that ambition sometimes outpaces production quality. The developers are attempting to support shooting, melee, takedowns, environmental interactions, weapon customization, a black-market economy, an apartment, a DVD store, deliveries, and a criminal lifestyle within the same game.

The most important thing is that BLACKWOOD has its own identity.

It is not simply another third-person shooter built around increasingly large explosions and endless combat arenas. Its best ideas come from forcing the action to exist alongside Anton's ordinary life. You have reasons to care about the store, the money it makes, the equipment in the basement, and the routine outside the contracts.

The supplied material also provides useful context through Atrito M7 Productions' history with Zero Hour. The team has experience developing and improving a tactical shooter over time, and that makes the firearm detail in BLACKWOOD easier to understand. The game still has rough edges that would benefit from the same kind of continued refinement, particularly around animations, AI, interactions, and the slower management sections.

Ultimately, BLACKWOOD is at its most compelling when its different systems overlap. Running the store gives you clean money, contracts give you dirty money, cash gives you access to equipment, weapons become possessions you can modify, and combat rewards you for understanding movement and aggression.