October 14, 2026
The $24.99 retro shooter launched today on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S with a second playable hero, more than 30 levels, and a launch-day fix list written by its own demo players.
The Emperor's cheapest war is back on. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 unlocked worldwide at 12 PM EDT today, October 14, on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S — a sequel Auroch Digital rebuilt around demo feedback, with a launch-day post listing changes made purely because demo players asked for them. In an era of $70 launches and day-one patches that fix what trailers promised, a $24.99 retro shooter that spent five months publicly absorbing feedback is doing something quietly radical.
The sequel follows 2023's Boltgun, Auroch's pixel-drenched love letter to the boomer shooters of the Doom era, which put players in the power armor of Ultramarine Malum Caedo and earned an 87% positive player-review average on Steam, according to GameRant. Boltgun 2 was announced in May 2025 at the Warhammer Skulls showcase, its October 14 date was set in August, and a free demo has been live on Steam since May — long enough for players to find everything they disliked about it.
A Game Shaped by the Demo
Auroch calls the release "a game shaped by you," and its launch-day Steam post, catalogued by HowToVideoGame, backs the slogan with specifics. The Bolt Pistol's magazine grows from six rounds to eight. The Ice World's blizzard has been toned down so players can actually see the heretics they are purging. Nyra's Bolt Pistol can now be melee-swung mid-reload. Malum's Charge knocks enemies backward instead of just arriving at them. The Bolt Pistol's machine spirit — which players said felt too slow — has been reworked entirely, and an unpleasant noise the Chainsword made is simply gone. These are small, unglamorous fixes, and that is exactly the point: they are the fingerprints of thousands of demo sessions, applied before the game asked anyone for money.
Two Warriors, Thirty Levels, Four Chaos Gods
The sequel's biggest structural change is a second playable character. Alongside the returning Caedo — Boltgun, Chainsword, frag grenades and his Obliterating Charge — players can run the whole campaign as Nyra Veyrath, a Sister of Battle armed with a Power Sword and Bolt Pistol, whose Fervent Slide gives her vertical and horizontal agility Caedo's bulk cannot match, plus a Melta Bomb for crowd control. You pick one and play the campaign as that character, which makes the choice matter more than a menu toggle usually does.
Around them, everything is bigger. The branching campaign runs to more than 30 levels, with alternate routes that require repeat playthroughs to fully complete. More than 40 new enemies arrive drawn from all four Chaos factions — Nurgle, Tzeentch, Khorne and Slaanesh — boss encounters have been reworked to be more complex, and AI-controlled Death Korps of Krieg troops fight alongside you on some levels. An optional automap and navigation guide address the first game's labyrinth complaints, an Undying Mode joins the accessibility options, and unlockable weapons include Flamers, Stakethrowers and Shotguns, per the Xbox store listing and GameRant's pre-launch rundown.
A Demigod Debuts, and Mick Gordon Scores It
The campaign sends Caedo and Veyrath to an isolated star system to investigate surging Chaos activity, where they run into Vashtorr the Arkifane — a daemonic demigod of invention making his video-game debut — whose awakened machine devastates the Imperial fleet and leaves the pair hopping from corrupted world to corrupted world to shut his plans down. For the final boss fight against Vashtorr, Auroch brought in Mick Gordon, the composer behind DOOM Eternal's soundtrack, to provide the track. If you are going to sell a retro shooter's climax, that is the phone call you make.
Price, Platforms and Early Returns
Boltgun 2 costs $24.99 at launch on Steam and Xbox — the 10% pre-order discount ended as the game unlocked — and it is Steam Deck Verified, with GamingOnLinux noting the certification ahead of release and Steam Deck HQ's demo testing finding mostly 60fps in smaller fights and frame rates holding above 30 in the heaviest encounters at the Deck's native resolution. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is coming "shortly after" the other platforms, Auroch's FAQ says, but still has no date.
It is a busy day for shooters generally — Sony's October catalog, detailed in our PlayStation Plus report, leads with a co-op looter shooter of its own. Early returns for Boltgun 2 are warm, with the usual launch-day asterisks. About four hours after unlocking, Steam's review summary read "Very Positive," with 82 of 85 user reviews recommending the game — a tiny sample that will move as more players finish the campaign, as HowToVideoGame itself flagged. Hey Poor Player's full review scored it 4 out of 5, praising the two heroes and branching paths while calling out the lack of character growth between levels as a missed opportunity, and landing on the fairest summary so far: an entertaining, straightforward boomer shooter that knows exactly what it is.
Our Take: The Anti-$70 Launch
There is a version of this industry where every game costs $70, ships broken, and apologizes in a roadmap. Boltgun 2 is the other version: $25, a free demo that stayed up for months, a developer that published its homework on launch day, and a sequel that doubles its playable cast without doubling its price. It will not win November — nothing releasing in Grand Theft Auto VI's blast radius pretends otherwise — but it does not have to. For shooter fans raised on Doom and raised again on the first Boltgun, this is a weekend of chainswords at exactly the right price, made measurably better by the people who played it early. For the Emperor, and for your wallet.
Sources · 4 sources
Reporting based on Auroch Digital's launch-day Steam post and FAQ, and coverage from HowToVideoGame, GameRant, Game8 and the Xbox store listing. Facts cross-checked across at least two independent outlets before publication.
