Edited 19/05/2026

The FPS scene is unfortunately dying. Most of us can admit that every year the games that we love get more casualised, more broken, more predatory for monetisation purposes and more incompetently developed. We pursue competitive FPS gaming that most AAA studios or even indie games often fail at. Foehammer Studios aims to change the focus of the oversaturated casual gaming market and bring back the competitive integrity that games have desperately needed for a very long time. We're done complaining about it so we're planning to get out of this FPS drought. No pay-to-win, no skin gambling like loot boxes or selling skins, no battle passes, no skill-based matchmaking in public matches, no aim assist, no hero abilities and no AI exploiting the work of real artists. Simply put, we’re bringing back the skill-gap in games.

I'm Aidan or ReaLadge as my online alias. I am the Head Founder at Foehammer Studios and I have solo developed Project Skill-Gap for just over two and a half years. I’m originally from a big lonely island called Australia, and now in the UK. I experienced a decent amount of my life in the competitive FPS scene but unfortunately due to the low population and the current state of modern FPS games, there weren't many opportunities at all and on top of that, the games I absolutely loved kept getting worse over time. It got to the point where everyone, especially myself, was getting extremely tired from it all.

So I taught myself game development and started building a balanced competitive FPS. For years, 95% of this project has been myself, from learning the engine to fixing the engine. Now I've got a small team helping where they can and hopefully in time, we can get more onboard to accelerate this vision further.

This project isn’t planning just one single game. It’s multiple phases starting from Phase 1, which is what we currently have released, the Mechanics Showcase that you can play right now. Once we polish the Mechanics Showcase and we are comfortable with it, we will start Phase 2 development of the Arena FPS that includes 4-16 player close-quarters combat modes that focus on having a wide competitive skill-gap. This is the first iteration of multiplayer PvP so this process needs to be thoroughly tested which will take a considerable amount of time before fully committing to early access and full release.

Once we are happy with the release, we will plan on having content after launch and start development on Phase 3, the Large-scale FPS featuring vehicle combat and destruction with 64+ players. This would also be a huge undertaking network and optimisation wise. We will closely look into ways to push past limitations within the project and the engine to fulfil desirable gameplay experiences.

At this point in time we would be having more team members working across multiple titles. When we are satisfied with the completion of the Large-Scale FPS, we will take on the biggest challenge that awaits us in Phase 4. The Survival FPS. The scope of this survival game is absolutely massive, too many ideas to verbally put out, but let’s just say that we are going full-on innovation while keeping balance in mind. We’re talking age progression from prehistoric fighting mammoths, to raiding clan bases with tanks and nukes, to boarding space stations and ramming them into the planet causing the planet to split in half. Those kinds of crazy cool ideas. Sounds very far-fetched, but with our determination and unbreakable passion, I believe we can do it.

We stick to the ‘It’s ready when it’s ready’ model. Releasing games at full release into an unfinished state has been a trend that we don’t favour at all and we will not release a final product that is completely broken. We will test everything to our heart’s content to make sure to keep that promise.

The Mechanics Showcase is the tip of the iceberg of making all this happen. It isn't just a tech demo, it's a proof of concept of what's to come, and we are only just scratching the surface of it all.

Beyond the games, software has also been in a functionality drought. We're building a few software applications and platforms that improve user experiences tenfold. One of these platforms is Foundium, an all-in-one productivity platform with page docs, databases, an infinite canvas, an integrated browser that can handle 1000s of tabs, and text and voice communication channels.

The other non-game related software is Inkognito, a safe haven for artists or anyone wanting to display anything visually without the concern of being scraped for AI training or general theft. Regarding this technology, we will be experimenting with the idea of our game’s anti-cheat that potentially removes graphics card cheats. We are currently using these software tools in-house and will be releasing them publicly in time.