Dotemu and Auroch Digital aim Ultimate Bug War! squarely at Helldivers diehards and boomer-shooter fans, blending PS2-era Starship Troopers camp with chunky retro FPS gunplay and co-op friendly bug massacres ahead of its 2026 console and PC launch.
Starship Troopers is having a moment again, and Dotemu knows exactly which vein to tap. Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! is a newly announced retro FPS take on the license, developed by Auroch Digital, the studio behind Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. It is due in early 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC, and it is very clearly gunning for Helldivers fans and boomer-shooter diehards in equal measure.
Set 25 years after Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 cult classic, Ultimate Bug War! drops players back into the Federation’s propaganda machine with a story framed as a war diary. You play Samantha Dietz, a decorated Mobile Infantry veteran recounting a campaign against a new Arachnid threat, the Assassin Bug. Missions bounce between familiar battlegrounds like Klendathu and fresh warzones such as Planet P, keeping one boot planted in movie nostalgia while giving Auroch room to invent new bug species, support toys and set pieces.
Johnny Rico is back too. Casper Van Dien reprises his role as the now General Johnny Rico, who serves as the player’s gravel voiced hype man. He pops up in briefing style FMV segments and in-game comms, delivering the kind of chest thumping, jingoistic one-liners that defined the film’s satirical edge. The developers are leaning into that tone with recruitment ads, Federation newsreels and mission briefings that feel like lost PS2 era cutscenes, grainy compression and all.
Visually, Ultimate Bug War! is pitched as a love letter to the PS2 era rather than the sprite based 90s shooters that dominate the boomer-shooter revival. The aesthetic is chunky and noisy, full of big flat textures, hard color gradients and thick HUD elements that look ripped from an early 2000s licensed FPS. Environments are boxy but busy, layered with neon UI holograms, barracks clutter and propaganda posters that sell the fantasy of life in the Mobile Infantry. Auroch pairs that with a modern lighting pass and ultra-violent dismemberment, so every exploding bug showers the old school geometry in lurid green ichor.
On the ground, the core loop is classic Starship Troopers: drop, fortify, survive the swarm. Each operation starts with a hot landing as your squad is kicked out of a dropship into a kill zone packed with Arachnids. You scramble to establish a foothold, locking down bunkers, calling in defensive turrets and setting up firing lanes before the next wave hits. The game pushes mobility and target prioritization rather than mil-sim lethality. Dietz moves fast, bunny hopping between trenches, vaulting over barricades and using quick melee shoves to make space whenever the horde closes in.
Auroch Digital is using its Boltgun experience to keep the arsenal punchy. The iconic Morita rifle is your bread and butter, with a staccato bark and a reload animation that lingers just long enough to feel vulnerable when the chittering gets too close. Over the course of the campaign you expand that kit to more than a dozen weapons, from shotgun style trench sweepers to squad support LMGs, railguns and explosive launchers that carve bloody trenches directly through a wave of Warriors. Support items and gadgets fill out the rest of the toolbox, including deployable sentries, air strike beacons, napalm barrages and medical drops tailored for quick in-and-out resupplies.
The bugs are not just bullet sponges. Standard Drones and Warriors fill the screen with bodies, but special types like the Assassin Bug demand quick threat recognition. They phase in from the edges of vision, darting across the battlefield to pick off isolated troopers and punish anyone who strays from squad coherency. Tankers and Plasma bugs return as set piece bosses, forcing you to dance between splash damage and armor weak points while the ground units keep up the pressure.
Although Ultimate Bug War! is being presented primarily as a single player story campaign, everything about its structure screams co-op friendly design. Objectives are built around holding multiple angles, juggling support cooldowns and reviving downed troopers under pressure, which naturally suits squads of friends hopping on voice chat. Even the “anti bug combat training modules” that Auroch has mentioned sound like wave based score attack arenas where groups can refine movement tech and learn how far they can push the difficulty.
Fans of Helldivers will likely feel at home with how often you are asked to multitask under fire. You might be clearing a nest cluster while simultaneously defending a comms relay, calling down a mech and making sure your squad’s ammo economy does not collapse. Unlike Helldivers’ top down tactics though, Ultimate Bug War! brings that chaos into a first person, PS2 flavored perspective. It looks less like a simulation of a vast interstellar war and more like the 2002 tie in shooter we never actually got, only blown up with modern production and a better understanding of how to make hordes satisfying to mow down.
For boomer-shooter fans chasing the high of Boltgun, Dusk or Prodeus, this is a slightly different flavor of retro. The enemies are not demons or faceless soldiers, they are swarms of skittering bodies that hit like a wall when they finally close the distance. The weapons hit with that same crunchy feedback, but the spacing and pacing are tuned around crowd control and last stand fantasy rather than arena strafing. The mission design leans on clear forward momentum and objective markers, much closer to the early console FPS campaigns that shepherded you through big set pieces.
The license helps give that structure personality. Federation bureaucracy turns up as score screens and performance reviews, grading your bug kill counts and collateral damage with darkly comedic propaganda slogans. Cutscenes revel in the franchise’s satirical roots, juxtaposing cheerful recruitment jingles with footage of troopers being ripped in half. If Auroch can thread the needle between honoring the film’s anti fascist streak and delivering the kind of power fantasy shooters thrive on, Ultimate Bug War! has a good chance to feel sharper than the average throwback.
With a 2026 launch window and platforms that include the inevitable Switch 2, there is time for Auroch Digital to polish the swarm tech and refine its co-op hook. The early look suggests a game that understands what Helldivers did for communal bug slaughter and what boomer shooters have done for punchy gunfeel, then filters both through the grainy lens of a PS2 licensed FPS tie in. If you are the kind of player who still has the Klendathu drop burned into your brain, or someone who thinks nothing beats the clarity of retro HUDs and big bold objectives, Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! should be on your 2026 watchlist.