Blackwood on Steam — The John Wick and 007 First Light Mashup Game You Didn’t Know You Needed

Key Takeaways:

• Blackwood is a cinematic third-person shooter launching on Steam on September 16, 2026.
• The game is developed by AttritoM7 Productions — a Bangladesh-based studio behind Zero Hour.
• Players live a double life as a Brooklyn DVD store owner by day and a contract killer by night.
• Combat blends John Wick-style choreography, 007 First Light gunplay, and Max Payne Shootdodge slow-motion.
• A Clean Cash vs Dirty Cash money system mirrors GTA 6’s rumored money laundering mechanics.
• Health does not regenerate automatically — damage is mostly permanent, keeping combat tense.
• The game ships in three acts — Act 1 in September 2026, Act 2 in March 2027, Act 3 in September 2027 — all as free updates.
• Buying Blackwood at launch for $24.99 gets you the full game including all future acts.

Blackwood Is the Genre-Mashup Game Steam Desperately Needed Right Now

Every once in a while a game comes out of nowhere and just makes you stop scrolling. Blackwood is that game. Developed by AttritoM7 Productions — a studio out of Bangladesh that previously made the tactical shooter Zero Hour — Blackwood is a cinematic third-person shooter set in 2012 New York City. On paper it sounds like a lot, but the more you dig into what this game actually does, the more it becomes clear that the team wasn’t just throwing influences at a wall. They actually figured out how to stitch them together into something genuinely interesting.

The core premise is this: you play as Anton Blackwood, a guy who runs a quiet DVD store in Brooklyn during the day and moonlights as a professional contract killer after dark. Think John Wick if he had a retail job instead of a dog. That dual-life setup isn’t just a story hook either — it drives the entire structure of the game, affecting how you earn money, what you can buy, and how you manage your cover. Blackwood launches on September 16, 2026, so fans of genre-mashup action games have got barely any time left to wishlist it on Steam before it drops.

Blackwood on Steam

The Combat — John Wick Choreography Meets 007 First Light Gunplay

The thing that’s going to sell most people on Blackwood is the combat, and rightly so. AttritoM7 Productions worked with actual stunt performers to build out the game’s fighting animations, and it shows. The result is a system that mixes fast, responsive gunplay — the kind of tight third-person shooting that feels similar to what 007 First Light pulled off — with brutal close-range melee that is unmistakably channeling John Wick’s approach to fighting.

You’re not locked into just shooting or just punching. Anton can seamlessly move between ranged combat and hand-to-hand in the same encounter, and the game has a strong emphasis on using the environment around you to dispatch enemies. Contextual takedowns using nearby objects, surfaces, and props are a core part of the combat loop, which is exactly what makes John Wick’s fight choreography so satisfying to watch — and now you’re the one executing it.

The game ships with over 30 unique weapons, third-person cover mechanics, slides, rolls, and dives to keep encounters feeling fluid and dynamic. Every fight is designed to feel cinematic while still demanding real player skill. This isn’t a game where you can just stand still and trade shots. AttritoM7 clearly built combat that rewards aggressive, mobile play — and the stunt-performer motion capture work gives every animation a weight and physicality that a lot of indie action games just don’t have.

Max Payne’s DNA Is in Here Too — Shootdodge, Bullet Time, and Killcams

If John Wick covers the melee side and 007 First Light covers the gunplay feel, then Max Payne is the third ingredient that ties the action together cinematically. Blackwood features a Shootdodge-style diving system combined with bullet time, allowing players to slow down time mid-combat and line up shots with that classic cinematic flair that defined the Max Payne series. Killcams are also in the mix, giving those satisfying finishing moments the dramatic framing they deserve.

What makes this especially smart is how the developer balanced these power-fantasy elements against genuine challenge. Bullet time and slow-motion dives make you feel cool, but they don’t make the game easy. Health regeneration is not a prominent feature in Blackwood — damage taken is largely permanent within an encounter. As the developer put it directly: “Health is divided into stages, meaning you won’t automatically recover full vitality after completing an encounter.” That design choice keeps every fight genuinely tense even when you’re pulling off stylish moves. You’re always one bad sequence away from being in serious trouble, and that tension is what made Max Payne’s best moments so memorable.

Running a DVD Store and Laundering Money Like GTA 6

Here’s where Blackwood gets really interesting for people who like depth in their games. The DVD store isn’t just set dressing — it’s a functional business simulation layer built into the game. Anton manages his shop by stocking inventory, setting prices, decorating the space, and serving customers. It’s his cover, and maintaining that cover matters. But it also generates income, and that income is categorically different from the money he earns doing murder contracts at night.

The game distinguishes between Clean Cash and Dirty Cash as two separate currencies. Clean money from the store can be spent at legitimate online marketplaces through the in-game computer — regular stuff, nothing that raises flags. Dirty cash from assassination contracts, however, can only be used on the dark web to buy illegal firearms, ammunition, and other gear you can’t get through standard channels. You can’t just freely mix and spend the two pools, which creates a genuinely interesting economy management layer on top of the action.

This should feel very familiar to anyone following GTA 6 news. Rockstar’s upcoming game is rumored to feature a money laundering mechanic where players have to clean dirty earnings before they can be freely spent. Blackwood is doing something structurally similar in a much more contained single-player package. It gives the criminal life-sim side of the game real teeth — you’re not just flipping between story missions, you’re actively managing two separate financial streams and thinking about how each decision on one side affects the other. It’s the kind of detail that makes a world feel alive rather than just functional. Fans keeping tabs on deep in-game economy systems in upcoming RPGs like Diablo 5 will find Blackwood’s approach to dual-economy progression really compelling.

Anton Blackwood — A Character Built Around Two Lives

The dual-life structure isn’t just a gameplay gimmick. It actually informs the narrative and the character in a meaningful way. Anton isn’t a superhero — he’s a man caught between survival, morality, and a past that keeps pulling him back into violence. The Brooklyn DVD store represents his attempt at a normal life, and the game plays that straight. There’s a woman at the store who notices the quieter, softer side of him — a side he rarely shows to anyone. That human element gives the story some texture beyond just action sequences.

This dual-identity structure mirrors what makes both John Wick and James Bond compelling as characters. Both men are defined by the contrast between the violence they’re capable of and the ordinary human connections they desperately want. John Wick grieving his wife while the Continental’s world pulls him back in. Bond trying to live a normal life between missions that fundamentally make that impossible. Blackwood is clearly drawing from that same emotional well, and setting the story in 2012 New York gives it a specific period atmosphere — before smartphones ate everything, when a DVD store was still a plausible small business. It’s a nice touch that makes the world feel grounded rather than generic.

The Untitled John Wick Game vs Blackwood — One Is Actually Coming Out

There’s one elephant in the room worth addressing. An official John Wick game has been confirmed — developed by Saber Interactive, the studio behind Space Marine 2, and reportedly featuring Keanu Reeves as the protagonist. It was developed in collaboration with the franchise’s director and was shown during the 2026 State of Play. Sounds great on paper. Problem is, it has no release window. It could be years away.

Blackwood releases in two days. For fans of John Wick’s combat style, Blackwood is the game you can actually play right now. And honestly, being an original IP might work in its favor. Blackwood isn’t constrained by needing to match film canon or feature a specific actor’s likeness — it takes the elements that make John Wick fights so satisfying and builds a complete original world around them. Sometimes that freedom produces something better than the licensed product would have been anyway. The same goes for the spiritual successors approach in gaming broadly — looking at how Wardogs: Bulkhead exploded on Steam with over a million copies and 350K concurrent players shows there’s a massive appetite for serious action games that don’t lean on existing IP.

Three Acts, One Price — How Blackwood’s Release Model Works

AttritoM7 Productions is taking an episodic approach to Blackwood that’s actually pretty consumer-friendly. The game launches with Act 1 on September 16, 2026, priced at $24.99. Act 2 follows in March 2027, and Act 3 arrives in September 2027. Critically, if you buy the game at launch, all three acts are included in that single purchase as free updates. You’re buying the full game at the Act 1 price — the price may go up for new buyers as later acts release, but existing owners don’t pay again.

Act 1 alone is confirmed to offer over six hours of content across its story missions. The three-act structure lets the team ship playable content sooner rather than making players wait for a complete but delayed product, and it keeps the community engaged between releases. It’s a model that makes sense for an ambitious indie studio managing a fairly large scope project, and the pricing is reasonable for what you’re getting — especially since future acts won’t cost extra. The game also supports Steam Achievements, Cloud Saves, Family Sharing, and full controller support, with an SSD required and 30 GB of install space needed.

AttritoM7 Productions — The Bangladesh Studio Behind the Game

It’s worth taking a second to appreciate where this game is coming from. AttritoM7 Productions is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Blackwood is their most ambitious project yet. Their previous game, Zero Hour, was a landmark title — the first Bangladeshi game on Steam to feature motion capture and procedural prop placement when it exited Early Access in September 2024. Blackwood is a significant step up from that, featuring stunt-performer-captured combat animations, an original in-house soundtrack composed and performed by the studio’s own band, seamless gameplay-to-cutscene transitions, and an authentic recreation of 2012 New York City.

Bangladesh’s game development industry has historically faced real challenges — limited investment, brain drain, and a small local workforce for this kind of technical production. That context makes what AttritoM7 has built here genuinely impressive. The game crossed 100,000 Steam wishlists before the release date was even announced, which tells you the wider gaming community has noticed. Blackwood had a playable demo at Gamescom 2026 in Hall 10.2, and the reception there only added more fuel to the fire heading into launch. It’s the kind of indie story that deserves attention regardless of how the game itself lands critically.

Should You Wishlist Blackwood Before September 16?

If you’re even slightly into third-person action games, yes. The combination of mechanics here is genuinely unusual — John Wick choreography, 007 First Light gunfighting, Max Payne slow-motion, GTA 6-style dual economies, and an actual shop simulation all in one package. That’s not a list of features thrown together to sound impressive on a Steam page. Based on the gameplay footage and the detailed system descriptions from the developer, it looks like AttritoM7 actually built a coherent game around all of it.

The health permanence system, the Clean Cash vs Dirty Cash economy, the contextual environment takedowns, the stunt-captured animations — these are the details that tell you a studio thought seriously about what they were making. $24.99 for all three acts with Act 1 launching September 16 is an easy pitch for anyone who’s been starved of good cinematic action games on PC. And honestly, while the world waits for the official John Wick game and GTA 6 to eventually show up, Blackwood looks like it might scratch both itches at once. Not bad for an indie studio from Dhaka. Keep an eye on Blackwood — and check out what else is happening across the gaming world right now with the Zelda Ocarina of Time remake news and the latest updates out of the premium gaming collectibles space.