I’ve been playing an early build of Mycopunk for the past week and damn — I can’t stop thinking about it. This weird mashup of Borderlands‘ cell-shaded style, Risk of Rain‘s frantic combat, and Earth Defense Force‘s chaotic enemy hordes has no business being this fun so early in development.
Last night I dropped into a mission named “Cleanup Detail” with a random squad; you’re tasked with torching these pulsating fungal growths connected by living pipelines across the map. I chose the character named Glider (very rapidly becoming my go-to). Glider has a wingsuit and lets you dive-bomb into and out of trouble — and rocket salvo your way out when things get hairy. The other three characters seem solid too, but nothing beats raining down hell from above.
Developers Pigeons and Play nailed the co-op experience. Playing solo works fine, but bringing friends transforms the game into something special. We strategically split up to tackle different sections of the map, only to frantically regroup when one of us inevitably stumbled across a mini-boss that started spewing spores everywhere.
The real star here? Enemy dismemberment. Holy crap! You can literally shoot chunks off everything that moves. I blasted the legs off a massive fungal quadruped thing, watched it adapt in real-time and start dragging itself toward me using these gross tendril-like appendages. Someone in the squad shouted “Kill it with fire!” so I torched what was left, but I missed a piece — thirty seconds later, the damn thing was regenerating. Lesson learned: be thorough.
And don’t think you can just take the high ground and be safe. These fungal freaks pack serious heat, with lasers that cut through cover, rocket salvos that rival my own, and this annoying ability to attack from literally everywhere. One second you’re dealing with ground troops, the next you’ve got flying spore-launchers raining death from above, and then something’s bursting through a wall you thought was solid. There’s no safe angle in this game.
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The game currently offers four sprawling locations on the same alien planet. Each has its own biome, but they’re all delightfully unsettling; like someone let mushrooms go unchecked for a few centuries. The gritty cell-shaded art style makes all the disgusting biology pop in the worst/best way possible.
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Story is light in this demo build; we’re getting breadcrumbs about why we’re fighting these fungal nightmares, but nothing substantial yet — it’s coming to PC in Early Access soon and there’s a demo available on Steam now. Until then, the gameplay loop is addictive enough that I’m happy just blasting away while they figure out the narrative.
Mycopunk is shaping up to be the kind of extraction shooter that’ll have me coming back for “just one more run” until the early hours. If they can maintain this level of chaotic fun through to release, this one’s gonna spread like, well, a fungal infection.
Early access to Mycopunk was granted by the publisher.
