Mycopunk is another game with attitude, published by Devolver Digital, a publisher who seems to have a great eye for titles that will stand out amongst others in the market for the uniqueness of their design and play. A looter shooter with a lot of charm, even in Early Access, Mycopunk is sure to impress you. However, there are certainly issues to be addressed in this game’s trial phase, and certain choices the game makes can be easily polarizing; you’re either going to love them or hate them.
What you’ll notice about Mycopunk before anything else is the style.
“Punk” is the operating word in this sci-fi yet somehow dumpy and retro world; the game holds a sort of irreverent humor over your head with an aesthetic clearly inspired by internet jokes and satire. What makes up a team of mushroom-slaying robots can easily be called an awkward workplace comedy, as each character hardly gets along with the others and has a lot to say. The dialogue and humor can be most closely compared to the Borderlands franchise in “genre,” but while that series has lost some appeal to its audience, I can safely say that Mycopunk pulls its humor off really well; the game contains a surprising amount of dialogue as well as environmental humor which never made me cringe and earned a few solid laughs out of me. This extensive set of dialogue also made its small cast of characters feel all the more real and enjoyable; Glider is an easy favorite of mine.
The game’s personality extends from its writing into the visuals, something designed to look like old CRT UI and bright, bloom-filled, vibrant environments, alongside lots of light-filled particle effects and fungal enemies that whip tentacles and bounce around in little steel balls. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it kind of is.
Here’s the thing about Mycopunk‘s visuals: you’re either going to love them or hate them. It was clearly a feat on behalf of the developers to create such a vibrant and visually creative game. After a while, I started to love it. However, the use of bright colors, a lot of bloom, and a HUD that can feel a bit loose, bouncy, as if it was really attached to you and not a static part of the game, can be a lot. When you pair this with a screen that is absolutely packed with enemies, particle effects, and little indicators of where damage is coming from or from what, things can quickly become a bit hard to keep track of or even overstimulating. Though I eventually began to like the style, I was a little overwhelmed at the start, and I don’t blame anyone who picks the game up and immediately finds that the visuals are a bit too much to handle.
Mechanically speaking, Mycopunk can be most closely compared to Deep Rock Galactic; you embark on short, little combat-filled missions and receive rewards in the form of blueprints and resources to craft them. These missions are fun, varied in objectives, and made more lively by character dialogue and your roach narrator. Players are given a lot of options for movement, with a base run speed that is very generous and a couple of different, unique movement options on each character.
There’s a lot of good to say about Mycopunk‘s gameplay; the enemy design is unique, if not incredibly varied, guns are uniquely designed, and ammo collection is utterly unnecessary thanks to a unique and cool system that allows you to reload one gun by using your secondary. There are a few hiccups, however, that I think need to be addressed before the game leaves its Early Access run.
For starters, this team-based game can often feel highly independent, especially on lower difficulty levels. Outside of moments where you need all players present to interact with some gate or console, there is essentially no downside to splitting up, and you often find yourself doing so; each player can feel pretty strong on their own, and the penalties for dying are next to nothing. There is very little strategic benefit to teaming up when splitting up covers more ground and often leads to more enemies dying faster.
Progression also feels kind of lame, split up between skill points, weapon drops, and weapon upgrades. Weapon drops can feel incredibly hard to get, requiring a huge investment of time with the starting three weapons before you get anything new to play with. Then, anything you happen to find in-mission isn’t an actual reward, as they have to be crafted using resources, which feels implemented just to add further grind to the game. Skill points are generally fine and are rewarded by playing characters, but the skills themselves are often just flat number boosts to movement abilities, which simply makes it feel as though the movement systems you started with were nerfed, to, again, add a grind to the game.
Mycopunk has a lot to offer; it’s full of character, its gunplay is fun, and it has a promising future of further support and development ahead of it. However, some of its key features, including the visuals, the grindy playstyle, and slow progression, are easily polarizing; these are systems you’re either going to love, hate, or physically can’t appreciate, in the case of the rare player I’m sure got a headache from the ambitious yet overstimulating visuals.
Pros:
- Unique and stylish presentation
- Genuinely funny dialogue and characters
- Fun, fast-paced missions
- Creative gun mechanics and reload system
- Great movement variety
Cons:
- Visuals can be overstimulating or hard to follow
- Weak team-based mechanics
- Progression feels grindy and slow
- Weapon unlocks are overly time-consuming
TryHardGuides was provided a Steam code for this PC Early Access Review of Mycopunk. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page!
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