Everything is so damn stylish these days. FragPunk, an upcoming free-to-play 5v5 shooter, is almost unerringly so, with blisteringly cool, hyper-stylised art direction, a card-based system that changes how you play each round, and smart and snappy gunplay with an array of weapons to choose from. Interestingly, there’s not only depth beneath that beautiful façade, but there’s also a sense of fun and humour that’s been lacking in our shooters for a long time.
Remember when arena deathmatch games took chances, or even poked fun at themselves a little? Cheat codes in GoldenEye, being turned into a monkey in TimeSplitters, it wasn’t all about K/D ratios and headshot accuracy. Surprisingly, FragPunk rejuvenates the arena shooter by not always taking itself so seriously, and it’s all the better for it.
I should explain the cards. Before the start of each round, you can power up and play a selection of cards from your deck. You earn the currency needed to power them up through playing well across each round, with each card providing boons, modifiers or new abilities with which you can then go and shoot the enemy team in an even more efficient or occasionally, outlandish way.
So there’s cards that will grant you a heal every time you knock an opposing player out, or ones that give you an overpowered shotgun called the Devil’s Breath. Others add in a wonderfully floaty double jump, bringing some height to your headshots, but the ones that stand out the most are what we would term, ‘the silly ones’.
These include, but aren’t limited to, a card that enables Big Head Mode, making it much easier to plant a bullet in an enemies’ noggin, or one that puts a cute and cuddly turtle on your back, protecting you from all incoming rear fire with their shell.
Because there’s new elements being introduced every round – each team can play up to three cards at a time – you have to alter how you’re going to approach the next encounter. Just because you feel empowered with your massive shotgun though doesn’t mean that the enemy hasn’t played something equally powerful, and it already feels like there’s an intriguing push and pull between each team.
There’s currently around 70 cards, but the team hope to add more, with ideas that would take them well past the 100 mark. They’re the true defining difference between FragPunk and the other hero shooters out there, and if they can get the balance right it feels as though this is one shooter that won’t get stale round after round.
Of course, there’s also the characters that you’re playing as, here known as Lancers. There’s ten available in the current build, and each of those we saw and played as in our hands-on were visually unique, heightening the stylish art direction, and boasted a healthy splash of neon-infused colour which fits into the overall punk aesthetic. This is definitely not a shooter that’s shy of standing out.
As a hero shooter each Lancer also has their own individual special abilities, from the fiery Corona whose lethal dash can chew through enemies to lead character Broker and their devestating missile launcher. It’s fair to say though that the leather-clad Axon was my favourite, his special granting him an electric guitar-shaped shotgun that also allows him to powerslide around the level. It doesn’t get much more punk than that. Just as with the cards, there are plans to add more Lancers as development continues, and as an ongoing live service game, it’ll be interesting to see just how far the team can go.
During our hands on playing alongside the game’s lead developer, one of the things that became apparent was the slightly more challenging gunplay than what you might find elsewhere. There’s still a relatively low TTK, but the team has deliberately made the gun handling a little tougher, which not only gives FragPunk it’s own feel, but makes every kill feel more hard won.
FragPunk was an outrageous highlight at Gamescom 2024, and as someone who’s become heavily invested in Overwatch over the past 8 years, this is one that I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye on. You should too, if you’re a PC or Xbox gamer, with an open beta due in October.
