Mycopunk is a new mission-based co-op shooter developed by Pigeons at Play and published by Devolver Digital. In the game you and up to 3 of your friends, if you so choose, play as a squad of robots named the New Atlas Hazard crew are tasked with ridding the galaxy of a deadly fungal menace using the guns and plethora of gadgets you have at your disposal. We managed to get our hands on the game early and jump in and give it a go!

The first thing you will notice when you jump into the game is the eye-catching visuals, the graphics look like you have just consumed a 10-pound bag of magic mushrooms and then decided to swig a couple of gallons of mushroom infused tea as a chaser. I must admit the visual style of the game won’t be to everybody’s liking but it is nice to see a developer attempting to do something different. Another thing you will immediately notice, especially if you are a fan of the Borderlands series, is how heavily the game leans on the humour of that series, even some of the guns you use in the game look like they could have been ripped directly out of Borderlands, so if you enjoy that type of thing you will most likely want to give Mycopunk a look.

You can play the game solo but the most fun is to be found teaming up with some friends, with up to four of you being able to choose from the four different robot characters in the game. There is Glider who has a wingsuit that allows flight and an ability that fires off a rocket salvo, Wrangler who is styled after a cowboy and comes equipped with a lasso that you can use to launch yourself or pull objects towards you and also an air dash that allows you a short burst of flight in the air, Bruiser who brandishes a shield that can reflect projectiles and stun enemies as well as a high powered slam move that acts as an AOE and Scrapper who can construct poles that all team members can use to grapple towards and a jetpack. For only 4 characters they have quite a diverse bunch of abilities to suit anyone’s playstyle, so it wasn’t too difficult to find a character that I liked to play the most, Scrapper the space cowboy FTW, YEEEEHAAAW!

Once you have assembled your team and picked your robot characters you are dropped into a hub area where you can customise your loadout and then head to the drop pod and select your mission, if you have ever played Deep Rock Galactic then you will know the drill. In the version of the game, we played there only two missions available one where you had to clean a fungal infection from different areas of the planet and another where you basically had to clean the same fungal infection of building and then power up a high-powered laser.

Once a mission is chosen you are sealed into the drop pod and seconds later dropped onto the planet and that is where all hell breaks loose, creatures swarm you from every direction and it takes real teamwork and coordination to deal with them, especially some of the mini bosses that can appear as you traverse the surface of the planet, the action gets so frantic that at times you can forget that you have an actual goal to perform. Blasting away at the masses of enemies with a squad full of mates is a load of fun and I had a blast traversing the planet and trying to accomplish our goals. If you do manage to complete the mission then you aren’t done yet, you then need to find your way to the evac pod landing zone and hold off wave after wave of enemy until the pod drops and you can safely evacuate from the planet. You will then be taken back to the hub area and can level up your character and choose which abilities you want to upgrade or new abilities you wish to equip.

Mycopunk is worth a look if you are into co-op shooters, especially if you enjoy the type of humour and action that the Borderlands series of games provide. Mycopunk is set to release at some stage this year and the demo of the game is available on steam now, so I urge you to go check it out, you have nothing to lose, except for a couple of robot limbs of course!

The game is going to release into early access sometime in 2025, but there is no set date for that at this time. What you can do now is sample the game, as there is a demo of the game you can try now.