Cooperative shooters are hardly in short supply, but Mycopunk finds an entertaining way to stand out from the crowd. Developed by Pigeons at Play and published by Devolver Digital, this first-person shooter sends a squad of discarded robots to clean up a fungal infestation that has turned machinery into hostile creatures. Their employer, the SAXON corporation, is hardly a benevolent organization, while their supervisor, a talking cockroach named Roachard Cox, helps establish the game’s irreverent sense of humor. There is some science-fiction backstory to explain the catastrophe and the crew’s increasingly dangerous assignments, but the narrative rarely takes center stage. Instead, Mycopunk focuses on frantic firefights, absurd weaponry, and the prospect of becoming an increasingly effective extermination team. The corporate satire adds personality, although anyone looking for a compelling story or memorable character development will find relatively little to engage with beyond the jokes.
The combat is where Mycopunk makes its strongest impression. Missions send players into infested environments to eliminate enemies, complete objectives, defend positions, and occasionally tackle more unusual challenges. What makes the shooting interesting is the construction of the enemies themselves. Rather than simply emptying a magazine into a health bar, players can dismantle their mechanical bodies piece by piece. Destroying an arm can deprive a creature of its weapon, while damaging its legs can reduce its mobility. Exposing vulnerable fungal growths provides another way to bring down these monstrosities, encouraging players to identify the most dangerous components and prioritize their targets. The system adds a welcome tactical element to the otherwise chaotic action, although the distinction between individual enemy parts can become difficult to follow when several creatures and visual effects fill the screen. Enemies can also make use of discarded machinery and equipment, meaning a damaged opponent can remain a threat if it is not dealt with properly.
Movement is equally important. Mycopunk encourages players to stay mobile through running, sliding, jumping, and character-specific traversal abilities, with no stamina system constantly restricting their movement. Its five playable characters offer different approaches to combat, from aerial mobility and gliding to defensive barriers and more aggressive close-range attacks. These abilities give players room to develop complementary roles, particularly when working together, and help prevent the different characters from feeling like interchangeable weapon carriers. The ammunition system also encourages variety by rewarding players for damaging enemies with their alternate weapon, rather than relying exclusively on a single favorite gun. This makes weapon switching a practical part of combat instead of an occasional change of pace. However, the combination of rapid movement, incoming attacks, environmental obstacles, and several overlapping enemy behaviors can make encounters difficult to read. The basic controls support a fast and physical style of shooting, but understanding how to use the available abilities effectively is essential to getting the most out of it.
The arsenal reinforces the game’s willingness to experiment. Conventional firearms sit alongside more eccentric inventions, including weapons that launch heavy objects and can subsequently pull them back. Grenades and character abilities provide additional ways to control the battlefield, while the enemies’ destructible components make different weapons useful in different situations. There is a satisfying sense of impact to breaking apart mechanical opponents, and the resulting chaos fits the game’s deliberately ridiculous tone. Between missions, however, the equipment system provides a more considered activity. Weapons and characters can be customized by fitting upgrades into hexagonal grids, with each modification occupying a particular shape. More powerful upgrades can demand awkward amounts of space, forcing players to decide whether a substantial bonus is worth sacrificing room for several smaller improvements. This puzzle-like approach gives progression a welcome degree of strategy and encourages experimentation rather than simply equipping whichever upgrade has the highest apparent value. Still, arranging increasingly complicated combinations can become a distraction for players who would rather spend their time shooting than optimizing equipment.
Mission variety helps sustain the experience beyond its basic combat loop. Players encounter different objectives, including clearing infested areas, defending positions, escorting targets, and assembling and operating powerful weaponry. Optional activities and hidden challenges can reward exploration, while additional modes provide further opportunities to test equipment and survive increasingly demanding encounters. The orbital hub offers a useful break between deployments, allowing players to adjust their loadouts, interact with Roachard, and spend time with their fellow robots. Nevertheless, the structure can become repetitive over longer sessions. Although objectives change, the central rhythm of traveling into an infested area, fighting through groups of enemies, and completing a task remains largely consistent. Some environments can also feel surprisingly empty, and locating the next objective is not always as straightforward as it should be. The combination of sprawling areas, combat distractions, and occasionally unclear directions can interrupt the momentum, particularly when a team loses track of what it needs to accomplish.
Cooperative play is arguably Mycopunk’s greatest asset. Up to four players can join forces, combining their abilities and equipment to manage encounters that would be much harder to handle alone. The game also turns failure into an opportunity for some darkly comic teamwork: when a robot is destroyed, its body separates into two pieces, requiring a teammate to retrieve and reunite them before the fallen player can return to the fight. Attempting a rescue while enemies are still attacking can make an already desperate situation even more dangerous, producing the kind of unscripted moments that suit a cooperative shooter particularly well. Solo play remains an option, and the adjustments made for the full release have made it more manageable, but the experience loses some of its appeal without other players to cover different roles and share the chaos. The game’s humor and customization provide reasons to spend time in the hub, yet the social dimension is most effective when it extends into the missions themselves.
Visually, Mycopunk embraces a stylized, cel-shaded presentation with bold outlines, unusual geometry, and a deliberately grubby science-fiction aesthetic. Its fungal growths, improvised machinery, and bizarre mechanical creatures give the world a distinctive identity, while the varied environments provide more to explore than a succession of identical combat arenas. The sound design complements the action, with forceful weapon effects and an energetic electronic soundtrack that shifts between uneasy atmospheric passages and more intense combat music. Roachard’s dialogue also reinforces the irreverent tone. These elements work together to give the game a personality beyond its familiar shooter foundations. However, its visual approach has a drawback: when numerous enemies, explosions, and effects overlap, distinguishing individual threats and locating vulnerable points can become unnecessarily difficult. Some technical irregularities, including unusual enemy behavior and other glitches that can disrupt the flow of a mission, also pop up from time to time. These problems do not erase the appeal of the presentation, but they can make the most hectic encounters less satisfying than they should be.
Mycopunk succeeds because it understands what makes a cooperative shooter enjoyable: responsive, movement-driven combat, enemies that reward more than indiscriminate shooting, and enough customization to encourage players to keep experimenting. Its modular destruction system is the standout feature, while the oddly shaped upgrade grids and diverse character abilities provide meaningful choices between missions. The humor, distinctive art direction, and soundtrack further help it establish its own identity. Yet the experience is not without limitations. Mission repetition, occasional navigational confusion, visual clutter, and technical hiccups prevent the action from being consistently engaging, while the narrative remains little more than a backdrop for the shooting. Players looking for a substantial single-player story may be disappointed, but those seeking an eccentric shooter to tackle with friends will find plenty to enjoy. Mycopunk is at its best when a carefully assembled loadout and a coordinated team turn an overwhelming fungal infestation into a gloriously messy firefight.
Score: 8.2/10