Roguelikelike FPS Bunker Punks busts out
Shoot some corporate robots
Right, bear with me while I figure out how to write about a retro FPS without stepping on Dominic Tarason's (constantly strafing) toes. Bunker Punks is a roguelikelike shooter about stopping THE MAN from doing something BAD, I think involving death robots. I'm not sure, because I skipped the opening text scrawl so I could jump straight into the running and gunning that Rob Zacny enjoyed when he punked some bunkers back in 2016. It came out of early access yesterday, so I figured now that Ninja Robot Dinosaur Entertainment have spent another two years bunkering down on development I'd be in for a treat.
I was! As was revealed on the latest podcast, old school FPS's are a bit of a blind spot for me - so I can't tell you if the gunplay is Quake-quality or Doom worthy. Rob Zacny can though:
"It's easy to underestimate Bunker Punks. It looks like a hundred other games. But it’s so precise and considered about each of the things it attempts to do that it won me over. From moment-to-moment, the run-and-gun gameplay reminded me of why I spent my childhood playing games like this, and the semi-roguelike approach to progress and permadeath always left me ready to dive back in for another attempt to destroy the corporations."
That roguelikelike layer sees you building up a bunker between missions and lives, pumping up your punk's stats and expanding their abilities.
Maybe 'old school' is a bit misleading, in that this is about hopping around procedurally generated levels rather than carefully sculpted levels with secrets and whatnot. The combat is definitely in the same vein though. While I'm yet to play origi-Doom (I will soon John, promise) I did play a bit of Dusk recently, and found the fast paced strafing to be similarly satisfying and punchy. I wasn't blown away by the enemy variety in Bunker Punks so far, but that's probably because I've only played for 20 minutes or so. There are plenty of robo-corp horrors that I haven't seen yet in this here trailer:
Bunker Punks is available on Steam, with a 15% launch discount that puts it at £9.34/$12.74/€12.74.