Co-op shooter Space Punks looks like a top-down Borderlands

I’m not being pithy for the sake of a headline. Space Punks really does look a lot like Borderlands: it’s a cartoonish, co-op looter shooter. The key differences are that it's top-down (like Borderlands' original inspiration of Diablo), the shooting looks a lot more fun and OTT, and the comedy begins and ends by adding the word ‘space’ to everything.

We don’t have defined roles for the team of mercs yet. There’s ‘The Handsome One’, who charges around with a mini-gun and can deploy a decoy. A talking pig-man is ‘The Crazy One’, who dual wields his guns and has a dash attack. ‘The Smart One’ is a robot mantis thing with explosive caltrops and teleporting. Finally, 'The Scary One' is a tentacled melee fighter. Her extra limbs mean she can melee everywhere.

There’s way more than that in the small segments of game, though. Spinning attacks, flamethrowers... everything seems to explode, which, alongside new guns, is all I really need from a game like this.

Developers Flying Wild Hog (who should also be releasing Shadow Warrior 3 this year) are building what they call "a living, breathing, and ever-changing game world - a true living game". I guess that’ll tie into the mission structure that suggests all the action you take on is contract-based. It should be easy enough to just add more stuff according to the contracts.

It’s an early access release on PC this July 14th. Though there are no stores listed yet, it is being published by Jagex Partners.