GRAVHOUNDS
Preview

After a few hours of scouring the Early Access build, I can conclude that GRAVHOUNDS is a hilariously chaotic and very addictive co-op game, although it is (not unexpectedly) suffering from some early access development issues.

The Extraction Loop: Build, Fetch, and Survive

The main loop of GRAVHOUNDS is hyper frenetic, followed at breakneck speed. You and your pack jump down to a hostile, procedurally generated planet with one ultimate objective: set up base around your ship (the Collector), extract as many resources as possible, defend yourselves from the killing house of defending killers, and hightail it out of there before the swarm blows your brains out.

The game is all about physics-based base building. You build pipelines that energise your structures and deliver your resources, and you establish turrets, generators and fabricators that fight back the endless hordes of bugs. The true star of the system is the "Grav Beam," which lets you play around with gravity as much as you want. You can slap resources back to base, casually send turrets you haven't installed yet flying across the map, launch an enemy bug into the air, or my personal favorite, accidentally yeet an active grenade at your teammate.

The mobility is also great. Your doggo operatives have multi-direction thrusters so you can slide and boost around the terrain or grind down the pipes you've built to race back to the home base.

Perks, Puzzles, and Plushies

If you have the time to survive further into a mission, the swarm grows, and so does your gear. The game uses an in-mission roguelite upgrade mechanic in which reward pods are called in to add stacking temporary buffs, changing your loadout as you play.

Between missions, you'll spend all of the resources you've collected to unlock permanent upgrades on extensive skill trees, research new turrets, and unlock even more dog breeds, each with their own base stats and abilities. The maps also contain scattered Points of Interest (POIs) that can be completed for platforming challenges or strange quiz mini-games to earn additional credits and blueprints.

But the best mechanic in GRAVHOUNDS is the respawning system. If your space pooch gets mushed by an aggressive, hamstered robot, they don't blow up in a burst of gore. Instead, they transform into a cute squeaky plushie toy - cone of shame included. If a teammate can grab the plushie (or shoot it with the Grav Beam) and launch it into the Collector ship, or if you can plod you shlumpy plushie body onto a pipeline to ride it back to base, you'll earn another life. It's pure genius, and hilarious to boot.

Early Access Ruff Patches

The base is an absolute blast, but the game remains obviously a work in progress and isn't particularly well-optimized for the long haul.

• The current weapon pool is extremely limited. You begin with a pulse rifle and a shotgun, with the rifle being far superior to all other weapons. Enemy AI is also quite rudimentary as enemies generally simply herd towards your base.
• While the game is able to be played solo, it doesn't work much for balancing. In other words, it's a game made for co-op play, not solo play, due to how quickly the stress of balancing building, fixing, mining, and battling off waves can get to be too much.

The Verdict

It may desperately need more weapon variety, some more complex enemy pathing, and (gasp) some simple quality-of-life UI things, but the core loop of grinding pipelines, smashing bugs with gravity beams, and bringing squeaking plushie teammates back to life is already excellent. Octopus Panic has got a good base, and if they keep at it, this could be the next co-op hit.