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If you didn't play the demo, I can't really explain the formula in a way that would really break it down. When you're playing the game, the different inspirations becomes clear, so I'll just break down how things work and say that if you like Deep Rock Galactic, Borderlands, Risk of Rain, or even Lethal Company, you'll probably like this a lot too. It's a little rough around the edges, and is an Early Access title, but the gameplay loop and progression are incredible, and I put many long hours into the demo. I felt a little bad about it, actually. You play as 1 of 4 different robots employed by the Saxon corporation to investigate a planet that has been seemingly overgrown with a sort of mechano-parasitic fungus that eats and integrates hardware into itself. Enemies big and small can use any part they can fit onto their bodies, and you can shoot off limbs or parts to disable their effects, destroy them outright to prevent them being reintegrated by living enemies, or hard focus the golden-brass core within their armored shells to kill them entirely. Abominations are the bosses, currently. Some are specialized in a weapon type, others are just almagamations of all kinds of shit.

I can't really explain the arsenal too well, since most of the weapons are still locked, but the baseline guns are pretty archetypal. A solid SMG that does what you'd expect it too and a shotgun with embedded ricochet tech. Don't let this fool you, though. They are by no means boring. Not only are they stylistically unique, but they can be customized the same way you customize their upgrades. Progression is done through grid-based upgrade placements in a slowly expanding grid layer for each piece of equipment or class, and they can be as simple as "more ammo" and "ignores shields" to as wild as "you throw your emptied magazine as a grenade that explodes on stopping, which you can then shoot to detonate again" and "your active ability creates an invinicble cage that blocks bullets, rapidly heals you and isolates enemies within it." Let me give you my shotgun build, the AU-SI Jackrabbit, It innately does more damage and inflicts fire damage if the bullets bounce. I've got an upgrade that makes it pass through enemies harmlessly if it doesn't bounce, an upgrade that makes it bounce a second time, one that makes me shoot twice in a burst, and one that resets the damage falloff if it bounces. The end result is I shoot twice through the underside of an enemy, it bounces from the ground into them, then it bounces wherever else it will, doing full damage each time as if I was only inches away from them. I haven't even found that many fancy mods, either. This is mostly green and blue mods on a incredibly small grid. Builds can go crazy, and the other weapons have much more interesting descriptions. I remember this sort of plasma cutter from the demo that fired a retrievable metal plate that, interestingly, has collision, letting you build platforms in the environment and doing incredible damage. The mods for that were insane. I also recently completed a secret mission that has given me the ability to buy an acid grenade launcher, which I'm kind of excited for actually. Speaking of: There are 3 different elemental grenades. Acid, Fire, and Electric. They can also be upgraded in strange ways. I have an Orange upgade that makes my Fire grenades into cluster bombs. Shit's great.

The gamemodes aren't all that dissimilar to DRG's, where you have a set objective and need to work together to get it done faster, though there's a simpler seek and destroy mission type where you just kill enemies until the bar hits 100. I will say, though, that this game does not moderate difficulty to player count, so if you go into a Threat 6 level by yourself, you're gonna have a bad time if you don't have a fucking killer build. Not that you won't be able to solo them eventually, but just not as soon as you unlock them. I would suggest hanging around Threat 3 to grind up Saxonite and Upgrades before really going ham on the higher difficulties.

Now, for the STYLE. MY GOD. THE STYLE. The soundtrack is fun, the art style is just strange, Roachard (your insect-man handler) is such a fucking blue collar bro, and the whole setting is wonderfully strange. The sound design for the enemy weapons is a little underwhelming, but the sheer density of them makes up for that some missions. Your own weapons, though, sound sick, and have some really fun reload animations. The EA release also has some voice acting for the player classes, now, too, and they often have some great lines and some between-mission banter not unlike the Ubersreich 5's from Vermintide II.

Wrangler is what happens when AI takes over Hollywood acting and gets caught in Spaghetti Western mode. He does a lot of sick flips and dashes, and his rocket lasso has a lot of uses.

At risk of paying out of pocket for this one, but Bruiser reminds me of Burt from Sam Hyde's infamous show Fishtank. Make of that what you will, but if you know, you know. I love him so much. He likes collecting bugs. Also he leaps, stomps, and has a shield projector.

Scrapper is greaser girl with a frog motif going on. Basically rebuilt herself from garbage and reminds me a lot of a forewoman I worked under a long time ago. She's fun. Has a jetpack and can place grappling hooks that initially kind of suck but can be upgraded to do all kinds of crazy useful shit. S Tier class.

Glider was busted in the demo, but now she's a bit more on par with everyone. She has rockets that damage enemies and heal allies, and has wings that let you glide around very quickly in brief bursts. It charges fairly fast, too, so she's definitely one of the more mobile classes. She is, however, unfortunately, BRITISH. Damn shame, innit.

Remember: Just like you can create busted builds with your weapons, so too can you upgrade your classes. They even have a unique resource called Upgrade Points. They aren't exclusive each class, either. You can grind upgrade points on less leveled classes and spend them towards something on your main class. There's also consumable items that let you force the next upgrades you find to be for your equipped weapons or class, and you can scrap uneeded or weaker copies of upgrades for scrap to recycle into upgrades you want past level 10.

I really think it'll be hard to sell it to you in words if you haven't already played the demo, but don't take my word for it. In the words of Randy Pitchford himself:

"It's cheaper than a point of meth, and has less side effects too."