Mycopunk (Early Access)

Mycopunk was provided by Devolver Digital for review. Thank you!

This is an early access title, so our final thoughts on Mycopunk will most likely change as it develops. This review is based on our thoughts of the initial release of the game.

Mycopunk enters the arena promising some fast-paced shooting chaos, with unique skill upgrades, co-op gameplay, and plenty of fungi-busting fun. And while it does deliver a lot of good times, it is a bit of a mixed bag in the overall package.

Mycopunk doesn't have much in the way of a story; in fact, the game just throws you straight in, without explaining much at all. The basic premise is that you are a member of the SAXON corporation, which is trying to rid the planet of a fungal infestation, so you embark on a series of missions to cleanse the planet.

So, let's start with Mycopunk's good points. The game's movement and combat feel smooth and well-designed.

The game plays like a bullet-hell FPS, and you need to keep moving to stay alive. Fortunately, moving around is pretty seamless, with the ability to jump, dodge, and slide your way out of danger. Combine this with weapons that feel pretty satisfying and are fun to use, and you've got a winner as far as the basic shooter aspects of the game go.

Another plus point is the dismemberment system for enemies. You can blow off limbs and body parts from your foes, which isn't just visual; it affects how they move and fire their weapons. If an enemy has a laser or gun on one of their arms that you're finding hard to deal with, focus your fire on that limb and blow it off. If they're fast-moving and getting too close, blow off their legs to slow or disable them. It's a pretty neat system, and while it isn't too detailed, it adds additional depth to the combat.

The skill/upgrade system is also pretty neat, allowing you to level up and upgrade your weapons by applying upgrades to them, which doubles as a sort of 'puzzle' game where you have to slot different-shaped upgrades into a grid to make the most of your weapons.

Now we move on to the not-so-great points about Mycopunk.

The game itself is structured somewhat similarly to Deep Rock Galactic. You are on a ship, you select a region to fight in, which offers unique resources depending on the region, then you choose a mission within that region, and drop down to fight. That's all very well and good.

The problem comes with the mission (and often level) design. Some missions far outstay their welcome. Some missions are simply to eliminate a certain number of enemies. But the amount you have to kill is usually pretty high, and the maps are often flat and somewhat boring, meaning you're basically jumping around a fairly dull arena, shooting enemies for 10 minutes or so until you meet the quota, and then you leave.

Other missions might include providing power to certain facilities and retrieving an object. These were probably the worst ones, in my opinion. They are filled with backtracking, the distance that you have to run the power cables is far too long, and for some reason, carrying objects is physics-based. It prevents you from moving fast or firing a weapon, which is a real killer in a game all about momentum and fast-paced combat. It really kills the feel of the game.

However, I think the main issue with Mycopunk is the balancing. There doesn't seem to be much game balancing between playing as a solo player and playing in co-op with friends. Playing on your solo is pretty brutal; the objectives take far longer to complete, you get fewer revives, do less damage, etc. But there didn't seem to be that much of a bump in difficulty when playing in cooperative play; it just made the game easier.

The missions need their objectives balanced for solo players to make them more achievable, and the level designs could do with more variety if they plan to keep you in a mission for 15-20 minutes.

Don't get me wrong, there is fun to be found in Mycopunk, but if you're a solo player, well, it's a bit of a miserable experience. In co-op, you'll probably have a bit more fun, but I still found the mission and level design to let the game down, with sometimes bizarrely large and empty levels requiring a lot of traversal, which serves no purpose.

With some objective balancing and mission design tweaking, Mycopunk could be a blast. Right now, I'd wait a little while for the developers to receive feedback and (hopefully) adjust the game in places.

Visually, the game adopts a cel-shaded style, which I'm not a fan of in this case. On a PC with higher settings, it looks fine, but playing on a Steam Deck using upscaling technology makes the game look noisy and a little messy, especially as each blade of grass has a shaded outline.

I also found that while most settings were saved, some settings, such as the "auto sprint" and "sprint toggle" settings, reverted to defaults after each boot of the game, requiring me to change them every time I played, a small point, but annoying nonetheless, as I found there was no reason to ever not be sprinting, it helps you dodge attacks and there is no stamina bar.

It's also worth noting that Mycopunk is designed to be played online but does work without an internet connection. You cannot pause during missions.

Mycopunk - Steam Deck Performance

Mycopunk has great controller support, and we get support for the Steam Deck's native 1280x800 resolution, although the cursor in some of the menus is off-center when playing in this aspect ratio. I would also recommend upping the controller sensitivity in the game's options, as it seemed very low to me by default. Unfortunately, the game does have some optimization issues, which means maintaining a stable 60 FPS just isn't possible, which is a shame for a fast-paced shooter like this one.

Instead, set the in-game FPS limiter to 30, then adjust the quality settings to their lowest, except Textures, which can stay on High. Make sure the Upscale Filter is set to FidelityFX, as it clears up the image a lot, then use a Render Scale of 50%.

With these settings, you should be able to maintain 30 FPS most of the time. In intense situations, especially boss battles near the end of missions, you might see brief drops into the 20s. The game is still playable, though.

The power draw will be around 10W-12W most of the time, and temperatures will remain around 60 °C. A Steam Deck OLED battery life should be around 4-4.5 hours, whereas Steam Deck LCD users can expect around 3 hours.

Accessibility:

Mycopunk has some accessibility options. You can disable screen shaking, head bobbing, and other settings to help mitigate motion sickness. The game does feature rebindable controls.

Conclusion:

Mycopunk has some potential; it has a nice movement and combat system, but the overall package lets it down right now. If some balancing tweaks can be made, as well as perhaps some adjustments to level generation, that would really go a long way toward my recommendation of this game.

If you are a solo player, I would skip Mycopunk, but if you do have some friends who would join you, it may be worth a shot if this is your kind of game.

Steam Deck performance isn't the best, keeping us down at a 30 FPS lock, so some optimization wouldn't go amiss here, but the game is playable and has a decent control scheme.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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