The same rat swarm pacing that made the first game so mean.
I’ve just wrapped up a playtest for the sequel to Shardpunk, and here I want to share a few details. For anyone unfamiliar with it, Shardpunk is a survival tactical RPG released on PC in 2023, where players navigate bunker environments while dealing with a mutant rat threat.
Giant rats armed to the teeth, capable of wielding both firearms and melee weapons. Not long ago, the second chapter was announced, aiming to expand on the predecessor’s formula, which already featured an XCOM-style combat system with full and half cover on grid-based maps, paired with a pixel-art presentation I always found delightful.
This new chapter adds a strategy layer, putting us in charge of a resistance on the brink of extinction. We’ll still be fighting rats, but we’ll also be fighting something new.
Over the past few days, I introduced this new chapter, and just a few hours ago, the developer Clockwork Pile released the first playtest, giving us a chance to try out the combat system and get an initial feel for it.
My first impression is that even though the visual style remains pixel art, with some subtle differences, the level of challenge seems unchanged.
For those who didn’t play the original, the first game was brutally tough. Swarms of rats came at you from all directions, often forcing you to deal with enemies blocking your path while others chased you from behind, leaving very little room to breathe or carefully plan your strategy.
In Shardpunk 2, at least in this sample mission included in the build, the situation doesn’t seem much different.
Since we’re leading a resistance, we’ll often find ourselves on missions where the goal is to reach some loot and then make a fast escape. The problem is that once you encounter the first enemies, and after a fair amount of effort, manage to take them down, new groups will start spawning from behind as you push forward, recreating that same feeling of being constantly overwhelmed and under pressure.
There’s still very little shown regarding individual character details. What we do know is that at the end of a mission, characters gain experience points, but we don’t yet have clarity on how that progression system will be handled.
Each character has 2 action points to spend on movement and their available skills. In addition to the health bar, you also need to keep an eye on the RP bar, short for Resolve Points. Once this bar hits zero, the character will panic.
Resolve Points are consumed both by enemy attacks and by using character skills. During missions, we can use resources that allow us to throw grenades, which are absolutely essential for clearing out multiple enemy groups, or medkits to restore health, along with other items I didn’t analyze in depth. Among these are shards, which also serve to power weapons.
Weapons, as in the first game, have a heat limit. Once exceeded, they overheat, forcing you, depending on the weapon type, to spend an action to cool them down before you can attack again.
In the mission available in this playtest, the objective is to reach a crate on the opposite side of the map. Along the way, you’ll encounter grid tiles marked in yellow that let you acquire resources you can use immediately.
Another aspect to consider is that if one of your soldiers is downed, meaning their health bar hits zero, they’re not declared dead right away, and another character can reach them and revive them. In my walkthrough, I was forced to blow up a barrel to wipe out a group of cursed rats, but unfortunately, one of my downed soldiers was too close to those crates and ended up dying permanently.
I imagine that in the full version of this tactical RPG, we’ll often face missions that force drastic choices, where sacrificing a character might be necessary for the success of the mission.
This playtest only offers a taste of a single mission, and it’s still too early to talk about base management. That said, that’s where my curiosity is most focused. I’m very eager to see how that part of the experience will work in detail and how it will mesh with the guerrilla-style approach the game seems to be pushing.
That said, I encourage you to try the build yourself by heading to the Steam page and clicking “Request Access,” which in my case was granted immediately. You’ll find the link below, and once you’ve tried it, let me know your impressions.
