FragPunk Preview: A Frantic, Funny Shooter That Feels Smothered by Modern Excess

There’s a good chance that FragPunk will be ruined the moment it’s released. When the first guide to optimizing your team, weapons, and card choices goes live, that’ll likely be that. And it’s a huge shame, because if our time with the closed alpha is anything to go by, there’s plenty of fun to be found in this often absurd 5v5 team shooter. Provided, that is, you’re willing to dig past the unwelcome clutter so ubiquitous in modern live service games.

Before that last descriptor puts you off, an explainer: This isn’t an Overwatch wannabe. The core game mode in FragPunk sees two teams square off in (usually) single-life rounds, with one half of the game spent as attackers and the other as defenders. Conceptually, it’s far closer to Valorant, but with gunplay more akin to Call of Duty. Each round you’ll pick a character – known here as Lancers – and attempt to either eliminate the opposition or plant/defuse a device called a Converter.

But while the clear inspirations – Valorant and Counter-Strike 2 – take their core gameplay very seriously, FragPunk isn’t afraid to get a little bit ridiculous. How much so depends on what comes out of your deck. At the start of every round, both sides pull three rule-altering cards to pick from. If purchased (using shard points that we’ll dive into later), these trigger effects for that round only. They can be as simple as adding extra ammo to your team’s guns, or as outrageous as spawning reapers behind injured enemy players that will kill them automatically if they don’t move.

That sounds imbalanced, and it is. FragPunk’s card system, by design, creates unusual and lopsided matchups round after round. In one of our highlights, our team chose a card that let us all play as the same character. Selecting a Lancer who could turn herself briefly invisible and invincible, we started the round by running straight through the attacking opposition, re-appearing en masse behind them before unloading into their backs. It felt gloriously, stupidly broken.

The deck is hiding a great deal of humor, too. There’s a that card straps turtles to your backs whose shells block all damage from behind. Another forces the opposition to play in Goldeneye’s notorious Big Head mode, making dome shots all the easier. FragPunk has a tongue-in-cheek playfulness that harks back to the likes of Timesplitters, and an era of multiplayer shooters long since passed – which makes some of its more contemporaneous progression systems feel all the more overbearing.

Some cards are also downright game-breaking. One option for defenders allows them to pick up and move the plant sites they guard, so teams can shift them to almost unassailable positions. Attackers might have the option to plant the converter anywhere, at the cost of a longer countdown time afterwards. Another card swaps the attacking and defending teams entirely for that round. For a competitive Counter-Strike player, these ideas are sacrilege. But that’s exactly what makes FragPunk feel genuinely refreshing.

The mitigating factor to that deck-based randomness is provided by the card economy. Each player earns a number of shard points per round (based on kills, assists, and objectives) to spend on the cards they want to trigger. In most cases, you’ll need investment from multiple players to activate one. The more drastic the effect, the more points it’ll cost. There’s incentive, then, to chat with your team and forge a strategy that makes use of your “deal more long range damage” or “shotgun shells deal burning damage” cards. You might even forgo spending in some rounds in the hopes of triggering a bigger effect later.

Another intriguing design choice reveals itself in the weapon selection. Gone are Valorant and CS2’s pistol rounds, along with their accompanying economies. You can take any weapon you like, right from the start. The catch is that you only get one copy of most of them. Die in the round you equipped it, and it’s off your menu for the entire half. As such, weapon versatility is essential. A team can’t rely solely on assault rifles for an entire game. Well, not without winning every single round.

Your choices can also be led by the cards available. The Full Fire Power card loads all LMG ammunition into a single magazine. Combine that with explosive bullets, and your team can unleash a relentless torrent of miniature detonations, all courtesy of a weapon that few opt for initially. Smart card design is a great incentive for teams to experiment with unconventional strategies.

Unfortunately, FragPunk stumbles a little with its Lancers. There’s nothing particularly thrilling or indeed unappealing about its cast or their looks, but their abilities betray a potential lack of balancing nous. Each character has three powers, all of which are available every round, some of them multiple times. Many of these are variations on the same principle, with some objectively far worse than others.

Sekmet, for example, can throw out a narrow tornado of sand which travels in a line, blocking vision and slowing anyone it touches. Decent, but nothing special. Fellow Lancer Hollowpoint, by contrast, can launch a gigantic, vision-blocking screen which can be stopped at will to cover doorways. Oh, and it also reveals through walls any opponent it touches. Another of her abilities is a one-shot-kill, charging sniper rifle that scans through walls whenever you aim down sights. We’ll let you figure out which Lancer is likely to prove the more popular pick.

It’s this war between entertainment and optimization that’s likely to harm FragPunk post-release. On one side of the battlefield lies a light-hearted shooter looking to kick back, create some chaos, and have a blast. A game in which the main sniper character can unlock and wear a hat that features a miniature model version of herself camping in a tower.

Across the design gulf of no man’s land, is another, more regimented camp. A competitive team game in which there will almost certainly be a best or broken option. And as soon as the acceptable meta has been determined, there’s the risk that little leeway is granted for anything else. For anything fun. After all, why wear silly turtle backpacks when you could pick a staggering headshot multiplier that turns even a whiff of the weakest SMG fire into an instant kill?

In the closed alpha, with everyone still figuring out the game, FragPunk manages to walk this tightrope. But heading toward and beyond release, we’d love to see it lean further into the party atmosphere. Fans of highly competitive, keenly honed shooters have plenty to occupy them right now, but it feels like there’s room for something more akin to the early days of Valve’s beloved Team Fortress 2 – a game that certainly worked as a competitive contest, but was just as much fun when played for jokes.

Unfortunately, that’s not FragPunk’s only challenge. Because this is a modern shooter, and that means a battle pass. That means challenges and events. That means multiple in-game currencies to earn. That means an overwhelming, near incomprehensible rush of progression systems and unlock pages after every single match. Incentives to constantly return and engage, as if the game itself isn’t enough – which, given our limited time with it, seems a harsh self-appraisal.

It’s exhausting and initially off-putting. FragPunk’s main menu is littered with so many extras extraneous to the gameplay itself, and almost none of them are explained adequately in the alpha. And while character unlocks and rewards were granted generously, there’s no guarantee that’ll remain the case post-launch when the numbers have been crunched on hour-to-investment ratio.

If FragPunk strives to be yet another eternal content machine, churning out cosmetics and characters in the hopes of sustaining a financially viable player base? There’s every chance it’ll trip over its own ambitions, falling like so many games have done before it. And that’d be a mighty shame, because there’s a creative and entertaining shooter hidden here. Provided you’re willing to find it.

FragPunk

Release Date: 2025

• Windows
• Xbox Series