I had fun blasting fungus limbs in Mycopunk, Devolver Digital's co-op shooter, but it'll take a lot to lure me away from Deep Rock Galactic

Mycopunk comes from the Greek – 'myco' meaning 'mushroom' and 'punk' meaning 'punk'. With that rigorous training out of the way, it's time to appease your cockroach commander Roachy and immediately drop from space to the Gravity Farms of New Atlas. Just for a cleanup detail. Don't mind the things with all the limbs. That's why you've got large weapons strapped to you.

Developed by Pigeons at Play and published by Devolver Digital, Mycopunk is comfortable with the irreverent tone of the publisher's portfolio. While there's a striking beauty to the lo-fi visuals of New Atlas when you land, covered with textures the team describe to me as "dirty Moebius" (the celebrated French comic artist and writer), it's just as at home letting you combine rude hand gestures with various dance emotes.

Fun guy

Very much a co-op game at heart, going hands-on with Mycopunk also means doing rude gestures to other players. Playing Mycopunk, I'm only currently able to access a Cleanup Detail mission and a Planetary Defense mission. The former begins with challenging us to clear up big wads of gunk on a pipe; the latter begins with challenging us to clear up big wads of gunk on power relays (both using our guns). There's a lot of gunk in Mycopunk.

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Naturally each mission evolves a bit from there. In the first one, there are periodically larger wads of gunk that can defend themselves from our aggressive gun-first cleaning. The second gets a bit more involved, having a giant railgun drop from the sky we need to protect then power on so it can blast a rival corporation's ship out of the air. As you'd expect, in both you need to call in an escape pod to extract at the very end. My so-called "colleagues" were happy to leave me behind. This is why you can call your co-op partners "tossers" in-game, I suppose.

Considering enemies are essentially just shapes – mostly orbs – I actually quite like their designs in theory. With many limbs spiralling out of their (delicious?) orb centers, they're all dangerous whether they're simply slapping you around with tentacles or have great big lasers attached. In addition to shooting their spherical weak spots, you can shred through their limbs to knock their attacks out of commission. Except, removed limbs can be picked up by other enemies, meaning you need to be careful to disarm and get killshots quickly. This carries over to how you revive allies too – you'll be split in two on death, waiting for an ally to physically bring your halves back together.

What I'm less keen on during my limited time with Mycopunk is how relentless enemies are, constantly spawning and firing a barrage of attacks at you once you're a little way through a mission. Obviously, trying to stay on top of enemy waves is part of the point in a co-op shooter like this, but there's often little time to breathe.

It means that of the four class types – Glider, Scrapper, Bruiser, and Wrangler – the ones with the most mobility seem to have the biggest advantage just to create space. In the couple of games I play, Glider's ability to super-dash long distances seems to outclass Bruiser's shields in utility. Enemies can get quite big and complex, and there's a satisfaction to delimbing the biggest boys out there that's undercut a little by the sheer amount of smaller fry.

Out on a limb

There's a selection of quirky weapons too, though limited to just four in my hands-on (plus grenades). There's a rifle that charges up a powerful laser as you shoot. One that hurls mini-rockets into the air that then descend. Cleverly, ammo is handled by feeding energy between your two main guns, meaning you need to balance using both. However, like with above, the simple damage-over-time weapons seemed to be the most effective at cleaving through enemies, with the stranger ones that looked more fun not doing as great a job cleaning up the big waves. There's likely to be a lot of balancing adjustments from this early build – I'd love more reason to get creative.

The structure of Mycopunk – dropping in to clear variation co-op mission types – will be familiar to a lot of players. It's the same rhythm of play as something like Helldivers 2 or Deep Rock Galactic, with the tongue-in-cheek anti-corp tone along the lines of Lethal Company. Mycopunk brings a colorful aesthetic to the table alongside pleasingly responsive action, but from just these mission types I'm still not completely sold on how well it stands out from the competition (though plenty of modes weren't available for me to play at this point). Mycopunk can be a good time, but so are the other games I mentioned.

I appreciate how quick some of the missions can be to complete. While Helldivers 2 can be the same, it's also easy to end up spending perhaps too much time hunting down optional objectives with randoms. With that said, the pace of enemy waves and perhaps the too-open nature of New Atlas in the maps I get to play can make the action a bit overwhelming. Rarely in Mycopunk do you get the chance to regroup with co-op partners and plan for the next objective, something that Deep Rock Galactic excels by the nature of its cavern-by-cavern approach. Mission objectives, on the over hand – in the limited types I've played – are a bit underwhelming. Go from A to B, interact with stuff, and deal with all the enemies chasing after you while you do so.

I'm looking forward to seeing more from Mycopunk. Shooting out enemy limbs is a novel approach that can be fun when you've the space to approach its bigger foes tactically. I'm hoping it can lean into its strengths to become the really unique co-op shooter that it has the ambitions to be. Until then, my many-limbed arms will be crossed, waiting.

A Mycopunk demo is now available to play on Steam.

Looking to get into more scrapes with pals? Check out our best co-op games!