The new shooter Fragpunk initially struggled to gain traction on Steam. The success of the free game only materialized two days after its release. Now it is among the top 15 most popular games.
What game are we talking about? The new free shooter Fragpunk combines the carefree gunplay of previous “Call of Duty” titles with tactical elements from Valorant and adds its own twist of randomness to the mix.
While the shooter managed to attract just under 50,000 players at launch on Friday (via SteamDB), it fought its way into the top 15 most popular games on Steam over the course of the weekend, surpassing the 110,000 player mark.
Here you can watch the trailer:
What kind of shooter is this? Fragpunk is a tactical multiplayer shooter where you play in teams of 5 against 5, attacking and defending familiar bomb spots. However, Fragpunk introduces various random mechanics each round through its so-called “Shard Cards,” which players can choose from.
For example, in one round the ground can be frozen, allowing players to slide across it. In another round, the heads of opponents can be enlarged to simplify headshots, or the team can hire two support bots that fight alongside them for one round. The better you perform in the game, the more points you earn to choose shard cards.
Each character, called “Lancer” in the game, has unique abilities that they must use tactically to gain advantages as attackers or defenders. Similar to Valorant, gunplay is still at the forefront despite the abilities.
In terms of gunplay, the shooter seems to have drawn inspiration from Call of Duty, as aiming can be done with almost every weapon and the time-to-kill is rather low with many weapons.
Where does Fragpunk fit in? Fragpunk aims to entertain both competitive players and casuals. The shard cards ensure that no round is like the one before it, and the short matches consisting of a maximum of 7 rounds in beginner mode appeal to casual gamers due to their brevity.
For professionals, there is a ranking system with the typical ranks from beginner to master, and in the e-sports arena, custom games, AI highlights, and training modes for line-ups will be available right at launch. For our shooter expert Dariusz Müller, Fragpunk is one of the top 10 shooters of this year: 10 new shooters that are particularly interesting this year – Mark these releases on your calendar
