Rules-Bending 5v5 Hero Shooter FragPunk Goes Live Today

In an era of plenty of hero shooters, FragPunk caught eyes during last year’s Xbox Games Showcase for its flashy style and mechanics that make every game unique. Now, the better part of a year and an alpha playtest later, it’s launching today across all platforms. 

For fundamental gameplay, FragPunk features 17 playable “lancers,” 20 weapons, and seven maps, with the going being a go-to “plant the objective” common in games like Counter-Strike and Valorant. It’s also got a slick style and characters that lean more towards Borderlands sensibilities. 

However, the big twist is that players can tap into “Shard Cards” that literally let players break the rules of the game. 

Effects include traveling between worlds, cutting the game time to 30 seconds, swapping attacker-defender roles, exposing nearby enemies on your death, teleporting to a teammate, throwing an eye that becomes a camera and ruins some of your vision, attaching a flashlight to your weapon that messes with your enemies’ scopes, making all the doors bulletproof, spawning bounce mushrooms, creating destructible barricades in front of major zones, spawning a melee-attacking “reaper” behind injured teammates… and so on.

In addition to the 5v5 standard game mode, there’ll also be some extra “casual” game modes for fun. This includes a “zombie” survival mode and several one-hit deathmatches, including one for snipers only and one for melee only.  In short, it seems the goal is to make it so there’s never a dull moment. 

While it has the usual battle pass and premium currency of modern games, it features cross-platform progression for any of its earned rewards, so if you hop between PCs and consoles, you can still keep your rewards. Much like other modern games, too, FragPunk’s content will run and release on a seasonal basis. 

For those who have it pre-loaded on Steam or elsewhere, it goes live at 4:00 p.m. PST, which is 1:00 a.m. CET. Those who do opt to join in will get 20 Blue-and-White Porcelain Weapon Skins, plus some in-game currency, sticker packs, and weapon charms.