For a genre built entirely on the appeal of its characters, recent hero shooters have woefully lacked spice and creativity. Poor, forgettable designs have made recent failures and underwhelming hero shooters on the horizon (sorry Concord and Project Ethos) look like trend chasers showing up years late to the party. However, there is one upcoming hero shooter that's doing everything right: Fragpunk. It's giving the genre a shot of adrenaline it desperately needs right now.
Developed by NetEase’s Bad Guitar Studio, Fragpunk is a 5v5 Valorant-style hero shooter but with much shorter games, seven rounds maximum, and more forgiving gunplay (although you still need good aim). Fragpunk doesn't feel like it has a Chinese mega-publisher behind it. Instead it feels like an experience sketched out in a teenager’s notebook or conjured up in a dorm room by a bunch of college students, because its ideas and presentation are so unsafe from a business perspective.
