NetEase's FragPunk is looking to dethrone Valorant with chaos and cards

FragPunk is the debut title from Bad Guitar Studio, a subsidiary of Thunder Fire Studio, which in turn is owned and operated by NetEase. Despite that somewhat murky linage, from what we played at this year’s Gamescom in Cologne, it seems like a more than competent competitive-focused FPS with some very intriguing mechanical hooks to keep the game fresh and evolving.

On the surface, FragPunk might appear like yet another FPS trying to court the market somewhere between the fast and frenetic console feel of Call of Duty and the esports twitch shooting of Valorant and Counter-Strike. This comparison isn’t helped by the default 5v5 game modes which are structured almost identically to those game’s bomb-defusal rounds, and the fact that guns feel right out of recent years Call of Duty game (especially if played with a controller). However, under this generic 20-years-too-late punk aesthetic, FragPunk has a wild card to play in the form of literal cards.

At the start of each round, you pick an operator with two unique powers and an ultimate-like ability, your guns (which you pick for free but are locked out of re-use if you win), and are given the chance to invest in three wildcards. These cards will have abilities like ricochet bullets, cut off certain routes, or add fog to the map. One card we came across even had the extremely useful/frustrating (depending on whose team you are on) ability to make enemies’ heads bigger.

These cards have to be purchased with points that you only get for getting kills, assists, or completing objectives. Some cards require a certain number of points to activate and some only need one but can be made more effective by investing in them multiple times. What’s more, before the start of each round both sides can see what cards the enemy team is using so they can plan and play accordingly.

It’s certainly an interesting wrinkle to gameplay that keeps things fresh each round (even if it was a little overwhelming to get up to speed with all these mechanics and twists during a 45-minute appointment). However, we can’t help but wonder how Bad Guitar will approach balancing a beast like this. It’s already hard enough to balance most competitive shooters when trying to manage maps, guns, character abilities, movement, and more. As many failed competitive shooters prove people will fall off if a developer can’t adapt their game to player feedback quickly. So it's only once FragPunk gets into the public’s hands that we will know the team's philosophies towards balance and speed at which they will address the dozens of modifiers. All of which Bad Guitar will have to do in such a way that the game feels chaotic and fun, without taking away from its competitive ambitions.

While FragPunk currently has no release date, a closed beta will be opening up in October for PC and Xbox players and we are very curious to see how this RNG-infused shooter will fare in the wild.

Lexi Luddy

Contributing Editor

Lex Luddy is a freelance writer and journalist. She has written for Vice, Fanbyte, PLAY Magazine, Gayming Magazine, Push Square, startmenu and more. She can be found on BlueSky @basicallilexi.bsky.social talking about Like A Dragon, Kirby, and queer representation in media.