Crowbar Collective, the same team behind the lauded Half Life remake Black Mesa, have released their first swing at title under an original IP. Rogue Point, as it’s called, is a co-operative tactical shooter that also happens to be a roguelite, and it’s out today in early access. It’s backed up by publisher Team-17, who as the developers mention, also supported the popular indies Hell Let Loose and Trepang, as well as many other successful titles. It ought to be quite the achievement for Crowbar Collective, who started off as a volunteer group of modders all the way back in 2004, but later snowballed into a full development studio in tandem with the production of Black Mesa.
Rogue Point occupies a unique junction of mechanics, meshing the corner-checking gameplay of Rainbow Six Siege, the horde-shooting of Payday, the run-based challenge of the roguelite genre, and the co-operative spirit of Left 4 Dead. On that last part–Black Mesa didn’t offer the opportunity to satiate the devs’ desire for co-op, so Rogue Point served partially as a means to explore that. Set some point in the near future after the passing of one of the world’s richest men, various factions of trigger-happy mercenaries, called MERX, wreak chaos in service of the corporations vying for control of his spoils. You and your squad of friends constitute the counterbalance to this, a rag-tag SWAT team with all the right skills to pay the bills. Literally, in fact, as your performance in the game’s missions directly subsidizes the arsenal you’re able to purchase. You’ll utilize your guns and gadgets along with whatever friends you bring along to tackle the many dynamic and objective-based missions the campaign has to offer, facing off against the various classes of the computer-controlled MERX baddies, and finally a boss enemy. There are four maps at launch, The Airport, The Mall, The Office, and The Oil Rig, though their layout and the enemy placement changes from mission to mission thanks to what the devs call the Parametric Design system. There’s also already a roadmap to 1.0 that features new weapons, equipment, enemies, cosmetics, better planning tools, and a new map.