Battle Shapers is a roguelike FPS that’s going to smash its way into your psyche

thesixthaxis.com:

As I smash one robot into another, sending them both spiralling to their doom, I can absolutely see why this is Nicholas Routhier’s, co-founder and technical director, favourite part of the game they’ve helped to create, “Making the choice of the finishing punch, the whole realisation around it, sending enemies flying, exploding against the walls, with the sound and everything, it’s a simple but really meaningful thing.”

Battle Shapers is a sci-fi FPS roguelike, built, as the genre dictates, on a replayable loop of death and destruction. However, the team at Metric Empire have clearly spent a lot of time finding ways to make their game stand out within this somewhat overcrowded genre.

You take control of Ada, a Battle Shaper who’s revived by the gloriously cute Meemo when it becomes apparent that something terrible has befallen New Elysium where they reside. There’s a steadily increasing amount of corruption that’s spreading through the digital kingdom, and, as anyone with a hard drive can attest, corruption needs to be eradicated.

Fortunately, Ada is perfectly suited to the task. As a Battle Shaper she’s capable of growing and adapting to the ongoing needs of the battle she’s embroiled in, changing out her weaponry, expanding her repertoire of moves, and stealing abilities and parts from her vanquished foes.

Those parts take the form of Cores, and defeating the residing Overlords of each area will allow you to take their Core and apply it to Ada, changing the abilities she has access to. You equip a main core and a backup one, so you can mix and match these cores to create hybrid builds which will hopefully play to your personal strengths and to how you play the game.

This is a system that further evolves as well with each