ArcRunner

My first few runs in ArcRunner went exactly the way Trickjump Games intended: I died fast, cursed the damage sponges, picked myself up, spent my Nanites in the Cryochamber, and went straight back in. That loop - stripped of ambiguity and delivered with real visual confidence - is the honest core of what this game is. It is a third-person roguelite shooter set aboard a cyberpunk space station called The Arc, and it does not pretend to be anything more complicated than that. The three classes carry the run-to-run variety. The Soldier leans on an energy shield that can block and redirect incoming fire, while the Ninja brings an invisibility cloak and a katana for fast, close-in work. The Hacker, which unlocks after enough progress, functions as a kind of cyber-mage who siphons energy from enemies and unleashes it in devastating bursts. Each class pulls from its own pool of augments, and after every cleared zone you pick one of four offered upgrades - things that let you hover briefly, fire rockets on a timer, or push elemental damage on your ranged weapons. With over 30 augments in the pool, the builds shift meaningfully between runs even if the rooms themselves feel shuffled rather than truly remixed. Weapons you find in the field range from a cluster-firing shotgun called the Demolisher to the pin-point Plasma Bow, and as you find upgraded versions they gain perks like ricochet rounds or infrared targeting. Where ArcRunner earns its keep is in co-op. Up to three players online and the whole thing clicks into a livelier register - the frantic strafing and constant threat of being flanked by drones genuinely benefits from having someone covering the other angle. Solo play is serviceable but it does expose the weaker seams: enemy pathfinding can be exploited by simply breaking line of sight, bosses are mostly damage-sponge affairs without much tactical texture, and the early zones grow repetitive once your meta-progression has outpaced them. The no-checkpoint structure means every run replays those quieter opening areas whether you want to or not. The aesthetics deserve their own sentence. The Unreal-powered lighting leans hard into reflective neon surfaces, rain-slicked city streets, and a synthwave soundtrack that genuinely commits to the mood. It is the kind of game that looks better in motion than in screenshots, and there is a specific late-night, low-stakes pleasure to just blasting through it with the volume up. Critics landed in the 75-on-Metacritic range for good reason: the cyberpunk playground shines, the shooting feels punchy enough, but the roguelite skeleton underneath does not run as deep as genre heavyweights. Steam user sentiment sits at a mixed 68 percent, and that gap between critic and player scores mostly comes down to long-term content depth rather than any fundamental flaw. If you want a dense, ever-evolving roguelite with branching meta-systems, look elsewhere. If you want a clean, focused, good-looking co-op shooter that respects your time and gets out of its own way, ArcRunner makes a solid case.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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