Burst Squad

I want to be straight with you: I went in with low expectations and Burst Squad still found ways to underdeliver on the things that matter most to me in a multiplayer shooter. This is a barebones first-person shooter from a tiny indie studio, sitting in that awkward Early Access limbo where the roadmap quietly stopped moving. The core loop is kill-score-repeat, with TDM and Conquest as your two mode options. That's it. No ranked system, no progression ladder worth talking about, no reason to stay past the first hour except sheer novelty. On paper, the loadout structure is fine. You get a primary weapon, a secondary, a knife, grenades, and a class ability tied to a powerup slot. Leaning is mapped to Q and E, which is a small but welcome nod to tactical shooters. In practice, though, the weapon feel is thin. Time-to-kill is inconsistent in ways that suggest placeholder tuning rather than deliberate balance. Sound design is a genuine problem: community feedback has specifically called out the absence of footstep audio, which for anyone who plays shooters seriously is not a minor issue. Footsteps are information. Without them you're flying blind on a map where positioning should matter. The bot AI, there as a fallback when no live players are around, reportedly has issues in TDM mode that haven't been addressed since launch. That tells you most of what you need to know about the post-launch support situation. The Steam community page carries at least one blunt warning that the developers have moved on. With only a few dozen reviews on record and a player pool that was never large to begin with, finding a live match today is a dice roll. LAN PvP is available if you can wrangle friends, which is probably the most reliable way to get value here. The sci-fi and military aesthetic has some visual identity to it, and the maps span outdoor and indoor environments which at least gives the Conquest mode a reason to exist beyond pure deathmatch. But without netcode transparency, proper audio feedback, a functioning ranked or progression system, or any sign of developer activity, there's nothing here that justifies choosing this over the dozen free-to-play alternatives that do the same job with actual infrastructure behind them. At its price point the damage is minimal. The opportunity cost of your time is a different story.

Fred · Scout Team

Shooters

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