Fish Stick Protocol

I came into Fish Stick Protocol expecting another Lethal Company clone with a fresh coat of paint, and walked out genuinely surprised by how much the physics-driven chaos differentiates it. The core loop is extraction: drop into a procedurally generated dimension, grab artifacts, survive whatever the level decides to throw at you, get back to the portal. Simple on paper. In practice your teammate is currently inflating like a balloon because a bee stung them, and you just got yeeted across the map by a sentient plant that also gave you a speed boost. That is the game. The DNA is clearly shared with Deep Rock Galactic and Human: Fall Flat - cooperative objective play wrapped in emergent physical comedy - but Fish Stick Protocol leans harder into pure unpredictability than either. Dimensions scale in hostility, and the game hints at exotic variants beyond the standard tiers. Environmental hazards range from shifting gravity fields to collapsing terrain to anomalies that shrink, freeze, or launch you mid-run. No permadeath either, which keeps the tone loose. The studio deliberately stripped out horror pressure in favor of what they call creativity and cooperation, and that design call is the right one for the audience this is targeting. The post-mission manor hub is where the progression loop lives: sell relics, earn Approval points, unlock new rooms, deck out the space with your collected trophies. Consumable tools like the Artifact Radar add a light loadout decision before each dive. It is modest, but it works. Where things get complicated is the Early Access caveat. Steam reviews sit at Mostly Positive across around 126 reviews, which is a decent signal for a small indie at this price point, but community feedback flags two consistent issues: repetition sets in after extended play, and the procedural generation occasionally produces runs that feel more like a bug report than a designed space. The physics engine is central to the humor but also the source of visual glitches that Early Access players have to absorb. Maracas Studio has published a roadmap covering new dimensions, additional gear, and expanded progression - roughly six months of Early Access planned - so the skeleton is clearly not finished yet. For a shooter specialist like me, the combat-or-lack-thereof angle is worth flagging honestly. This is not a shooter. There is no weapon TTK to optimize, no ranked ladder to climb, no netcode to stress about in the traditional sense. What matters here is whether your group of friends can handle eight-player sessions of coordinated stupidity without someone rage-quitting when physics send their character into orbit. If that description makes you roll your eyes, look elsewhere. If it makes you text your Discord server immediately, this is probably the cheapest fun you will have this season with a full lobby. Fred, Scout Team