GraveRun

My first pass at GraveRun lasted about forty minutes before I stopped solo and texted a friend to come over, because that is clearly the context this thing was built for. It is a top-down pixel run-and-gun where you hold waves of zombies back across a handful of modes - campaign levels, a village survival stand, score attack runs - and the core feel is solid enough. Movement has a decent snap to it, gunfire has weight, and the bullet-time mechanic (yes, there is a slow-mo button) feels like the developer genuinely thought about moment-to-moment pacing rather than just stacking numbers. The weapon system is the main reason to pay attention here. You carry two guns simultaneously and can swap or upgrade them mid-fight, pulling from a pool of over 30 types. A pistol pushed through multiple upgrade tiers hits meaningfully harder than its starting stats suggest, and different zombie types have enough variation in their aggression and movement patterns that you start prioritising targets rather than just spraying. There are also vehicle drops - motorbikes and jeeps delivered by helicopter - that shift the feel of a round briefly into something chaotic and satisfying. The Workshop is live too, so custom weapons, levels, and enemy configs exist if you want to dig past the base content. Here is the problem, and it is not a small one. GraveRun launched in Early Access in 2016 and has never left. The developer did push updates - Workshop integration, critical hit zones, a reworked weapon-swap system - and the solo dev seems genuinely committed based on the patch notes. But the campaign is short, the online multiplayer was actually disabled and replaced by Steam Remote Play Together as a workaround, and the player base is thin enough that finding random online sessions is not really a thing. That Remote Play Together pivot works fine for a local crowd on one machine, but two players on separate keyboards is not supported - someone has to use a controller, full stop. Controller support itself has been a friction point. Early reviews flagged that binding a Steam controller required manual setup, and a DS4 user reported only being able to aim in two diagonal directions. The developer has iterated on this, but if you are planning to run this at a party night with mixed inputs, test your setup before your guests arrive. The pixel art is clean without being flashy, the soundtrack does not overstay its welcome, and the score attack leaderboards give solo players a reason to replay. For what it is - a small indie from a one-person team built on a game-jam prototype - GraveRun holds together better than most games in this tier. The honest ceiling is a tight two-to-four-player couch session at a sale price. Walk in expecting that and you will probably have a decent time. Walk in expecting a finished, feature-complete shooter and the Early Access label will sting. Fred, Scout Team