Gravhounds Preview – Interstellar dogsbodies with a mix of Helldivers and tower defence

What if man’s best friend was also man’s greatest source of expendable labour? Having genetically engineered, modified or Frankensteined dogs until they’re fuzzy heads on more human bipedal bodies, we’ve then sent them off to the farthest reaches of space to work a shift manning extraction platforms to gather resources, defend them from swarming indigenous species, and then try to get the heck outta there.

What immediately stands out about Gravhounds (aside from the dog people) is just how fluid it is. Each of the four dogs in the game is equipped with a hip-mounted jet pack, able to zip them up into the air, let them hover, or boost them along the ground at high speed. It’s great when exploring, to quickly nip out and around the Collector at the heart of your base and then bring resources back home, and boosting in any and every direction is fantastic in combat to keep enemies at paw’s length while you and your turrets blast away at them.

From the extractor, you have multiple power pipelines and nodes, and extending these like tentacles along the ground is a key early step. You have to grab and pull a node from a previous one, building out your pipeline step-by-step and automatically then having regular build points for turrets, scanners, teleporters and other structures.

The pipe then acts as a handy grind rail for you to zip along quickly without using up your boost meter, as well as letting you throw any resources or items you’ve gathered and have them move back towards the Collector, or out the extremities. Gathering resources is one of the simple early tasks, shooting with your mining laser, grabbing with the gravity gun, and then being able to fire the ball of gubbins. If you’re close enough, you can just shoot it right into the intake portal of the Collector, but as you sprawl further through each planet’s map you will want to make use of the pipe.

Waves of alien bugs will periodically come and attack you, coming from a defined direction or two in increasing numbers and size. That’s why you really do want those turrets, starting off as a simple burst fire gun but then being able to upgrade to more powerful alternatives – missiles, lasers, rapid-fire cannons, snipers and more. They become a real help, because your guns and abilities are fairly weedy to start off with. It’s not until you earn reward pods and grab from each selection of mods they contain that you really start to feel more powerful – in particular when your critical hits can trigger mini black holes and barrages of missile fire.

By the end of the first stage, with enough turrets (some found from a secret cache) and mods applied, we were handily taking down the bulky Leapers and big swarms. Even the final wave, as we were holding out until launch, barely challenged us in a duo.

The second planet, though, was another matter. Now there was a need to refuel in order to power a jump to another system, while also gathering resources and trying to complete esoteric side objectives – jump through hoops in time, shoot some flying cogs, etc. Being drawn in three different directions, and with bugs able to spawn in from more directions, we were eventually downed at the same time and wiped. Adding a few extra dogs to our pack would probably have helped, but it showed some of the need to handle different threats.

Of course, it could also be that we need to upgrade further. Missions earn various upgrade points that can be spent on new turrets, on new and powered up mods to earn, gun upgrades, and bonuses for the four dogs in the game right now. Each has a specific ability, such as Dozer being able to dig a hole and place a bone bomb, and Finn being able to play dead and be ignored by enemies.

There’s a short amount of time to dip a toe in and check out the open playtest that is taking place this weekend. It’s available now via Steam and Xbox Insider and running until Monday. After that, it’s a wait until November for Early Access and Xbox Game Preview releases, though it will also be day one on Game Pass.

There’s definitely some space for refinement, which is obviously the point of Early Access, but there’s a fun mish-mash of tower defence, person horde shooter, resource gathering and micro-survival genre here. Oh, and you can definitely feel the Jet Set Radio and Sunset Overdrive inspirations shining through for the pipe grinding combat.

Tags: Gravhounds