Mushrooms are excellent, I think we can all agree on that. Some of them are tasty, others are vast, many are deadly, and there are even a few that can make you trip balls.
In Funguys Swarm, the early access auto-shooter from Stairway Games, the mushrooms are sentient and angry. In fact, these furious fungi are fighting back against the Fire King and his strange little garden army. The forest is ablaze, and the natural world needs a hero, preferably a roguish one with the ability to respawn again and again.
You are the mushroom leading the charge, and as such you must venture out into four different nature-themed biomes, swinging a slice of melon, smashing a garlic hammer, and flinging berries at an increasingly busy swarm of fruit and veg baddies.
If that sounds silly: it is. If that sounds fun: it is.
Funguys Swarm and Early Access
While Funguys Swarm is an auto-shooter in a similar vein to Vampire Survivors and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, thanks to its bold art style and the well-implemented setting, this quirky little bullet heaven feels pretty unique in a genre where that’s not always simple to pull off.
Further differentiation is afforded by a cool over-heating system where you can accelerate your growth mid-run with a heat penalty that persists into the meta layer. Back at base, once your run is done, you can spend some of your resources to hose down the Fire King and cool those flames ready for another attempt.
Between runs you can also make upgrades to your general stats, unlock new companion pets, add new abilities and then enhance them, and unlock new weapons and bulk up their damage output. There are loads of things to work towards and I’ve put more than 12 hours in so far and there’s plenty left for me to unlock.
Enter the Egglosseum
I’ve picked today to write about Funguys Swarm because I missed the previous update, back in October, which added a lava-filled environment and mechs. I’ve got another chance, though, as there’s another update out today which adds yet another new arena, a new character, and even fresh gameplay systems.
At the heart of the new update, which landed today on November 13, is a new playable arena called the Egglosseum. With a name like that, you won’t be surprised to hear that this new location has you fighting crazed chickens.
A third character called Nutcase just joined the party, too. This odd-looking rodent is dash-focused, and the faster you push him, the more out of control things become – you have been warned. I really liked his ability to throw nuts ahead of himself, and his mobility is useful in the boss battles and when avoiding larger area-of-effect attacks.
Finally, the latest update has also added a new Debuff Mutation system for upgrading passive cards, as well as four new global upgrades, and nine fresh Shroom Shop items to unlock – there’s plenty of new content to get stuck into, basically.
In fact, given the amount of content already in the game before this injection of newness, I think the small hike mentioned in the blog post on Steam is more than justified. It’s still modestly priced in my opinion.
According to the developer over on Steam, there’s more already in the works, with new arenas and more surprises in store. However, the big focus of the next update is going to be on the meta, with the devs targeting exciting mid-game choices and more rewarding progression, amongst other things.
