Play this new early access game from Steven Spielberg’s son

Lynched: Banner of Spark is a new game from Max Spielberg, son of Steven Spielberg, and his new indie studio FuzzyBot. While Spielberg’s previous experience in the games industry focused primarily on shooters like Medal of Honor and Battlefield, this new outing is a bit more colorful and relaxed, but still focused on enjoyable action. This game is Lynched: Banner of Sparkand it starts early access on Steam today.

Lynched: Banner of Spark is a cooperative action game in which players fight against robots in a post-apocalyptic world. In practice, the game is much livelier and less gloomy than it sounds, as the colorful world is full of adorable robots. With solid roguelite and city-building gameplay loops to back it all up, Lynched is a solid alternative for those who are hesitant about other early access action games such as: B. burned out Hades 2 And Towerborne.

Bite-sized Hades

Lynched: Banner of Spark begins with a prison break. Players meet a friendly Unibot named Buddy and embark on an adventure to restore the Banner of the Spark, a group of helpful Unibots who helped restore the world after an apocalypse. To achieve this, players will have to fight against many robots that are not so friendly towards humans. That means Lynched is an isometric action game in which players complete missions to destroy hordes of evil robots called Combots.

Lynched provides players with numerous weapons with which to do this. Some are more generic swords and spears, while others are more obvious. My favorite is the guitar-like resonator, which deals damage or knocks back enemies in the area around me. Players can also grab enemies or objects in the environment with their “Wyre” arm. This allows players to pull enemies toward them to extend combos, pick up and throw objects, or perform a finisher on low-health enemies.

The combat is exciting and hits the same high notes as great isometric action games Hades. After a while it becomes repetitive, but Lynched sets up some systems to solve this problem. The most obvious is that at the start of a mission you can change which weapon or powerful spark powers your character has and go through them with a different build. Lynched also features roguelite elements that ensure each run feels unique.

Within a few missions, you will have rescued other bots that add depth to each mission playthrough, such as an armorer who can offer players upgrades at the end of each area that makes up a mission. This means you’ll have a slightly different experience even if you play the same mission over and over again, helping to reduce the repetition somewhat.

In between these action-oriented missions, there is a whole other part of the game that might appeal to players. Each player has a central area where they can move buildings and customize them to their liking. It’s not quite as complicated as something like this Animal Crossing: New Horizonsbut it’s a great way to break up the pace between exciting moments of action.

It’s a clever way to complement co-op gameplay, another big benefit of Lynched. We all know that the logistics of playing multiplayer games together can sometimes be frustrating. Up to eight players can join the same lobby, but missions only support teams of three, so there may be some downtime once even larger groups are gathered. Instead of forcing players to sit in a menu or static hub area, Lynched essentially gives players a different fun gameplay style to play around with while they wait.

Lynched will appeal to the same niche as Stoic and Xbox Game Studios Towerborne. It’s a satisfying, if repetitive, cooperative fighting game that’s best suited to players who want to do button mashing and fight their way through level after level of robots to kill some time. FuzzyBot has made some smart decisions to support this loop, as its roguelite setup ensures that each playthrough of a level feels unique. And the City Hub gives players something exciting to do while they wait to play action-packed missions with friends.

If this all sounds tempting, you should take a look Lynched: Banner of Spark. The game is available now via Steam Early Access.