Shell Runner

As of 10/25/25, Smells like abandoned. The Developer has released 2 other games and are currently pushing out more updates for that than this game. This game supposedly left EA in April of 2025. Since then, as early as 10/22/25, there has been updates to their other games and this game has not received any updates. Prior to leaving EA in April of 2025, the last update was November of 2024. The game feels incredibly... boring. Great idea that feels like the execution of it makes it lack in terms of quite literally everything it's trying to do. Synthetik, Zero Sievert, now Escape from Duckov, every other games feels like so much more had gone into the gameplay loop. Feels like a money grab, and now that it's abandoned for other projects that are picking up revenue for this developer - obviously they're in it for the money. Avoid.

Fun top down looter/shooter, I hope it gets gamepad support this would be a perfect game for the Deck.

It's a little fun, but there are a lot better top down shooters in terms of gameplay. For the extraction shooter aspect of this, there is not much depth at all, just accepting random procedural quests and taking your current gear into those quests. Here are the other reasons I won't keep playing this in the game's current state: - Controls can't be re-bound. - The camera only can be turned with RMB, and it is inverted: you are turning the world from your RMB point when you drag to turn the camera. There are no other ways to manually control the camera other than zoom out. If you decide to just not move the camera and play it in the top-down view, a lot of walls block vision, so you need to turn the camera or just use the map mode for combat, which zooms out wildly. - UI doesn't scale right to the screen at all, a lot of things clip and menus where you would need to drag items to the other side seem a little cramped. That may just be a 16:10 aspect ratio issue, but it caused me problems playing with inventory management. - No twinstick controller support (though I mostly tried using a controller to get around the wonky camera controls.)

EDIT 04/16/2025: I'm replaying the game to try to give the game another chance. I only played it for about an hour and so far and I'll probably keep updating this to showcase my thoughts as I go along. It seems the same. The crafting system seems to have been overhauled and appears that they've added new mission types that I don't remember seeing when I played. I haven't gotten much of a chance to check out the fresh content but now seeing that you have to get these keycards to try to fight the boss of the area is a pretty big incentive over just getting quests to fight them directly every other selection like before. One thing I still don't like too much is the controls feeling a bit clunky and rotating the camera being a bit annoying especially when you have to try to do this while being shot off-screen by an enemy, which was a complaint I had in the original playthrough but I haven't gotten a sentry gun (or see if it's even still in) to test if they just stand around getting shot down by them still. The new crafting system is fun and it's a nice little touch to make them take up actual inventory space so you have to decide if you want to take those parts or do you want to try to pick up that implant to break apart or rip out the modification to place it on your gear. One minor complaint I have is with the keycards themselves being actual items too. I felt that they could've been something you interacted with and received a keycard that you didn't need to carry (or at least reduce to a 1x2 size like ammo) since a 2x2 card is a pretty big card when you can't hold much. I also noticed some weirdness with the Shell Printing system. When I interacted with the system, it had a giant cutout of my character on the side and there was text underneath it and it feels like this text is meant to be read and/or interacted with, but you cannot. I also couldn't figure out (in the few missions I did) how to claim my rewards. I got a shell as a reward in two missions but none of the shells in the printer had unlocked and I don't know if they reworked this system. There is also still the complaint I have about the HUB character being voiced by AI. I still stand by the fact that they could've left it voiceless (as it doesn't seem there are any voices in the game so it wouldn't have stood out) or just done it themselves if they didn't want to reach out to an aspiring VA to work out an arrangement. Other than that, I'll check again in a day or so and try to clear the first two areas and see what I might have missed or if things clicked a bit better for me. As it stands it still is just a "meh" for recommendation and I hope it improves since this was one title I was looking forward to when it launched. (ORIGINAL REVIEW STARTS HERE) There really isn't a lot of content here. There are 3-4 different types of missions, Collect 2 of a specified weapon type, kill a certain number of enemies, kill a boss, and possibly a 4th one I can't remember. Missions can take about 10-15 minutes so you could theoretically clear them all within 2 hours and decide if it's something you want to keep doing as you'll need to do these types of missions again and again as leveling/ranking up is a tedious task. The big appeal is if you want to collect more shells (Playable characters) since there are about 15+ with varying qualities from Trash to High End (5 quality levels in total. The level design is okay, Enemy AI has a habit of shooting you from off-screen but also being dumb as bricks. Sometimes I can run up to 4 different enemies and swipe them with my gladius with no one noticing, other times I can walk 1 cm out of cover and the air gets filled with bullets as they all fire on me. THOUGH, as I said, the AI is an idiot. You get an item called a sentry gun that you can deploy in a room and hide in a corner and the sentry gun will slowly shoot at the closest enemy to it for about 10 seconds before it despawns, but the enemy just stand around and don't try to move or avoid the gun making it relatively easy to use it to beat bosses. I got to about Rank 3 with high-end weapons and that was due to me getting a bug where some of my gear disappeared, but I can constantly "unequip" an accessory style gear, which allowed me to sell it infinitely and make a lot of money to buy about 40 quality refiners to get my weapons from tier 3 to max tier. BUT I was kind of bored with it by, hour 3, but I powered on for another 2 hours trying to get to Rank 4 to get better quality shells in Quest Rewards and then experiencing the glitch/bug to max out my gear quality and also trying to get more shells and their quality, but I ultimately decided, it wasn't worth it to do so. Another nitpick would be the "map" and the zoom functions. The zoom in/out feels really pointless, since zoomed all the way in and you have the camera up in the characters face (which doesn't help at all when the game is designed to be played from a sort of top-down perspective) and zoomed all the way out is what the game starts you at so you don't get much of a vantage point. I guess if you want to play the game on extra hard mode, you could zoom in all the way. Also the "map" is really useless. You press M and then it zooms out just a bit more than your max zoom out and while you're in this mode, the game is still running and enemies can still wander around and start shooting at you if they see you so it feels like it's just for "do you want to see a slightly larger area around you to determine where the boss or extraction point is?" Otherwise, it's pointless to have it since the perspective tends to hide things like "is that a doorway or just a bunch of metal hanging?" "Is the door closed and you can walk by without getting shot, or will you have to dodge or put up a barrier once you walk by to avoid getting shot down?" I definitely think this game needs a lot more work before I can recommend it and I would also recommend just hiring someone to do the voice lines for the hub companion, even if it was one of the devs doing it with a basic microphone, it would at least feel like there was more effort put into it that way. All in all, I did enjoy the few hours I spent with it, but that's me and if I had to answer if I would recommend it to others? It's sadly a no. I'm not going to talk about "potential" of the game because I'd rather review the game as it stands right now, not what it could possibly be in the future, especially with the game being in Early Access and therefore at risk of never being finished for one reason or another.

The gameloop is extremely short. I'm guessing the rarity tiers of the shells are there to keep you grinding, but you'll see most of the game in the first hour. I don't want to be too harsh, but there's just no meat here to chew into.

Sry, but with all due respect: This is not an Early Access title, this is a half-baked idea, a bunch of overused Synty assets and some badly implemented tutorials; all stuffed into a trench coat, trying to pose as a game. Between counter intuitive GUI, AI bots that will always know exactly where you are but then try to shoot you through the wall instead of going around and basically no QoL whatsoever, this "game" makes me want to request a refund not only for the money, but also for the time. Why throw something that undercooked out there? Why not invest half a year or a year into getting a solid foundation laid down and THEN go into EA for finishing and polishing? This could have become an interesting game, but seeing as it was released in this state, I have some serious doubts about the developer's commitment.

They released update 0.3 back in 2024, then said "here you go, 1.0, out of early access". It is still version 0.3.1 but being sold at full price without any updates since 0.3 back in 2024. Game is abandoned and unfinished.

When i read the early access reviews i tell myself: okay, it is still in development Now that i play it in a "finished state": same problem, same bugs, annoying and still unfinished It is not worth it if this is the what it is suppose to look like with some adjustments

I bought this on sale, but after playing for few hours, I couldn't find enough reasons to continue, while there're others better. It lacks of unique elements, or depth. I just.. not addicted to this like Duckov, Arc Raiders, Zero Sievert, Tarkov etc. I don't know the exact reasons, but here's the cons that personally bother me: - No right click to aim. In stead it's constant aiming but the accuracy feels like hip firing - No option to reverse camera rotation. Double right click feel clumsy to use - No shift to sprint? what...? Only one way to dodge and it depends on your leg equipment - Some audio is missing. Eg. recycling is completely silent - Gun fight feels... meh... audio, bullet speed, again no ADS - Suggested a dedicated keybind and slot for melee in early access. Devs don't seem to agree - No base upgrade? Not sure in mid to late-game though - Shell variety. It's just a little better of this and little worse of that. Mainly for appearance - Story... or is there one? - Lacking base upgrade elements (?) So, some pro. Again, personal preference: - Cyberpunk style - They added keybindings which is missing last time I tried before release - Same for controller support - Hey! Co-op mode! (But I don't have the chance to try it)

The game was fun for a little bit in the early build but now the enemies AI is kinda broken where they have gods eyes and see you off screen and if aggro they see you thru walls and the melee is kinda useless. The random generate stages are kinda busted too where some stages got a just the amount of enemies or just flooded with a army of bad guys. I had a 2 star mission where i spawn in the center was surrounded with a least 30 enemies and the 5 enemies that was a front of my door all had smgs and grenades and it ended so fast lol. That happen 2 more times with the bad stage RNG with packed full of bad guys and i couldn't recover cause all i had was the 2 stars mission and the enemies all had better weapons and most of the gunners always have grenades. I have played about 25hrs of this game and don't recommend this game where it sits now.