Currently sitting in Early Access on Steam for around $15, Gravebound is an indie title that feels like a cross between Risk of Rain, Borderlands, and The First Descendant. It is a PvE extraction shooter where you (and up to five friends) drop into a wasteland to shoot enemies, gather loot, and get out before a deadly storm closes in.
The enemies here are not your standard zombies or aliens. You are mostly fighting Clankers
angry, weaponized household appliances like washing machines and toasters. You're guided by a slightly annoying, meme spouting robot companion that feels heavily inspired by Claptrap. The game leans hard into a cel shaded art style and doesn't take itself too seriously, offering crazy cosmetic skins ranging from animals to outright internet brain rot
memes.
A typical match involves dropping into a zone, fighting off waves of machines, and completing objectives like repairing broken shield arrays. As you fight, you collect scrap and rare materials (like cubes and gears) that drop in specific zones. Once your objectives are done, you have to sprint to an extraction pod and survive a countdown timer to escape with your gear.
The build crafting is where the game gets really fun. Weapons have random modifiers, and as you gather crystals during a run, you can activate crazy effects. Hitting an enemy's weak spot might trigger chain lightning or send homing missiles flying across the screen. Between runs, you use your extracted scrap to permanently upgrade your character through a skill tree, increasing your health, adding double jumps, or improving your shield capacity.
While the core loop is a great time to just turn your brain off and chill, Gravebound has some massive growing pains. Because the private lobby button is currently bugged, you are forced to play with randoms. This leads to a major issue: loot ninjas. When you open a chest or defeat a boss, there is no temporary lock on the loot. Random players can sprint by and snatch the gun you just spent five minutes working for.
The lobby system is also a mess. There is no text chat, no way to ping players, and no way to kick someone who is AFK. You might find yourself staring at a lobby screen for ten minutes just because one person walked away from their keyboard and won't click ready
.
The game is incredibly punishing if you have technical issues. If your game crashes or you are forced to restart, it counts as a failed run. In Gravebound, failing a run doesn't just mean losing the loot in your backpack; it actually downgrades the gear you already had equipped. Losing hours of grinding because of a server hiccup is a tough pill to swallow.
- Highly addictive core loop that mixes looter shooter and extraction mechanics.
- Fun cel shaded art style with hilarious enemy designs.
- Deep weapon modifier system (chain lightning, homing missiles, etc.).
- Great price point ($15) for the amount of replayability offered.
- Perfect for turning your brain off and grinding with a group of friends.
- No temporary loot protection; randoms will steal your drops.
- Lobby system lacks basic features (no chat, no AFK kick).
- Technical crashes heavily penalize the player by downgrading equipped gear.
- Playing completely solo is incredibly difficult and unbalanced.
- Private lobbies are currently bugged.
"A brilliant foundation that needs some serious quality of life updates. If you are looking for a new PvE co op game that blends looter shooter mechanics with rogue lite extraction elements, Gravebound is worth checking out. It has some frustrating bugs right now, but for $15, the core loop is incredibly addictive."
