Surgent Studios, the developer behind Tales of Kenzara: ZAU, has unveiled its subsequent recreation at this time, and it is…completely nothing like Tales of Kenzara: ZAU. It is referred to as FixForce, and it is a chaotic cooperative “extraction platformer” about a crew of robots fixing machines utilizing random elements they discover mendacity round.
FixForce places as much as six gamers collectively as a robotic restore crew despatched into an space to repair numerous damaged constructions littered round the space inside an allotted quantity of time. Every damaged machine signifies what elements are wanted to repair it, and people elements could be discovered scattered round the stage.
Nevertheless, many of these items will probably be caught behind obstacles: our bodies of water robots cannot swim via, up tall towers, guarded by evil enemy robots. To gather them, you may want to make use of your robotic constructing skills to select up and place objects strategically so that you and your folks can climb throughout them to succeed in no matter it’s you want. And in case you’re injured by an impediment, your head will fall off, and your teammates might want to discover your head and physique and stack them again collectively to resurrect you again into the recreation. Groups earn factors primarily based on what number of issues they repair inside the time restrict.
I acquired a likelihood to play a spherical of FixForce forward of the announcement alongside the builders, and yeah, the stage of foolish chaos implied in the announcement trailer just about encapsulates it. It is simple to get distracted goofing round with all the objects in the stage and constructing bizarre, random issues, however FixForce additionally lends itself to crazy emergent moments, like when one of the devs tried to toss platforms at me to save lots of me from being caught on an island, and as an alternative slammed one into me and knocked me proper into the water.
It was a surprisingly cheery and foolish time for a studio that simply made a recreation about grieving the loss of life of a cherished one. That reality is just not misplaced on founder Abubakar Salim, although.
“As FixForce got here collectively, we noticed the pure chaos and hilarity it was unleashing and made the determination to maneuver shortly and publish it ourselves,” he stated in a assertion. “Sure, FixForce is totally not like something we’ve ever carried out earlier than, however look: we made one recreation about grief and one other about abuse and thought, ‘can we’ve got a little bit of foolish, silly enjoyable for a second?’ I promise we’ll return to darkish and miserable after this.”
Notably, this is not the identical recreation Salim introduced in 2024, Challenge Uso, neither is it the horror recreation introduced final yr to be revealed by Pocketpair. Surgent clearly has a lot of irons in the fireplace right here, however its eagerness to get one thing launched shortly is smart given the scale of its long-term ambitions and its monetary struggles in 2024.
FixForce is dropping in early entry on March 12 on PC through Steam and Epic Video games Retailer, and its full, closing launch may also be on Xbox, the studio says.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Acquired a story tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.