How Shatterline combines the roguelike formula with a competitive shooter
When you hear the term "roguelike shooter," you probably don't think of a game that looks like Shatterline. You might imagine the colorful pixel art of Enter the Gungeon, or the grimy sci-fi world of Returnal. By contrast, Shatterline wears the muted blacks and deep reds of a traditional multiplayer shooter like Call of Duty, complete with complex tactical gear and selectable characters that look straight out of an action movie.
But check your expectations at the door, as Shatterline is a different beast than any shooter you've played recently—and that's definitely a good thing.
Shatterline melds two styles of game that typically don't intersect. When you first boot it up, you'll likely start with the Expedition mode, its single-player (or co-op) PvE offering. In these missions, you choose one of the game's heroic Operatives—each with their own special tactical moves and Ultimates, of course—and dive into a shattered Earth environment haunted by crystalline demons known as "Glassheads."
As you progress, you must use your handy scanner to see where to go next, collecting resources like Red Salt from the Glassheads you shatter and saving allies along the way. Your Operatives then use these resources to activate machines that clear corruption from your path, and to call in supply drops that let you choose from several character upgrades.
Though these PvE jaunts are superficially similar to the sort of co-op content that you see in other multiplayer shooters like Destiny 2, Shatterline's approach is more similar to a run-driven roguelike, with a randomly determined set of challenges arrayed along a lengthy path. Like Hades, Shatterline allows you to develop a build for your chosen Operative that suits their pre-existing skillset. For example, my favorite Operative is armed with a grenade launcher, so I tended to select bonuses that improved my health capacity and regeneration.
"The intersection of PvE and PvP elements is highlighted in the RPG progression of the Operatives," says Alex Paley, Co-Founder of the game's publisher Faraway. "The resources used to unlock new abilities for your Operatives are earned in the Expedition (PvE) mode, but these same abilities play a vital part in competitive PvP play."
Paley pitches Shatterline's "game feel" as a mixture of Destiny 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4—and while those might seem like big names to live up to, I agree with the comparison.
This mix became especially clear during my time with the game's PvP modes, Conquest and Escort, which correspond to traditional point-control and payload advance modes, respectively (and which are just as robust as Expeditions). I initially wasn't sure what to expect, as I feel like most games that feature both PvE and PvP tend to excel at either one or the other, not both. But I was struck by how immediately fun Shatterline's PvP was to experiment with, even against tough opposing teams who had clearly played for dozens of hours already.
Like in the PvE modes, Shatterline's Operatives each have a distinct set of abilities that allow them to excel in certain areas of combat. Once I got the hang of my explosive hero's various grenades, I was able to use smokes to cover my team's movement and set up complex kill-traps with my tactical frag and my ultimate grenade launcher. It made for an enticing afternoon of gunplay—one that would certainly keep me coming back, especially if there were more maps and Operatives to choose from.
Paley emphasizes that the Ukraine-based developer Frag Lab envisions Shatterline as a live service game, and the team has a lot of plans to keep players coming back for more, including new Operatives, limited-time modes, and fresh content for Expeditions.
"As with any live-operated game, we will constantly need to release new content, Operatives, modes, and so on to keep players coming back every day," says Paley. "And with each new release, we will need to balance the game to make sure we are accommodating the needs of both our existing player base as well as new players."
"Unlike other AAA shooters, we consider Shatterline to be a very community-driven game where the dev team is constantly interacting with players for ideas for updates, and hosting game nights on Discord or live events all over the world," he continued. "We want it to feel like a real tight-knit gaming community and we want creators to be at the center of it."
Paley said that Shatterline will feature weekly event modes, such as Barricade, which features Fortnite-style environment-building before battles, giving players a chance to strategize before blasting each other senseless. These limited-time event modes will also cross over with new co-op PvE modes, like Invasion, where three players team up against one souped-up "boss" player in a short encounter.
The pace and feel of Shatterline's combat is impressive, and I can imagine pouring hours into its competitive modes in order to up my performance and learn the ins and outs of each Operative. If you're looking for a new competitive shooter to try out, you should make it Shatterline, especially if you enjoy those of the class-based variety.
Shatterline is available now on the Epic Games Store.