FixForce is a co-op extraction platformer where losing your head is just the beginning

Surgent Studios has pulled back the curtain on FixForce, a co-op extraction platformer for up to six players where you play as robot repairmen racing against the clock in a post-post-apocalyptic world. The game is part of the ID@Xbox program and is currently in development.

The studio's biggest design revelation was that players enjoy the disasters more than the clean runs. When robots take enough damage — or a carefully constructed bridge collapses under the team — heads literally detach from bodies. What started as a passive spectator mode evolved into a full secondary gameplay layer: disembodied heads can scoot, jump, and swim, access heads-only zones blocked to full-bodied players, and even push their own bodies back to teammates for revival. Death, in other words, is just another way to keep playing. Proximity chat is baked in and deliberately spatial — you can hear a teammate's Doppler-shifted scream as they fall past you, or catch a distant shout of "I've found a toaster!" For moments when players are too far apart to communicate clearly, every Fixer has a laser pointer built into their fingers to coordinate last-second rescues without breaking the chaos.

Surgent Studios is best known for Kao the Kangaroo, a 3D platformer revival, so the team has a track record with character-driven platforming. FixForce represents a significant pivot toward cooperative, systems-driven chaos — closer in spirit to Overcooked or Moving Out than a traditional platformer. One of the more counterintuitive lessons from development: making the platforming controls more forgiving actually increased chaos, because players trusted their movement enough to attempt wilder, riskier structures. The studio cites a player-built DNA double helix used to reach an inaccessible machine as the moment they knew the design was working.

No release date has been announced yet, but the ID@Xbox spotlight suggests an Xbox and PC release is in the pipeline. If the studio's design philosophy holds — that failure should always feed back into fun rather than frustration — FixForce looks like it could carve out a solid niche in the crowded co-op chaos genre.