Gravhounds open playtest is live on Steam — free co-op wave shooting with dog people

Gravhounds, a co-op wave shooter from Octopus Panic, Inc., is running a free open playtest on Steam through Monday. If you've been looking for something to fill a few hours with friends this weekend, this is worth a look.

The game pulls a loose structural cue from Helldivers 2 — you operate out of a home base spaceship — but plays differently in practice. It's a wave shooter with a light tower defense and resource mining layer on top. You gather resources by flinging them across the map with a gravity gun, which is as satisfying as it sounds, though the game will teach you quickly not to do that with explosive materials. Movement stands out too: gliding along networks of buildable cables feels good and adds some flow to the chaos. For a playtest build of an unreleased early access game, it's notably well put-together.

Octopus Panic, Inc. is an indie studio, and Gravhounds is clearly trying to carve out space in a crowded co-op shooter market. The hook that gets eyes on it is the art direction — the characters are anthropomorphic dogs, blue-collar and vaguely dissociating, and when you respawn you come back wearing a cone of shame. It's a small detail, but it lands. Co-op wave shooters live and die by their moment-to-moment fun, and the shooting here is described as genuinely enjoyable even in this early state.

The open playtest runs until Monday — just hit the Join Playtest button on the Steam page to jump in.