Full ReleaseXbox · PC

Gravhounds

Strategy, Shooter, Base Building

Overview

GRAVHOUNDS is a 1–4 player co-op action builder. Drop into hostile planets as a pack, build and defend your base in physics-driven mayhem, and extract with everything you can carry before you become alien chow! The longer you stay, the greater the danger... and the rewards.

Intense alone, chaotic with a crew. Combine each Gravhound's strengths and improvise to beat back the swarm. Go lone wolf to expand the operation or stick with the pack and stand your ground.

Fetch!

Fling objects across the battlefield to your teammates. Turn gravity against the swarm and send them flying, one by one.

Disclaimer: Transporting volatile materials with the Grav Beam may result in unforeseen loss of Gravhounds.

Deploy turrets, generators, and fabricators to expand the operation and defend it from the swarm.

Extend pipelines across hostile terrain to power your base, move resources, and keep your escape route alive.

Choose from a crew of bio-engineered canine workers built for dangerous planetary operations.

Loyal.

Obedient.

Expendable.

Unlock powerful new abilities and upgrades mid-shift. Stack bonuses and reshape your loadout to suit the situation. The swarm grows deadlier by the second - but so do you.

Boost in any direction and reposition under fire. Race to your teammates' aid or make a last dash for materials.

Warning: Unauthorized recreational use of pipeline boost is strictly prohibited.

Seek out treacherous planets for the best materials - the higher the risk, the greater the rewards.

Unlock new Gravhounds, weapons, and upgrade paths.

Stay longer, push harder, and the swarm escalates. Every shift becomes a bet on how much your pack can handle.

Far from home.

Swarm closing in.

Still expected to hit quota.

Get to work.

From the game's Steam store page.

THE GAMEQ VERDICT136 reviews analyzed

What players are actually saying

1. Summary

GRAVHOUNDS is a co-op shooter where a squad of space dogs gathers resources, runs pipelines and builds turrets while waves of bugs attack. Its launch-week reviews were very positive. Players praise most how much fun it is with friends (26% of reviews) and the way it blends tower defense with shooting (24%). After those come the fast boost-and-rail movement and a low price players call a bargain. 18% of reviews compare it to Deep Rock Galactic, Helldivers 2 or both, usually as a compliment. Many positive reviews are short and enthusiastic, and some add a caveat: it is early access and needs more time.

Content is the most common complaint: a short, linear set of missions that repeats quickly, with no difficulty select. Balance comes next (one rifle and one rocket mod outclass the rest, dog abilities feel weak, upgrades are tiny), followed by smaller quality-of-life gaps: no way to remove a misplaced turret, vague tooltips, and quizzes and puzzles some players hate. Several of the negative reviews still describe a good base that needs work, and two of the 11 thumbs-down reviewers say they would have picked "maybe" if Steam offered one. Performance and solo play split opinion.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Best with friendsHigh

26% of reviews praise the co-op or say the game is better with a group, more than any other single point. Couples, families and friend groups describe playing it together: "I'm about to sink like 40 hours of my life into this game with my friends," and "Best played with a full squad of friends for maximum gravgun shenanigans." A few people enjoy the chaos for its own sake, friendly fire and throwing teammates across the map included. Strangers are another matter for one long thumbs-down review that still ends "OVERALL A VERY FUN COOP SHOOTER." It warns that players who don't understand the mechanics can sink the run: "if people press the wrong button (because of lacking knowledge or just trolling) you fail the entire mission." The same reviewer adds that randoms rarely want to replay your mission to help your progress.

Tower defense and shooting in one loopHigh

The core loop gets nearly as much praise (24% of reviews). You collect resources, lay pipelines, build turrets on them and then fight the waves yourself, and players like juggling several jobs at once. "Its a combination of a lot of stuff that somehow works great," says one reviewer, and another writes: "The mix of fighting and exploring/gathering resources never let´s you quite settle down into one task." The pipeline and node system gets its own praise ("Love the turret/pipeline mechanic"; "building is fun, I like the node system"), as does the freedom in laying out a base: "the ability to just be able to make any turrent path so alot of different ways to build." A playtest veteran stresses planning: "check the map plan a base and pipe route accordingly to make it to higher waves." Pushback comes from players with more hours in, who say turrets either barely matter or make the fight trivial (see balance and difficulty below). One of them notes "Enemies has no pathing," with bugs trying to walk through cave walls.

Fast, floaty movementMedium

Boosting, jetpacking and rail-riding come up often. "Riding pipes and boosting back and forth, jumping, et cetera? It's fantastic," says one player, and some hear echoes of Tribes and Firefall in the skiing. One reviewer calls movement "pretty much the most important thing" in the game. A handful of reviews find it rough in spots: "the jumping/jetpacking is a little awkward" when threading the bonus rings, it "feels good when ur not trying to jump through a window," and one early quitter found it "clunky," partly because sprint has to be toggled off to regenerate.

Strong value for the priceMedium

12% of reviews call the price fair or better, often in plain terms: "for 15 bucks it's a steal!!" One player says "I easily would have considered it worth double what they're asking," and several recommend it because the entry cost is low for an early access game. The only dissent on price is one thumbs-down review arguing the game "would've made out alot better if it was f2p" with paid cosmetics.

Dog crew charm and art styleLow

Plenty of players simply enjoy being a dog in space, and the jokes about barking and a dedicated howl button are affectionate. Among the more substantial comments, the art and presentation get praise ("I really like the art style, feels pretty unique and high quality"), as do small touches: "I love how you turn into a plushie when you die and get a cone after you revive." One reviewer finds the characters cute but wants them to stand out more than types like "the funny one", "the loner", "the bruiser" and "the heart". One early quitter went the other way: "Art style screams default UE assets."

Where players are split

PerformanceLow

Performance reports split roughly evenly: about as many reviews say it runs well ("The game runs beautifully," "Plays and runs smooth," "Performance is very good as well") as describe problems. The problems are frame rates falling as fights grow ("frame rates drop significantly as waves progress"), heavy hardware load ("maxing out my gpu and nearly my cpu yet still getting 60+ fps") and a call for an "optimisation update". At the extreme, one player says "I could run the demo on low settings, but I can't run the actual game." One reviewer adds that there is no FOV slider and the default "induces motion sickness."

Playing soloLow

Only a small group of reviews talk about solo play, and they split. Six say it works on your own ("Its great solo and greater with friends"; "it is difficult solo, not too hard, just difficult!"). Seven say the game is built for a team: "it doesn't seem like the game was much made for solo play," "trying to manage everything alone gets tough," and from a player who lost interest after half an hour, "if you are solo i would skip entirely." The concrete solo complaint is about timing: there is little time between waves to explore, repair and solve puzzles before the ship has to be defended again.

DifficultyLow

The few reviews that talk about challenge disagree about it. Some find it "right level of difficulty" or "manageable." Others, mostly long-session players, find it too easy once defenses are up ("fences and some turrets are so strong, its almost pointless to help"), point out that "there isn't an active difficulty selection," and say the final wave doesn't feel final. On the other side, one player says two-player scaling is far too harsh ("Multiplayer DOES NOT need extremely aggressive scaling with 1 other player joined"), and another saw the same planet swing from overwhelming to easy depending on which enemy mix spawned.

What frustrates players

Thin content and repetitive missionsMedium

12% of reviews raise thin or repetitive content, including four of the 11 thumbs-down ones, which makes it the most common complaint. Players describe a linear campaign of fixed missions with no rotating pool. One reviewer did "the same 3 missons like 5 times" helping others, and another writes that "Once you've seen a couple of the points of interest you've seen them all." The fixes they ask for overlap: "Game for sure needs procedural generated maps and missions," an endless mode, and more maps, weapons and building types. One otherwise happy reviewer says "I'm worried this may effect the staying power of this game compared to DRG." Several treat the thin content as part of buying into early access.

Weapons, dog abilities and mods feel unbalancedMedium

Balance complaints name the same few problems. Weapon choice is narrow: "Pulse rifle is the only weapon worth getting," and weapon upgrades are too small to matter ("the maximum amount of increased fire for the assault rifle is 1.08x the base"). One mod dominates: "The early rocket barrage mod is insanely overpowered." Dog abilities are weak enough that some reviewers rarely use them ("Dog abilities are quite meh to me and rarely use them"), and one says "its not really worth playing most of the classes because of their unique ability." Some want to choose a loadout before a mission ("just let me pick a fucking gun") instead of drafting everything mid-run. The skill trees do get a defender: the same reviewer who calls the pulse rifle the only worthwhile gun finds them "diverse enough to have to have the conversation who mains what."

Quizzes and puzzlesLow

Four reviews complain about the puzzle content, two of them in strong terms. The in-mission quizzes draw the harshest words: "Absolutely despise with every fiber of my being the quizzes," from a player who otherwise loves the game, and another describes having "no idea about the answers" and restarting until the questions are memorized. One thumbs-down review says puzzles take up a large share of missions and "doesn't feel like it fits the game at all." A demo veteran asks for clarity rather than removal: "Puzzles should be challenging, but players should at least understand what they're supposed to do." One reviewer likes them: "Fun little minigames with rewards meaningful enough to benefit from playing them."

Vague tooltips and poor mission trackingLow

A few detailed reviews ask for numbers and clearer information. "My biggest concern remains the lack of detailed tooltips and ability descriptions," says one, and another notes that mod descriptions list effects but "non of them tell you any value / number to expect." In squads, players can't tell what has already been done: "it's impossible to see if a squad mate has already done something," so they ask for a proper in-mission map with completion tracking. One critic says unexplained mechanics are why random teammates press the wrong buttons.

Building quality-of-life gapsLow

Four reviews ask for a way to delete, sell or move structures, because "Once you build something it's there," even a rocket turret that only hits trees. Two players who split roles with a partner say XP rewards building far more than everything else ("the game seems to favor construction/infrastructure building over most other objectives"), so the teammate who explores and mines falls behind.

Co-op bugs and the resource-carrying systemLow

One review reports that in two-player sessions progress "only saves for the host." Another describes the ship AI repeating "Alright, start it up. Lets get you home" over and over if you keep fighting after completing the objectives. The carry-and-throw resource system frustrated two players: in one thumbs-down review, carried resources crash into the ship and "if they hit the ground, they vanish," and another player can't tell whether a thrown blueprint has been secured.

No crossplayLow

Two players left thumbs-down reviews almost as soon as they started because they couldn't play with friends on another store. One asks, "What kind of coop pve game doesnt have crossplay?" The other names PC Game Pass and Steam and says they will try again if that changes.

3. The player conversation

Launch-week reviews were upbeat and fairly unified. Many are short and warm, and 21 reviewers say they played the demo or playtest before coming back for the full launch, some of them for many hours. Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2 come up often, with Sanctum, Risk of Rain, Tribes and Fortnite's Save the World also named, and players mostly use them to explain what kind of game this is. Recommendations often carry a qualifier, such as "Needs a little bit of time in the oven" or "can't wait to see this game in 1.0," so some of the praise rests on trust that development continues.

Most of the thumbs-down reviews fall into two groups. Five were written within the first hour of play, mostly over things outside the shooting and building: no crossplay with Game Pass friends, a game that wouldn't run on the reviewer's PC, a tight FOV, plus one player who hated the resource-carrying system. Four others came from players with far more time in the game, and they are among the most detailed reviews in the set. Those players like the foundation but found the missions repetitive, the challenge easy to flatten and the balance off. The longest of them covers almost every frustration listed above, though its points also turn up in shorter, independent reviews. Several positive reviews raise the same balance and content issues and still recommend the game, which suggests that how much a player forgives early access decides much of the split.

4. What the developers could do

Add mission variety and replayability. Thin, linear content is the most common complaint, and players ask for procedural or rotating missions, an endless mode and a difficulty select so they don't have to replay fixed maps.
Rebalance weapons, mods and dog abilities. Reviewers name the pulse rifle and the early rocket barrage mod as dominant, call the dog abilities weak and say upgrades like a 1.08x fire-rate bonus are too small to feel.
Tune difficulty and co-op scaling. Long-session players say strong turrets and fences flatten the challenge, while others found two-player scaling and some enemy mixes overwhelming, which points to clearer difficulty tiers.
Optimize late-wave performance and add an FOV slider. Players report frame drops as waves grow and heavy GPU load, one could not run the full game at all, and one felt motion sick at the default FOV.
Let players remove or sell structures and spread XP more evenly. Four reviews ask for a way to delete misplaced turrets and rails, and two players who split roles with a partner say construction earns far more XP than exploring or mining.
Fix the quizzes and explain puzzles and mods with real numbers. The quizzes drew some of the angriest comments in the reviews, and detailed reviewers want tooltips with values and objectives that explain themselves.
Add in-mission tracking and fix co-op progress saving. Squads can't see which points of interest are done, and one player reports that progress only saved for the host in a two-player session.
Add crossplay between Steam and PC Game Pass. Two players left thumbs-down reviews almost immediately because they couldn't play with friends across stores.