It’s been a big-name week for roguelike and roguelite releases. Behaviour Interactive, ProbablyMonsters, Digital Sun, and Bohemia Interactive have all had games launching. Today’s release, Fracture Point, was created by just one person.
Solo developer Kyrylo Burlaka built the entire game himself, and today the doors to his very hostile skyscraper are officially open. Fracture Point is a first-person roguelike looter shooter where getting to the top means knowing exactly when to keep climbing and when to take your loot and get out.
You’ve just been released from prison after being put there by a powerful corporation that still controls the city. The person responsible is waiting somewhere near the top of the company’s heavily guarded tower, and a resistance movement can get you inside. From there, you’re on your own.
Prison Was Easy, the Tower Might Kill You
The entire game takes place inside a tower, but don’t expect to memorize the quickest route to the top. Floors are procedurally generated, changing the layout and encounters each time you head inside. The higher you climb, the more dangerous things become. Enemies get tougher, surviving gets harder, and the tower starts dangling increasingly valuable loot in front of you.
That’s where Fracture Point starts testing your nerve. You don’t have to keep climbing. ATMs, vending machines, and loot collectors give you opportunities to secure what you’ve found along the way. Reaching one means making a choice…bank your haul while you still can, or take it upstairs and see what the next floor is hiding. Getting greedy could cost you everything.
Death is permanent, so there’s no respawning a few rooms back and having another go. Push one floor too far and the run is over, along with anything you failed to secure before somebody put a bullet in you.
Every Floor Raises the Stakes
Even keeping your guns loaded requires more thought than usual in this game. Fracture Point uses manual magazine loading and caliber-specific ammunition, so you can’t simply scoop up every box of bullets and assume it’ll work with whatever you’re carrying. Magazines need to be managed, the right ammunition matters, and running dry at the wrong moment could turn an otherwise promising climb into a very short one.
Loot adds another decision to the pile. Equipment can be sold, secured, or carried further into the tower, where better rewards are waiting alongside enemies increasingly capable of ending your run. It gives Fracture Point some of the risk-versus-reward tension of an extraction shooter without needing a huge map or an extraction helicopter waiting somewhere in the distance. Your entire world is one building. The way out is downstairs but the best loot is upstairs, along with the person you’re trying to reach.
One Developer, One Very Unfriendly Skyscraper
There’s something fitting about Fracture Point arriving during a week filled with games from much larger studios. There isn’t a huge development team behind this one. There’s no publisher either. Burlaka has taken the idea of fighting your way through a procedurally generated corporate skyscraper and built the whole thing himself.
That includes more than simply stacking increasingly difficult floors on top of one another. Between the shooting, manual weapon management, randomized layouts, loot system, permanent death, and decisions over when to secure your haul, there’s a lot happening inside this tower.
You don’t have to walk through its doors completely blind, either. A free demo is available on Steam, giving you the chance to start climbing before jumping into the full game.