Last year in June 2024, developer and publisher Mothership Loudspeakerz released GHOSTWARE: Arena of the Dead, a retro FPS boomer shooter set in a futuristic world that blurred the line between technology and magic. This year, they’re taking that shooter experience and mashing it with hardcore close quarters combat. Available during Steam Next Fest: June 2025, Texnoplazm is a brawler-shooter hybrid that blends together martial arts with guns to deliver an intense first person “gun fu” experience in which you swap between shooting enemies from afar and driving your fists into their faces. Taking the best elements from Cyberpunk, the Arkham franchise, and Doom, Texnoplazm truly makes you feel like an unstoppable machine as you punch, slice, and shoot your way to victory.

Texnoplazm Demo Gameplay Synopsis

Texnoplazm takes place in the same universe as GHOSTWARE: Arena of the Dead. Europe has been transformed into a dense cybergothic urban jungle in the year 200X. Advanced science makes technology feel like magic. You play as a doll known as “The Girl With No Name”, a synthetic humanoid companion trafficked by street gangs in the city’s underworld. One night, she unexpectedly breaks free from the chains of her programming and unleashes hell on the street gang that held her captive.

Punch, Slice, and Shoot Through Your Enemies

Texnoplazm’s engaging combat system maintains a high intensity pace to the beat of its electrifying technometal soundtrack. Combat is all about chaining combos, timing attacks and parries, dodging projectiles, and recovering health by doing damage. There are no reloading or clunky intermediate animations. Executing long combos with different styles earns you more points, while taking damage decreases your score. Defeated enemies also drop more weapons and health to ensure the action never stops!

The brawler-shooter cycles between 3 combat styles to encourage skill expression and creative fighting. Switch between your fists, melee weapons, and guns, while acrobatically dodging, sliding, and parrying enemy punches and bullets. Each style has its strengths and weaknesses against different enemy types, so switching between them is essential to beating diverse enemy groups.

PUNCH!

Punching is the go-to combat style and features a versatile move set. Light attacks are quick boxing combos that deal moderate damage and dispatch weaker enemies. Special attacks require energy to use but deal heavy damage and push enemies around. These include a charged rocket punch that launches you forward and sends your opponent flying backwards, and a ground slam that launches enemies into the air. Knocking up enemies initiates temporary aerial combat so you can stay in the air a little longer to keep dishing out punishment. Parrying at the right moment when enemies telegraph their attacks negates all damage, makes room for vicious counters, and deflects projectiles back at their sender.

SLICE and SHOOT!

Enemies regularly drop weapons after dying, which you can instantly pick up and use. Slice and dash through enemies with melee weapons like knives and metal pipes, and shoot futuristic pistols, rifles, and shotguns. All weapons have a durability or ammo capacity, meaning you have to constantly kill enemies to pick up fresh weapons. When a weapon breaks, you can always throw it to stun enemies and set up an immediate melee combo.

Slide, Climb, and Dash Across Cybergothic Europe

Texnoplazm’s urban map is a dense concrete and metal jungle littered with stone buildings and industrial pipes that pave the way to the next arena with a little bit of puzzle parkour. The linear level design is similar to boomer shooters like Doom. Each level is contained within a closed map divided into arena rooms filled with enemies. Checkpoints and shops are scattered between rooms where you can save your progress and buy weapons with points earned through combat.

The map and arena designs are diverse and interesting to explore. Every level maintains the cybergothic aesthetic, but none look alike. The parkour and traversal are straightforward yet engaging as it takes you from the lowest sewers to the highest rooftops of the dark city. Arenas feature distinct architecture and environments that mix up each combat encounter. Texnoplazm’s levels may be brooding of an industrial future, but they sure aren’t boring.

Texnoplazm Takes It Back to the 2000s

Texnoplazm reminds me of the games I was excited for as a kid back in the 2000s. It has the satisfaction and power of Arkham-style melee combat, and the speed and gun play of Doom-like boomer shooters. Chaining together different attacks while staying elusive with well-timed dodges and parries creates cinematic combos and maintains a devastating momentum. The visuals and sound design are reminiscent of old PS2 games. I’m sure Texnoplazm’s release will inspire players to show off their skills in old school style combat montages.

I’ve been in the mood for boomer shooters in the past month since Doom: The Dark Ages’ release in May. However, Texnoplazm made me realize I don’t need sophisticated gun play to have immense fun. The guns were cool and the first-person shooting mechanics blended smoothly with brawler combat. I never felt that switching between melee and gun play was ever clunky or unnatural. However, my favorite part of the game by far was fighting inside the pocket. I found myself rocket punching to get up close and personal more than sitting back and shooting. Shoot my last shot, throw the gun as a distraction, then BOOM! Fist to the face. I loved that the special attacks weren’t just heavy damage dealers but also tools for mobility and crowd control. The transitions between ground and aerial combat felt clean and optimized the constant fast-paced flow of combat.

The punch-slice-shoot brawl style does have an initial learning curve but is intuitive enough to pick up quickly. Just learning the basics takes the game to another level and mastering them opens up so much more. There’s so much diversity and choice in the weapons, movement abilities, and arena design that no combo or combat encounter feels the same. All the systems harmonize to achieve superhero-like fight choreography without breaking the flow of battle. The demo was so fun that I replayed it twice so I could get another chance to truly unleash my inner cybermartial artist:

A Wishlist for the Future

Texnoplazm could incorporate the environment more. There are sections of the demo levels where enemies can be knocked off ledges or punched into passing trains, but the environment is otherwise underutilized. Paint the Town Red is another brawler FPS that allows you to use the environment as a weapon, like picking up and throwing furniture. Adding a mechanic to use the environment around you, such as by picking up objects or even enemies, could push Texnoplazm’s combat to newer heights.

I’d like to see more use of the environment to traverse the arenas as well. Because the mobility is so cranked up, running to close the distance between far away enemies feels like a walk compared to the sprint of an explosive rocket punch. Perhaps horizontal wall runs or explosive charged jumps off walls and objects would be effective alternatives. Additionally, I was barely running up walls since most enemies are fought on the same plane. Overall, I felt unmotivated to use the existing movement mechanics in combat because the special attacks moved me so much better.

Final Thoughts

Texnoplazm’s demo is a fantastic blend of the brawler and boomer shooter genres. The visual aesthetic and technometal soundtrack bolster the epic combat experience against the unique backdrop of cybergothic Europe. The demo itself feels like a finished game and I’m looking forward to seeing what Mothership Loudspeakerz has in store for the full release.

Texnoplazm’s demo is part of Steam Next Fest: June 2025. The game will enter Early Access on Steam in Fall 2025. Retail price has not been set at this time.