GRAVHOUNDS Review

A routine workday quickly turns into a dangerous space adventure as you explore hostile planets, gather resources, and face unexpected threats.

GRAVHOUNDS is a cooperative action game developed by Octopus Panic that combines familiar gameplay mechanics, including shooting, resource gathering, tower defense, construction, and survival. However, you don't control ordinary soldiers or human workers. Instead, you take control of genetically engineered dogs sent to complete dangerous industrial assignments across hostile planets.

These canine workers are sent into unfamiliar environments, where they must collect valuable resources, operate machinery, establish defensive positions, and protect their equipment from aggressive creatures. It is an unusual concept, but one that immediately gives GRAVHOUNDS a personality of its own.

Developers have designed the experience around blue-collar workers doing jobs in space.

Your main job is to complete whatever task the corporation gives you and get back to your spaceship safely. The company views its genetically engineered dogs as loyal, obedient, and expendable. This sets up the game's humor without a complex narrative foundation. You're basically working for a corporation that thinks it's perfectly fine business to send dogs into dangerous situations, as long as they can do the job. 

GRAVHOUNDS can be played solo, or online in cooperative multiplayer for up to four players. You can decide whether to run an entire operation yourself or split the load with friends. Its blend of mechanics may remind you of titles such as Helldivers 2 and Deep Rock Galactic, especially with its focus on co-operative missions, hostile environments, and resource gathering. 

GRAVHOUNDS' story is quite simple, so don't expect a complex sci-fi narrative with intricate character relationships and long cinematic sequences. The premise follows a group of genetically engineered working dogs stranded far from home, while their spaceship's artificial intelligence, Cosmo, keeps assigning industrial jobs as if all is well. Your mission is to explore different hostile planets, gather precious resources, complete your tasks, and stay alive long enough to return to your spaceship. 

There's not much character development or meaningful story progression.

However, the story works because the central premise does, and the developers know the experience they want to deliver. You don't follow a complicated plotline or spend most of your time listening to characters explain their motives. Instead, you still complete dangerous assignments while facing unexpected problems that arise during your expeditions.

The corporation itself, and how it treats its canine workers, also leads to a few funny moments, if you think about how sketchy its employment practices actually are. Your characters are essentially treated as disposable workers, and GRAVHOUNDS uses that idea to establish much of its humor.

The different playable hounds also add personality to the experience, as each character has individual attributes and abilities that affect their input during missions. Some are faster, some are stronger, and some abilities grant useful benefits for facing off against enemies. For example, Zayn can use a powerful bark to fend off incoming creatures, while Dozer can deploy bone-shaped explosives to his advantage in dangerous encounters.

These abilities fit the canine theme very nicely, making the characters feel more unique than simply having different looks. Even little things like the cone of shame that appears when your character respawns show how much the developers have embraced the premise's ridiculousness. The core gameplay loop is grabbing missions from your spaceship, choosing a planet, choosing a landing spot, and heading out to collect resources. 

You'll need to find valuable resources, link extraction points, build defenses, and maintain your equipment as you complete the objectives. Things get a lot more complicated, however, when enemy attacks start to interfere with your plans. It's not just about acquiring the materials; you have to be aware of your surroundings and be ready for anything that could jeopardize your operation.

One of the most interesting things about the gameplay is the risk-reward balance.

The rewards you can obtain as you continue on your journey are more valuable, but the enemies are also more powerful and more numerous. This creates a compelling decision: do you keep gathering resources, or do you head back to your spaceship before things get chaotic?

Leaving too early may cause you to miss some potentially useful materials. Leaving too late may cause you to lose control of your operation. It's a satisfying mechanic in that you are always deciding how much extra risk is worth taking. With each successful expedition, your confidence grows, but the enemy pressure also increases, so you can't get too comfortable.

Your ship is your home base between missions, with facilities and progression systems you can use. You can visit the research center to unlock more turrets, weapons, character upgrades, and other improvements to help you out on future expeditions. You can also choose missions and decide which planets to travel to.

You gradually gain access to more equipment to make your next expedition easier, and research upgrades are key to preparing for more demanding missions. That gives you a reason to keep coming back to the spaceship after you've done your assignments instead of treating each mission as a one-off. The other major aspect of the gameplay is construction, which adds more depth to GRAVHOUNDS than your average cooperative shooting experience.

Connect extraction points and build defensive structures, especially as you start running into larger groups of enemies. You have to think about where to place your equipment and how to defend key areas from incoming threats. This creates a gameplay loop where your survival depends directly on your ability to gather resources and build. 

The cooperative structure also gives you more flexibility in your approach.

When you're solo, you have to gather resources, build, maintain equipment, and fight alone, which can make situations harder. But in online multiplayer, you can share those responsibilities among up to four players. One player may focus on resource gathering, while another builds defenses and the other players protect the operation from incoming creatures.

That makes teamwork especially critical when the heat is on. Instead of everyone doing the same thing, you can coordinate your actions and run the expedition more efficiently. Together, these systems make each mission feel like it builds on the last, starting as a relatively small operation and growing into something that requires much more care as you go.

Combat in GRAVHOUNDS is about using your weapons and abilities to defend yourself and your gear against hostile creatures. You operate in dangerous environments where enemies aren't just things you stumble into now and then. They are a constant threat, disrupting your resource gathering and making it hard to keep your operation running.

So you have to be prepared to defend yourself while performing your industrial duties. The shooting mechanics work alongside the construction and tower defense systems, letting you use your equipment and defensive structures to respond to incoming threats. Character abilities add another layer to combat, with each hound offering unique advantages. Zayn's powerful bark can scare off foes, giving you breathing room when creatures get too close, and Dozer's bone-shaped explosives offer another way to deal with unfriendly targets.

These abilities also help differentiate the playable characters and give you more reasons to consider which hound suits a given situation.

However, your combat method's efficiency also depends on how well you prepare before enemies attack. When you're trying to keep your gear safe, building defensive structures and researching new turrets can make a big difference. This means combat isn't only about how well you can shoot; the infrastructure you set up beforehand can also dictate how easy an encounter is to handle.

The combat system is most fun in how it interacts with the other gameplay mechanics. You're not just entering a zone, killing all the enemies, and moving to the next objective. Instead, you have to balance combat with resource gathering and building, which can make encounters feel more involved. It's particularly annoying when you're collecting materials or trying to keep the extraction equipment running and enemies attack. 

This give-and-take of combat and resource management makes encounters mean something more than just giving you something to shoot at. However, a bit more weapon variety wouldn't hurt. More options would let you approach different encounters in more ways and make combat progression more rewarding.

Your advancement is heavily dependent on the research facilities on your spaceship. When you finish expeditions and gather resources, you can then unlock more weapons, turrets, character improvements, and other upgrades. These upgrades affect your readiness for upcoming missions as enemies grow stronger and environments demand more from your equipment.

 You don't start each expedition with the same capabilities; instead, you slowly build your options, improving your chances of completing increasingly difficult assignments. The research system also gives you a reason to keep grabbing resources even after you've gotten down the basic gameplay loop.

This progression fits especially well with the game's risk-and-reward nature.

You can finish an expedition with the resources you've already collected or take risks in hopes of gathering enough to make further improvements. That decision matters even more when you consider the risk of losing control of your operation, especially after you've spent so much time building your defenses. The mission approach also depends on character attributes and individual abilities, with different hounds offering different advantages depending on the circumstances. 

GRAVHOUNDS' appearance fits its bizarre sci-fi setting perfectly, throwing you into environments where industrial machines and hostile wildlife coexist with genetically altered canine workers. The game's identity comes from the juxtaposition of banal industrial duties and the bizarre locations where they are supposed to be carried out.

You're basically setting up resource extraction operations on alien planets while dealing with creatures that would make most regular workers reconsider their career options. The different playable hounds also shape the game's personality, especially through their individual designs and character-specific abilities.

The developers also add small visual details to help the humor land. The cone of shame that appears when your character respawns is a great example of how GRAVHOUNDS extends its canine theme beyond the basic premise. They may seem like minor details, but they make the characters more memorable and keep the experience from feeling like a generic industrial survival game with dogs tacked on.

The equipment, turrets, and construction systems also contribute to the overall presentation, making your growing operation an important part of the environment. Watching a relatively simple expedition grow into an operational defensive setup gives the construction mechanics a visual purpose.

But one area that could use more polish is the technical presentation.

While the overall visual direction supports the gameplay, the experience never quite feels as polished as it could. The game's presentation is functional, but after long periods of exploring the environments and managing your gear, you start to notice some rough edges. This isn't to say it detracts from the core gameplay experience, but a bit more polish could help the various systems feel more cohesive. 

However, the available information doesn't provide enough detail about its individual musical or sound-design elements to make stronger claims about their quality. Ultimately, the presentation supports the experience, even if it isn't necessarily the game's strongest selling point.

GRAVHOUNDS is an unusual cooperative action game that brings several familiar mechanics together without relying entirely on a conventional shooting formula. The idea of genetically engineered dogs working for a corporation across hostile planets gives it an instant personality, and the mix of resource gathering, construction, tower defense, and combat provides a gameplay loop with a few responsibilities to juggle.

The risk-and-reward system is one of the strongest parts of the experience, adding meaningful tension to your expeditions. Every additional resource you collect can help with later upgrades, but staying on a planet too long can make things considerably more dangerous. You become more aware of your surroundings and how long you should stay in an area.

Another fun feature is the playable hounds, especially as their individual skills tie into the game's central idea.

Zayn's bark and Dozer's bone-shaped explosives are prime examples of how the developers integrated the canine theme into the mechanics, rather than making it purely cosmetic. Co-op multiplayer for up to four players also lets you share the load and tackle missions more effectively. Some areas still need improvement. The weapon selection could be a little more varied, giving you more options in combat and making progression more interesting. 

Its story is fairly simple, but that is not necessarily a big issue, since the gameplay is obviously the main draw. The story gives you enough context to know what you're trying to achieve, and the funny corporate premise gives the experience an identity without asking too much of your attention.

GRAVHOUNDS' fun comes from how the various mechanics constantly interact.

Enemies attacking you make it harder to collect resources. As your operation grows, construction becomes more important. Combat is easier if you have prepared your defenses properly. You're always swapping between these duties so it doesn't feel like missions are just a series of repetitive objectives in order. 

GRAVHOUNDS may not have the technical sheen or arsenal diversity to compete with the most mature co-op shooters, but its core concept is fun enough to hold your attention. If you like games that mix shooting with resource management, construction, and co-op survival, you'll have plenty to like here. The unusual canine premise is more than a funny concept; the developers have woven it into the characters, abilities, and overall gameplay structure.