HYPERWIRED – Creative Roguelike Shooter With One Major Flaw

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• DEVELOPER: SIDRALGAMES
• PUBLISHER: SelectaPlay, Beep Japan Inc.
• PLATFORMS: PC
• GENRE: Roguelike / Shooter
• RELEASE DATE: July 2nd, 2026
• STARTING PRICE: 7,79 €
• REVIEWED VERSION: PC

HYPERWIRED is a classic top-down roguelike shooter with a genuinely unique idea. Instead of simply flying around blasting enemies, your spaceship drags a massive electrical plug behind it. Throughout each procedurally generated level, you’ll need to plug yourself into various sockets to restore power, complete objectives, and unlock the exit to the next area. On paper, it’s a really creative concept that immediately caught my attention.

Each level revolves around activating different stations. One might restore your health, another provides ammunition, while others recharge your energy supply. Once every required station has been powered, you’re free to move on and continue exploring new levels filled with tougher enemies, new mechanics, and eventually boss fights.

Mixes roguelike and shooting with power management

The core progression loop is solid. After every level, you get to choose a new upgrade that slowly builds your character into something much stronger. You can increase your maximum health, make bullets pierce enemies or bounce off walls, extend your cable length, improve your firepower, gain temporary invisibility, reduce charging times, or increase your available energy. Batteries found throughout each stage also grant additional bullet modifiers, either by discovering them in the environment or by defeating special enemies carrying them.

Managing your energy becomes an important part of the gameplay since every movement drains your battery. Fortunately, the game gives you ways to recharge, either by connecting to charging stations or by summoning temporary power sources. It creates an interesting rhythm where you’re constantly balancing movement, combat, and resource management.

The game also offers a decent amount of replayability. There are multiple ships to unlock, each rescued during your runs. Saving these stranded ships not only gives you temporary companions that assist you during combat but also unlocks them as playable ships for future runs, giving you another incentive to keep playing.

Beautiful pixelated game with challenging boss fights

Visually, HYPERWIRED is excellent. The pixel art looks fantastic, environments are colorful, and there’s enough variety between biomes to keep each run visually interesting. Enemy designs repeat over time, but there’s still a good mix of standard attackers, ranged enemies, stationary hazards, wall-mounted turrets, and environmental traps that constantly force you to stay alert.

Boss fights are another highlight. They aren’t overly complicated, but each one has distinct attack patterns that require you to adapt. Some bosses can be attacked from any direction, while others protect themselves with shields or unique mechanics. Nearly every fight turns into a satisfying bullet hell encounter where positioning and using the environment for cover become essential. While environmental destruction exists, it’s fairly limited and doesn’t dramatically affect combat. Defeating a boss also rewards you with a permanent upgrade, making each victory feel worthwhile.

I also highly recommend playing the tutorial. The socket mechanic is unlike anything found in most shooters, and the game doesn’t ease you into its systems particularly well. Skipping the tutorial will probably leave you confused during your first few runs. Unfortunately, this is where my positives about the game stop.

Two major crashes ruined my experience

Mouse and keyboard controls feel much smoother, but controller aiming feels awkward because your ship doesn’t naturally shoot in the direction you’re expecting. Instead, its aiming behavior feels clunky and unintuitive, making combat much less satisfying than it should be. Considering how much of the game revolves around constant shooting, this became a major issue if you decide to play with a controller.

The game also becomes fairly repetitive after a few hours. While procedural generation keeps the layouts fresh, you’ve essentially seen the core gameplay loop after three or four hours. That’s fairly common for the roguelike genre, so it isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, but it does make later runs feel familiar.

However, nothing hurt my experience more than the technical problems. During my playthrough, I encountered two major crashes that completely halted my progress. Both happened after defeating the second and third bosses, forcing me to restart entire runs from the beginning. Losing that much progress in a roguelike is incredibly frustrating, especially when the crashes happened multiple times.

The final verdict

At the end of the day, HYPERWIRED has a fantastic core concept and plenty of clever ideas. The progression system is enjoyable, the boss fights are fun, the visuals are beautiful, and the unique socket mechanic gives it an identity that stands out from other roguelike shooters.

Unfortunately, awkward controller controls and, more importantly, major crashes significantly damaged my overall experience. If those technical issues are addressed and the controls receive some additional polish, HYPERWIRED could become an easy recommendation. Right now, it’s a promising roguelike that’s held back by problems that are simply too difficult to ignore.

Review copy provided by the publisher