A mass of flailing fingers flop against my desk. I’m doing badly at playing cartoony roguelike shooter Maximum Thunderness with a controller. The fact I’m trying to play its demo on mouse and keyboard at the same time, in order to appreciate the co-op element of the game’s battles with skateboarding aliens, probably isn’t helping. In fact, it almost certainly isn’t.
To be fair, can you blame me? Berzerk Studio, developers of musical bullet hell Just Shapes & Beats, got me all hyped up with their screaming guitars and repeated screaming of the game’s name, as their game reverberates with the energy of a Saturday morning superhero cartoon having the mother of all sugar rushes. Underneath all of that flash and fury, it plays a lot like your standard Hades 2-esque action roguelike.
The tempo of a run’s mashed into bursts along short sections of highway which act as chambers to clear, with either a bunch of smaller enemies or one big one buzzing about. You, as a jetpack-wearing mute space ranger bloke called Krash Nitro, must battle your way along paths made up of these battles against hulking green aliens and bogey-shaped blobs, all of whom are invading Earth for reasons. To be fair, some of the aliens can ride skateboards, so this is clearly a threat no one should underestimate.
Which is exactly what I did when I decided to play a game designed for one to three players as one man pretending to be two players. If you play it as intended, Krash Nitro zips about the screen avoiding blasts of purple energy and melee swats, while dishing out punishment with his blasters. You’ve got to nail a timed reload every 20 shots to avoid a temporary jam, but otherwise its all-action button mashing until the screen’s cleared. Once it is, each player gets a choice of three cards to augment their abilities, via the usual sorts of health boosts, critical chance boots, and other buffs to your skills. One that regularly popped up turns Krash into a cyborg, knocking five points off his health, but giving him three points of armour in their place, the sort of trade-in you’ve got to consider before you accept it.
If you’re playing with a mate and they die mid-round, this is also the point where you’ll have to give some of your precious health up in order to resurrect them. Having had my mouse and keyboard Krash pop their clogs because I didn’t have enough appendages to move them out of harm’s way while also shooting the baddies with my controller Krash, this is where any semblance of thought that I might be gaining an advantage by pretending to be two people properly went out of the window. In time, maybe an ingenious solution using rubber bands or a tactically-placed marble run, but for now I can only recommend playing solo if you’re just one person.
As to whether Maximum Thunderness has the juice to stand out from the massive roguelike crowd when it comes out in autumn 2026, I’m not entirely convinced yet. The theming and battles are flashy enough to draw folks in, but I’m not sure the world and story premise have anything like the depths of genre leaders like Hades 2 or the more tactical Mewgenics. If you’re keen to try and gauge that for yourself, you can find Maximum Thunderness’ demo on Steam, where it’s also wishlistable.
