Hypercharge: Unboxed

Hypercharge: Unboxed comes from the small indie developer Digital Cybercherries, which was created by a couple of friends who dreamed of making games together. Their stated goal is to make fun and accessible games by the old standards and on their website they write: "It's so frustrating having to pay huge amounts of your hard-earned cash on incomplete games, expensive DLC and the nuisance of Pay-to-Win. We are against all that". You can see that in Hypercharge: Unboxed.

Hypercharge: Unboxed was released on PC and Nintendo Switch back in 2020 and now it has landed on Xbox Series X/S. This is a first-person shooter with elements of tower defence, where you as various toy characters must defeat waves of other enemy toys - from plastic soldiers, plastic robots and helicopters - all designed like toys.

Each match starts with a defence phase where you build defensive structures and various traps around the points on the map that you need to defend. The currency you require to build your defences are coins collected during the battles, and as you progress you'll unlock new opportunities to defend against increasingly stronger enemies. When the defence phase is over, the enemies come pouring in and you have to protect yourself as best you can and kill the attacking forces. It goes on and on, opening up new characters, new paths and, as mentioned, new defences.

Throughout the levels you can also find various crates containing different upgrades for your weapons or even secondary weapon types. There are plenty of different upgrades, so there's lots of reasons to explore the maps and even to create the weapons you want.

The levels offer everything from bathrooms, kitchens and kids' rooms to garages, attics and even a large toy store, and they are all brilliantly designed. If you've seen the films Army Men, Small Soldiers, and especially Toy Story, you'll know the tone presented here. The maps are filled with hidden items to find and everything is designed like a Pixar film from the 90s. Even the game's many characters come in those plastic boxes that you got your toys in when you were a kid. It's a really accomplished and well-designed game.

Hypercharge: Unboxed is a really pleasant multiplayer shooter, with a slightly different theme than we're used to. It runs well on Series X, the weapons feel good and heavy and the game is packed with things to do. There are many different characters, each with different skins and different cosmetic boxes to unlock, there's lots to find and experiment with around the maps, and overall it's quite entertaining with friends. If you play alone, which is possible with bots on your team, some of the fun disappears automatically as this game is very clearly built around multiplayer.

Hypercharge: Unboxed is a huge success for the small developer and it's impressive to think that this game was created by almost two handfuls of developers and designers. If you're looking for a nostalgic multiplayer action game that you can play with the family (there's also split-screen here), then Hypercharge: Unboxed is not a bad option at all, and it can even be purchased for around £21.