Fermenter Games’ Baseless immediately distinguishes itself from its peers. The game’s signature mechanic is that firing your main gun produces movement, with each shot propelling you backward a bit. For at least an hour and perhaps even longer, the traversal technique is disorienting. Likely, years of playing traditional 2D shooters haven’t readied you for thew kind of recoil. But once the quirks of momentum and gravity are grasped, you’ll become a scarf-clad weapon of destruction in Baseless.
Acclimate to Stay Alive
Mechanically, the title requires adaptation. You’re thrown into a succession of arenas where you’ll shift from shooting, shielding, slashing, salvaging power weapons, and even swinging a grappling hook. Naturally, strategies for survival emerge as you deal with everything from spiky blobs to turrets that lock onto your position. But surprisingly, Baseless favors improvisation, as you constantly reprioritize the threats around you and respond with whatever offense is ready.
Yet, restrictions are plentiful, from cooldown timers at weapon caches, limited sword swings, and of course, a constrained supply of your heavy weapons. But that’s by design. Fermenter expects you to juggle weapons with the poise of a skilled mecha pilot. Maybe it’s the masochist in me that wished the developers had taken it even further. When I’m shot at by one of those pesky autocannons, let me precisely time a parry and send the ammo right back at them.
Shoot First, Say Less
But where Baseless really stumbles is a commitment to an overly verbose narrative that clashes with the urgency of its arcade-style action. The story is delivered through frequent text-heavy interruptions and dense character exchanges that slow the game’s otherwise graceful momentum, pulling attention away from the kinetic dance of recoil-driven combat.
While the world-building is imaginative, the artwork is goodlooking, and the overall plot is functional, the sheer volume of exposition feels at odds with a game designed around reflex, flow, and improvisation. Instead of enhancing the experience, the narrative often becomes a speed bump between encounters, occasionally making it feel as though the game is fighting against its own best qualities. Fortunately, you can skip sections of the dialog.
Save, Shoot, Subdue, and Survive
Meanwhile, missions rotate through a welcome variety of objectives, including enemy-clearing gauntlets, survival challenges, deactivation sequences, and high-mobility traversal trials that emphasize grappling and precise recoil movement. Some stages task you with holding out against escalating waves, while others challenge you with collecting gears, or rescuing captives. This steady mix of mission types prevents the arena structure from feeling repetitive. So even when visual themes repeat, it’s usually differentiated by a different kind of undertaking.
Fortunately, the game’s rather busy visual design, filled with gravity fields, planets, power-ups, explosives, and a variety of enemies doesn’t obscure your ability to read the on-screen action. While the geometric design leans toward abstract, it’s usually easy to follow the action, especially with the decision to include a flowing scarf. One of the few exceptions is at the start of a stage, where the immensely zoomed out perspective makes you like a speck. The preview is a reminder of scale and how small you are in relation to things. But it can make it difficult to see your position on portable PC screens.
The Underrated Beauty of Chaos
Baseless is a bold shooter that thrives on constant motion, quick thinking, and mechanical mastery. Its recoil-driven combat and improvisational flow make it one of the year’s most distinctive action games, even when its narrative undercuts the pacing. With varied mission design, readable chaos, and a control scheme that rewards persistence, Fermenter Games delivers an experience that feels both punishing and empowering in equal measure. For players willing to embrace its quirks and momentum-heavy learning curve, Baseless proves that innovation in shooters is still very much alive.
Baseless was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.
GAMEPLAY – 85%
CONTROLS – 75%
CONTENT – 80%
AESTHETICS – 80%
PERFORMANCE – 80%
VALUE – 80%
80%
GOOD
Baseless flips the shooter playbook by turning recoil into movement. Once the method clicks, the game feels chaotic in all the right ways. The story can occasionally get in the way of the action, but the dynamic combat, smart mission variety, and sporadic instances of pandemonium make this one of 2025’s more memorable shooters.