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Fogpiercer is a new incremental roguelike strategy title from developer Mad Cookies Studio and publisher Hooded Horse. It’s out on Steam on July 17th, 2026, as well as on Game Pass and GOG, and we’ve played through the first few hours to bring you our initial impressions. Fogpiercer is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are hanging on for survival as a dense fog fills the air. The last hope for mankind is to drive the remaining trains to find new areas to settle in. The task is made harder by gangs of bandits who try to take down trains to salvage the tech.
Defeating the bandits in each level is the premise of the game, with each victory coming by not just surviving but beating the bandits in a set number of turns. Failure to win means restarting your run and missing out on potential upgrades. Each set of levels ends in a boss fight that will test your strategy and be the ultimate test of the build you’ve put together throughout the run. Every time you finish a level, you’re rewarded with scrap to use at the shop and potentially new cards to use in battle if you’ve performed particularly well.
You start the game with a basic setup of an engine, an attack rig, and a storage compartment. Fogpiercer has a short but good tutorial that quickly gets you up to speed with the basics, which consist of learning how to attack and defend against the bandits, how to upgrade your train, and some of the nuances of the strategies you’ll need to perfect to ensure a victory. Fogpiercer has some interesting ideas about how to take out the bandits, where shot placement can cause devastation and take out multiple bandit cars at once.
We took great satisfaction in moving the train into position before sending out a barrage of rockets that caused a chain reaction and won you a great victory. We also liked how you must consider defence and where the enemies are before a turn ends, and deploy as many vital shields as possible. It’s also not as easy as it all sounds, as you are only granted a set amount of action points, and you don’t know what you will be able to do each turn, as everything is decided by random card drops. However, perform well, and you’re rewarded with more cards and abilities to use in the next battle.
Fogpiercer also has some fun upgrades to play around with that enable you to switch out different parts of the train and upgrade attack and defence alongside other areas that will help you win. As with all these kinds of games, you may find yourself losing the first few rounds, but the permanent upgrades to your rig will slowly build towards being much more powerful, better defended, and having lots more choices of cards to use per turn.
The presentation in Fogpiercer is also good, with everything being clear on screen and good use of weather effects to create a desolate scene. We did find some of the menus confusing as they bounce around the screen a little at times, especially in the shop area where it wasn’t alsways clear what we needed to click on to actually upgrade something. This is a small niggle, though, as the overall gameplay loop is satisfying and rewarding for those who stick it out. Overall, Fogpiercer is a good entry into this popular genre and has some unique ideas that help it stand out. This one comes throughly recommended for those looking for something a little different.
