GRAVHOUNDS Early Access Launches Today on PC and Xbox: Price and What to Know
Octopus Panic's co-op action-builder GRAVHOUNDS enters Early Access today on PC and Xbox Series X|S, free day one on Game Pass. Here is what the launch includes.
Key art for GRAVHOUNDS, which enters Early Access on PC and Xbox today. Image: Octopus Panic.
Octopus Panic's co-op shooter GRAVHOUNDS enters Early Access today, November 2, on PC and Xbox Series X|S, with the Game Preview build available day one on PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. The debut title from a seven-person studio founded by veterans of 343 Industries and DICE puts one to four players in control of bio-engineered dog workers who build, shoot and extract their way across hostile planets for an AI supervisor that never stops assigning jobs.
What Gravhounds Is
You play a bio-engineered dog stranded on the far side of the galaxy, taking industrial jobs handed out by a shipboard AI named COSMO. Each job drops you and your crew onto a hostile planet to set up an operation, survive the escalating swarm it attracts, and get out alive. Octopus Panic co-founder and former Halo 4 creative director Josh Holmes has said the studio built the game around the idea that "the best co-op moments are when things unexpectedly go off the rails," and that the team expects that problem to get considerably worse once the wider playerbase gets its hands on it.
The Core Loop: Jobs, Builds and Extraction
A shift starts with picking a job off the ship, dropping onto a planet, and deciding how to defend the site while the objective runs. There is no pre-shift loadout screen locking you in: Reward Pods found and earned mid-shift hand out randomized weapons and upgrades that stack on top of each other, so a run can swing from a slow start into total overkill by the final wave if the drops cooperate. The trade-off is that staying out longer for better rewards also escalates the swarm, so every extra minute on the ground is a bet against how much heat the crew can handle.
The Grav Beam and Base-Building Under Fire
The signature tool is the Grav Beam, a multipurpose device for hauling resources, slamming down Build Kits and flinging both objects and enemies across the map. Construction happens live, in the middle of combat rather than before it: players extend a power pipeline out from the landing zone and drop defenses along it as the job runs. The kit includes:
- Turrets that lock onto approaching threats automatically
- Generators that keep the pipeline and turrets powered
- Fabricators that convert gathered resources into more build kits
- The pipeline itself, which doubles as a boost rail for the propulsion rig
Movement and Co-op Chaos
A propulsion rig lets a Gravhound boost, hover and reposition mid-fight instead of just running and gunning, which matters once a job's defenses start taking fire from multiple directions at once. PC Gamer's early hands-on summed the pitch up as playing "sorta like Helldivers 2 except dog people," and the comparison tracks: both games lean on squad coordination against a swarm that punishes anyone who wanders off alone, though Gravhounds' twist is that the base you are defending is one your own crew just built thirty seconds earlier. Arrowhead's own live-service shooter remains the genre's biggest name, and its recent Liberty Day event shows how far that comparison point has grown since launch.
Price, Platforms and How to Play Today
GRAVHOUNDS is a Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview release, which means the build shipping today will keep changing based on player feedback rather than launching as a finished product. Here is what to know before jumping in:
- Available now on Steam and on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC
- Priced at $19.99 on both storefronts
- Included day one with PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
- Rated Teen on the Xbox listing, for Violence, Blood and Language
- A free demo remains available on both Steam and Xbox for anyone who wants to try the build loop before buying
Octopus Panic has not published a formal post-launch roadmap yet, but the studio has been shipping demo updates roughly monthly since the game's Gamescom reveal in August, and a September playtest alone drew more than 20,000 players according to the developer's October press materials. For the current state of the build, patch notes and known issues, check the official Gravhounds site directly.