At Breakout Con 2025, I met up with Jean Luc Lariviere-Lacombe, founder of The Dungeons Key and designer of Dirtbags!: A Sci-Fi Shooter RPG, for an energetic three hour session of bug-splattering and squad survival shenanigans. The exhilaration was palpable, and so were the gut! … Lets dive into this scrappy yet polished indie title, and unravel the tabletop RPG world of convicts without a cause!
Introduction - Never trust the corp!
Punishment’s a daily thing under Sergeant Occam, though Speedball’s gettin the most of his wrath over the past few weeks. We’re used to it. Last night we were caught slackin, and forced to dig trenches for the latrines. Crap job, literally.
Dyopia’s ruin lay in the distance, blasted away from that past nuclear war. The moons glow hung above, but something else; a comet. We paused and looked up in awe, before it started breakin up. Half of it collided with the moon. Them fragments, they turned to meteor storm on the atmosphere, and before y’know it, the oil field round us was lit ablaze. As we were staring jaw agape, one of them meteorites crashed right into the muck, drenching everyone in sewage.
Scramblin from the crater, looking to advantage the distraction, we head to the 5-ton truck seeing if we can do a bit of commandeering. The meteorite sizzled stinkin something fierce, then cooled. It looked like a round shell that began to crack. Many-legged creatures jumped out of the thing, and screeched furiously. Damned bugs!
Dirtbags! is a rules-lite, cinematic sci-fi shooter RPG . You play titular roles as a convicts in a future corporate-run dystopia, coerced into a specialized program called the Rehabilitation Incentive Program (R.I.P).
Launched on Kickstarter on February 28th, it reached its funding goal within 6 hours of launch, going on to raise over $10,000 CA, hitting nearly every stretch goal, including expanded content and an upcoming game jam!
In my interpretation, the games theme is an exhilarating cross between the humor and irreverence of the Borderlands game series, gung-ho bug killing of Starship Troopers, and the criminal us-against-the-world attitude of Suicide Squad. The promo materials add on reference to Tank Girl, and the Aliens franchise!
Taken together, your one bad mofo looking for a shot at freedom and reintegration, tasked to do the Corporate Echelons dirty work, killing and defending against bug infestations, scab pirates, and other threats across the system. They’re thrown against every problem imaginable, from courier, to salvage, to extermination. Most of all, they’re expendable!
“You can’t cook a space bug omelet without breaking a few dirtbags!”
Our Session - Killin Some Bugs!
Our squad consisted of six key players, each of them taking on the role of a Dirtbag with a special set of skills. Our roster consisted of:
- Sparky, the fire-starting
combar engineertech - Church, the jumpy
combat medicpill - Locket, the steely-eyed
infanteerape - CTD (“Connect the Dots”), the paranoid
recon specialisthen - Drip, the ever-dapper
support gunnermusclehead <——- ME - Speedball, the souped-up
combat engineertech
Our operation placed us as indentured laborers in an oil field across from the ruins of a once massive, but nuke-cratered city. The unsuspecting R.I.P. members were left to witness an celestial phenomenon become a full on bug attack.
No worries! Between the six of us, commandeering a sewage truck, drudging through rubble, and rallying with the inmates under our surly sergeant,… damn bugs never stood a chance!
Physical Game - The "Enlistment Manual"
While the demo materials used is an earlier version of what will be released in a couple months, the big rocks are there and fleshed out to present a sincere review of the materials.
First, I cannot get enough of the art and layout of the game manual! … The cover is a cacophony of angst and punk vibes. While chaotic in its design, its a deliberate color palette of explicitly monochrome and shades of orange, with a mesh of stencil typography and scrawled marker. Right from the get-go, you know what kind of incarcerated mosh-pit you’re walking into.
The interior reads like a mildly xeroxed enlistment manual that a manic high-school kid got ahold of and scribbled their blue pen all over one afternoon during detention. A constant clash of directives and propaganda on the current state of the system and your role as a Dirtbag against drawings of middle-fingers, target reticles, cross-outs and callouts of corpo lies, a convict mounted to a rocket with bulging eyes, and other graffiti sticking it to the echelon.
Though the character sheet we had was a placeholder, both it and the final are straight-forward, intent on clear and direct representation of your characters stats, traits, equipment, body health, and dice pools.
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The System and Mechanics - Shoot'n Stuff!
A few miles down out of the truck, and we’re back to being leg-deep in mud, havin just killed ourselves some spitters, and just inching our way back to the barracks. Locket and Speedball dealing with burns from the caustic saliva, CTO’s leg chomped, and all of us smellin like the devil. At least we managed to get across that rope netting over the ravine before it fell.
At the bunker door, we hear a whisper. Someone knows we’re here; some high-as-a-kite Dirtbag with fuel and cloth in hand, havin just huffed the thing, holding a robot hound leash in the other. We come in from all sides, and CTO manages to make a little whistle, bringing the hound over all friendly.
The Dirtbag withdraws, and leaves us to the lockers. One swipe from Sparky’s plasma cutter is all it took, and boom! … Our guns and equipment were back with us.
Time to lock and load!
In a nutshell, it’s a rules light and elegant system something gritty and teeth clenching as this game.
Three pools of dice lie before you: Action, Ammunition, and Reserve. Your actions enable you to do anything within a degree of success, and resist incoming threats. Your ammunition allows you to unload as much of your magazine as you please within the pool defined by your weapon. The reserve is for failed action dice, sitting in the corner waiting for your character to take a breather.
The amount of action dice relies on the total of your three stats: Bones, Cunning, and Nerves. … Each of the three have explicit abilities which are assisted by your score, and disabled completely if reduced to zero due to harm. In addition, characters have equipment loadouts and special traits dependent on their class role and build choice.
Your default equipment loadout consists of a main weapon, possible backup weapon, magazines, tools/kit, energizers, tourniquets, and other items. How much you can carry is dependent on Bones, and a breakdown of items and costs is available for those building up their locker KEEP OUT! … Weapons all have fun pet names and solid illustrations. Drones can be acquired and maintained. Energizers provide injected effects that push the limits of your character. A mysterious substance called M.I.L.K. serves as “inspiration” for the sake of rerolls, advantage, negating hits, and extra successes. The selection is varied enough to keep things interesting, and the system is robust enough to keep things open for future expansion and adventures.
From there, a whole slew of things are possible, as a game designed to allow multiple actions per turn. Multiple magazine can be emptied. Weapons can get jammed and require fixing. Energizers can get injected, with emotional outbursts at risk if more than one are taken. Limbs can get shredded. Fuel canisters can catch fire and explode! barbecue time
The moment you take up the role of a Dirtbag, all sorts of fun (and pain) is possible!
Warfare and Threats - Juice Me Up!
Was a sight to behold! Sky filling with comets. Flames surrounding us. Roaches with talons rushing at us. Sergeant Occam and the rest of the Dirtbags taking up position.
Injected with the coagula energizer, I screamed emptying my magazine. Speedball fired with guns akimbo and killed two of em. The hound and a roach go at each other while flyers whizzed by and slashed at Locket and Church. Sparky melted them out of the air with a little incendiary action!
Locket tossed a grenade, but poor Speedball; he’s standing in the way dumbfounded. “Oh shi-!” .. It blew him away, shredding his arm. Church hopped over and double-injected him to keep him going, and Speedballs head nearly popped with rage. … He ain’t called that for nothing.
“Four more minutes to dropship, maggots!” Sergeant Occam blasted away bugs with a large machine gun. The massive queen bug rushed forward like a boulder.
At point of writing, the threats (not including the corpos themselves) are twofold: bugs, and scab pirates.
Bugs are roach-like creatures with characteristics that are a cross between insect, arachnid, and crustacean. Hive-like and ferociously hungry, bugs are an infestation spreading throughout the Corealis System and beyond, devouring organic matter and living creatures, getting in the way of corporate echelon business, a overall causing a bad time! The variants are aplenty and you best have your energizers ready, and gun locked n loaded. … Spewers, swarms, flying skimmers, and the dreaded Queen. This is just the start of a mutated host of bugs which is sure to expand!
Scabs are hostile (or “corpo targeted”) humanoids that raid and scavenge the cracks between the echelons reach, or care. Some are life-long pirates. Some are escaped Dirtbags. Others are cannibals who bathe in bug guts. … Well, the play-test material doesn’t state that, but hell… why not?
Each tour of duty (quest/mission) consists of multiple operations which are sure to encounter one or more of these threats. The number of operations helps define the overall difficulty of a tour, as it can be a short dive, or a long game of attrition. Between tours, the R.I.P members receive a week of shore leave which grants a chosen benefit to the character.
Finally, Dirtbags is one of those games that can sometimes go fast-and-loose with a characters fate. Death and dismemberment are real risks in every encounter, and long-term play should expect players to play though character death, and run another with a different buildout. Of course, that final objective is just so tantalizing! … Reaching zero debt, and being granted your freedom! Lies. Corpo lies.
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Conclusion - Hey! Wrap it up already!
From the get-go, I knew Dirtbags! had something special going on for it, from its outlandish art style to its combat-ready mechanics that give the players tons of room to play and act how they want without strict action economy constraints. The experience of digging the ditch and being a part of a R.I.P. unit fending off an infestation did not disappoint. It meshes a delightfully chaotic, yet satirical shot on both the military and corporate industrial complex.
Its reminiscent of the sci-fi shooter video game genre, and if you are looking for something that might feel like Borderlands, its a great choice! … Even if you’re more into dystopian resistance action dramas ala other touchstones (Star Wars: Rogue One, Hunger Games, Aliens, Suicide Squad, etc.), it provides solid groundwork for a gritty reality to run those themes.
Sometimes, though, you just want an excuse to crush some bugs and blow off some steam. In that regard, Dirtbags! is the perfect flamethrower blast for anyone craving char-broiled bug on a stick! … With a soon-coming release date in Summer 2025, and multiple stretch goals hit, its hard not to be excited!
Interested in checking out Dirtbags! a sci-fi-shooter RPG?
“Aha!! So many indie TTRPGs and so little time, kittins! … Matt, the hooman, has a bunch more recent tabletop RPG reviews worth checking out. If you enjoyed this write-up, check out these magnificent others!”
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- Dirtbags! a Sci-Fi Shooter RPG: Gameplay Review! - March 23, 2025
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