The studio that turned portals into a competitive shooter is now chasing a different ghost. Empulse, the 6v6 movement shooter from Splitgate developer 1047 Games, opens Steam Early Access on June 24, 2026, and it wears its inspiration on its sleeve: this is an unapologetic love letter to Titanfall 2, built around wall-running, grappling hooks and pilotable mechs.
It launches across PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S simultaneously, with cross-platform multiplayer switched on from day one. The asking price is $19.99, dropped to $15 during a launch-week discount - a deliberately low barrier for a genre where the giants are free-to-play but stuffed with stores.
No store, no battle pass, no paid cosmetics
That last point is the one 1047 keeps hammering, and it is the biggest departure from the live-service playbook: Empulse launches with no in-game store, no battle pass and no paid cosmetics. Every unlock is earned through play. In a market where the headline shooters fund themselves on cosmetic churn, shipping a paid game with no monetization layer on top is a genuine statement of intent - and a gamble the studio is making on goodwill and word of mouth.
The mech system is where Empulse stops imitating and starts experimenting. Rather than rewarding mechs to individual players the way Titanfall 2 did, Empulse spawns them on the map as shared, contested objectives - two at a time, at fixed locations mid-round. Whoever fights to them first gets to pilot them, turning each mech drop into a flashpoint the whole lobby converges on instead of a personal kill-streak reward.
A demo that landed before the launch
Empulse is not arriving blind. Its Steam Next Fest demo earlier in June pulled in strong feedback, averaging an 8.1 out of 10 on the fun question in 1047's own player survey - exactly the signal a movement shooter wants, since the entire pitch lives or dies on whether sliding, grappling and wall-running simply feel good. Titanfall fans have spent years waiting for a true spiritual successor after that series went quiet, and the demo suggested the core loop is landing. Early Access is where 1047 finds out whether it can keep a community fed - and whether a no-microtransactions shooter can survive in a free-to-play world.
