ZOOPUNK takes place in the Animal Punk universe, the world TiGames established with F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch, but it is set decades earlier and tells an origin story rather than a continuation. Its subject is the turbulent early history of Torch City and the war that shaped it.
The First Torch War
The game opens on the dawn of the First Torch War. It begins with the discovery of fire seed energy, which sets off an age of rapid technological progress and, with it, catastrophic conflict. The energy does not stay controlled. As it spirals, it wakes mechanical debris into self-aware, unstoppable war machines. Those machines were built to harness energy, but they take on the violence of the creators who made them, turn against the animals, and establish a mechanical empire bent on domination. With the city in chaos, animals from rival factions have to unite against a force none of them can face alone.
The Fire Seed and the Spark
The fiction places a planetary system underneath all of this. Official descriptions say that every atom on the planet is governed by a vast central network, and that the Fire Seed is the medium through which that network transmits its signal. Any substance the Fire Seed touches is transformed, reshaped according to the will of what the material calls the Creator. Because such an unstable force sits at the world's core, the world has fractured into isolated regions, each moulded by its own geography, resources and ideology.
Later material introduces the Spark, described as a mysterious power at the centre of the changing world that continues to shape its technology, its civilizations and its conflicts. In the extended gamescom trailer, Rayton, Braton and Trixie infiltrate the enemy's heavily fortified domain to seize the Spark, racing to protect a threatened Torch City. The studio has not spelled out whether the Spark and the Fire Seed are the same thing under different names, two aspects of one system, or separate things, so they are best kept apart until it does.
The Question of the Soul
The soul sits at the centre of the story, and the war is framed as a disagreement about it rather than a fight over territory. Animals hold that the soul is innate and inseparable from life. The mechanical army holds that it can be copied and learned. Official material states plainly that this difference in perception is the root of all conflict between the two sides.
The conflict is also not clean. Rival animal factions, shifting alliances and competing understandings of life and consciousness all feed into it. The gamescom 2026 trailer showed animal bosses, which the studio flagged as a departure from the animal-versus-machine framing of the earlier game, and which fits the way the fiction has been described.
The Regions of the World
Four regions have been described, though none has been named:
A nomadic network of mechanics and wanderers
A volcanic industrial fortress
A rare sanctuary of purity amid the chaos
A crumbling citadel where military order decays into ruin
Trailer footage has separately shown lush forests and high-flying airships, presented as a first taste of the environments players will fight through. Whether the forests and the airships belong to any of the four described regions has not been stated. Gameplay covers how much of this has actually been seen in motion.
A Note on Terminology
Official material has used more than one name for the mechanical force. The most recent material calls it the Machine Legion. Earlier material calls it a mechanical empire, and the January 2025 announcement referred to a Mechanoid Empire. These are most likely the same faction described at different points in development, but only the Machine Legion has been used recently, and the studio has never linked the three names itself.
Not Yet Confirmed
The names of the four described regions
Whether the Spark and the Fire Seed are the same thing
Who or what the Creator is
The identity of the animal factions, their leaders and their motives
Any named location other than Torch City
How the story connects to specific events in F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch
Whether the First Torch War is resolved within this game