Developer: Dodge Roll
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Rrp: £10.99 (Steam), £10.99 (Gog.com), and £10.99 (Humblebundle)
Released: 5th April 2016
Available on: Steam, Gog.com and Humblebundle
Played Using: An Xbox 360 control pad
Have you ever wanted to change your past? Remove a mistake from your life? What if I told you that you could? What if there was a gun that would let you kill your past, would you use it? Well it just so happens that such a gun exists. All you need to do is delve into the depths of the Gungeon and survive all it has to throw at you.
Enter the Gungeon is a dungeon delving Roguelite Twin Stick Shooter, although that description isn’t entirely accurate as the roguelite part isn’t procedurally generated in the traditional sense.
The game starts you off at ‘The Breach’ where you get the to choose between four characters, each of which has their own unique abilities (there’s also a co-op mode but since I never used that I can’t comment on it).
Along with their starting weapons all the characters start off with two ‘blanks’ which can be used to delete enemy projectiles and stop them shooting for a very short period of time. If a blank is used it will also reveal any hidden passages that are connected to the room you’re in.
Each chamber is procedurally generated with a series of rooms for you to explore, however as mentioned previously, this procedural generation is not the usual sort. Instead of creating rooms from a bunch of components each one is handcrafted and the procedural part is which rooms (and creatures) are selected for the chamber.
The denizens of the Gungeon aren’t going to be welcoming you with open arms. Opening fire yes, but definitely not welcoming. Thankfully you can dodge their projectiles with a dodge-roll using the [Left Bumper] or [B]. While dodge rolling you’re invulnerable, at least for the first half, once you touch the ground you become vulnerable again. This dodge roll can also be used to jump over small pits etc.
The enemies within the Gungeon are referred to as ‘the Gundead’, although there are several enemies that aren’t part of the Gundead but still need to be dealt with. For the most part the Gundead are pretty mindless going through predictable patterns that are quite well telegraphed.
When you kill an enemy sometimes it will drop a shell casing, these shell casings are the gungeons main currency (there is another for within the gungeon but I don’t want to spoil that surprise).
When you enter a room it will lock all the exits, even hidden ones, until every enemy is killed. Occasionally on clearing a room an item appears that you can collect, be careful though, if you don’t collect it it may just disappear and be replaced with an insulting note.
Beyond the standard pickups of keys, health, money and armor pickups come in two forms, Active and Passive. You can only have one active item at a time and it tends to be a consumable (although some of those consumables recharge over time). Passive pickups work passively, as the name implies, and will bestow upon your character some kind of bonus, so far as I’ve seen there isn’t a maximum number to how many of these you can have at once.
After a boss is defeated several items are dropped, usually a weapon, money, some health and something called a Hegemony Credit. These credits build up over your various attempts of getting through the gungeon and are another currency that can be used in The Breach, presuming that you have found the right NPC’s.
It helps to have a map, and the designers of this game seem to agree, if you press in the [Left Trigger] it will bring up the aforementioned map. You know what else it helps to have? Teleporters. The designers also seem to agree with me on that too and have provided you with the ability to select a teleporter from a room you’ve cleared, press [A] and you’ll be instantly teleported there.
Pixel art games are a penny a dozen, to stand out you need to be of high quality. Enter the Gungeon easily meets and exceeds expectations with extremely smooth and detailed animation for even the most insignificant thing. I couldn’t help being impressed when I accidentally destroyed a barrel of apples only to see that the apples actually spilled out and that when books are shot pages fly all over the place. It’s attention to detail like that that really shows the level of dedication the designers have put into this game.
I’m actually surprised that the creators haven’t tried to market a Gundead plushie, I’d buy one. Correction, having just looked, yes you can buy an official plushie and I will be getting one.
One of the flaws of procedural generation is its very nature, the random element (yes I know that procedural generation and random generation are different things, but from the users perspective it really makes no difference). What I mean by this is that there’s no guarantee which boss you will fight at the end of a level or if there are any weapons to find. It’s entirely possible that you may have to fight a boss with only your starting weapon and that makes it a substantially more difficult fight.
Enter the Gungeon has clearly been designed with speed in mind, the evidence is everywhere; the in-chamber teleporters, the quick load times between levels, the fact that currency comes to you! You don’t even need to stay in the room. Lastly and the best example of the designers going for speed, the fact that as long as you’ve played one of the characters before, there is a quick start when you start the game on the splash screen itself.
As I’m sure you can probably tell I liked this game even though I’m no good at the bullethell / twin stick shooter genre. If I do have a problem with this game it would be with the incredibly steep difficulty curve, seriously this game is totally unforgiving and the difficulty ramps up hugely after the first chamber. Either way, its well worth getting hold of and has a lot of depth hidden away.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Crypt of the Necrodancer
The Binding of Issac
Nuclear Throne
