Enter The Gungeon: Prepare for gunishment

It Feels Appropriate to begin talking about a game called Enter The Gungeon by telling you about the guns, which, to put it mildly, are a little bizarre.  Yes, there are pistols, shotguns and so on, but you can also get guns that fire rainbows, lasers, cannonballs, fish, foam darts, envelopes, and bees, to name but a few. Of course, the idea of having sure a huge variety of guns is that there’ll be different tactics associated with using each one, adding variety to the game. We’d imagine the same will apply to the various characters that you’re able to choose from when starting the game. If you find a pleasure in experimenting with gameplay, then, Enter The Gungeon will certainly scratch that itch.

That variety extends to the dungeon or ‘gungeon’, in the game’s parlance itself. Every time you, er, enter the gungeon, a brand new stage will be built for you to conquer. In that respect, then, the game is a rogue-like and comes with many of the tricks you’d expect from that genre. That means collecting loot as you explore each of its rooms, buying new items when you come across a shopkeeper, and experimenting with what those upgrades do and how they can aid your run.

When it comes to how it plays, though, the title is very much an action game. Its fast-paced twin-stick shooting seems to require you to master the timing of a move which shares it’s name with the studio is making the game the dodge roll.  Enter The Gungeon’s dodge roll gives you a brief window of invincibility, making it incredibly important when trying to navigate your way through the gungeon’s traps and the enemies’ attacks. It’s not your only tool, though. There is also a brilliant cover mechanic in classic action movie style, you are able to flip tables to provide yourself with a barrier to protect you from gunfire.

“YOU CAN GET GUNS THAT FIRE RAINBOWS, LASERS, CANNONBALLS, FISH, FOAM DARTS, ENVELOPES, AND BEES”

Speaking of gunfire, there’ll be plenty of that. As well as being a rogue-like and a twin-stick action game, Enter The Gungeon has also got a bit of the bullet hell shooter in it. That chaotic mix of weaving your way through complex bullet patterns, flipping tables and dodging traps, all while firing off a barrage of rockets, bees and machine gun fire sounds like a recipe for an intense, exciting and challenging game. In other words, we just hope Enter The Gungeon is as great as it sounds, because if it is, we anticipate having a lot of fun.

Indeed, ‘fun’ is certainly what the game is aiming for, in more ways the one. The whole set-up for the game is deliberately ridiculous you are trying to get hold of a legendary weapon that it is so powerful, it can kill the past. We’re not against levity, but games that aim to be humorous can end up coming off like that ‘wacky’ person we all  know you know, that one that thinks their ‘off the wall’ nature makes them hilarious, when in reality, they are infuriatingly witless dullards. We’ve not seen enough of Enter The Gungeon to determine whether it’s going to stray into that territory yet, so we’re just going to have to keep our fingers crossed. The inclusion of a ‘Master Of Unlocking’ hat that looks like Jill Valentine’s is at least subtle enough to give us hope that the game’s humour will enrich it, rather than becoming grating.

Enter The Gungeon is a combination of a disparate ideas and game types the rogue-like, the bullet hell shooter and the twin-stick action game but it’s a combination that sounds like it can work. If its colourful, chunky pixel art and the wonderfully expressive animation of its characters is indicative of the quality of the game that Dodge Roll is constructing, then work it certainly will.