PAX Prime 2015 Day 2 Recap

Enter the Gungeon

What happens when you take the cutesy graphical style of Castle Crashers and throw it into a tight corridor dungeon layout with enemies spewing a bullet hell? You start throwing controllers through windows I imagine. As will soon be the case with Enter the Gungeon, a co-op top-down shooter where you must navigate through a labyrinth filled with enough randomly spawning and varied AI to make you cry. And then die. And then rage quit. Only to come back again a few hours later because you know you could do better.

Controls are as simple as they come. Top right trigger to fire, top left trigger to dodge, one joystick to move your character and the other to aim. Simple enough right? There’s also a button to swap weapons or pick up items, not that we ever had the peace of mind to worry about such things!

The overall theme seems like one giant hyperbole that doesn’t take itself seriously. Considering its being brought by Devolver, the group that has introduced us to Broforce, that should be expected. If you’re into Broforce comedy, Enter the Gungeon should keep you just as entertained. The visuals are less 8-bit here and more cel-shaded, making for some pretty jawdropping moments when a giant raven boss flexes its biceps so hard, it’s upper feathers explode to reveal a body builder bod to rival Schwarzenegger in his prime. “Check out these guns,” follows in case you didn’t get the double meaning, or were still too messed up in the head by what you just saw to be prepared to start dodging bullet hell on steroids!

When I went into this game, I expected AI on par with pac-man as endless hordes would stream towards us till one or the other no longer could stand. Rather the AI used tables for cover effectively, ducked behind walls, and some special ability units like the ghosts would even go invisible before trying to flank us out from our cover.

What could have been tedious backtracking to recover missed room’s treasure was also planned for with a quick teleport system that lets you return to a variety of rooms on the fly at no cost. Since the middle of the dungeon had a shop NPC, this meant we could go back to get new supplies whenever we reached the coins to afford them.

Rewarding your skill, the game has a unique system of coin drops to reward solid play. Basically if an enemy hits you, they won’t drop coins. If you can take out a particularly powerful mini-boss enemy without taking damage, they blow up like a pinata. Thus if you want to play with the truly fun weapons, you have to prove you have the skill with the lesser stuff to deserve the upgrade.

In a nutshell, Enter the Gungeon offers Gauntlet style co-op gameplay in an environment of twitch mixed with strategic bullet hell encounters against AI smart enough to make you wonder if there isn’t a dev behind the scenes screwing with you. Throw in Broforce comedy and over the top semi-cel shaded boss cinematics and you have all the elements i feel are necessary for a fun time. Enter the Gungeon is keeping it simple, and doing it well. Everything feels polished; I need this game in my Steam roster now!

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