Carrying on with last week’s review of a game with randomly generated levels I decided to grab a twin-stick shooter with randomly generated levels for this week. Enter the Gungeon is built by Dodge Roll and is another of Devolver Digital’s indie game army. It has a lot of the Devolver Digital trends like old school graphics, tons of guns and an army of enemies to fight.

Story:

The Wikipedia page for Enter the Gungeon assures me that there is a story. I have not seen it in action so can’t comment.

There are characters to be interacted with in the levels (or chambers as the game calls them) and central hub world but none of them talk much about the world or how they got stuck there.

Sound:

Sound is something very few developers get right especially in the Indie scene. Thankfully, Enter the Gungeon does a decent job. Multiple background tracks rotate as you play the game. There are different tracks for combat and there is a decent enough cooldown track for non-action areas. Sadly, while decent the combat track could have been more upbeat while the cooldown track could have been calmer. Right now, both tracks don’t have that much of a gap to set the mood.

The sound effects are a dime a dozen. Everything sounds different. The best part is that most of them sound like you would expect them too. Even the guns have a huge variety in their sound effects. There is even a gun that says the name of the last thing described on screen.

Graphics:

The graphics initially look simple with their old school dungeon crawler look that seems inspired from the 16bit era. Once you take a close look however you notice stuff like shadows playing their part, light effecting shines on metal and fire trails growing as they rapidly move.

The levels are well coloured so you never lose sight of your character except in the swarms of bullets. Each level has a theme and they are varied enough so that you don’t get bored looking at them.

Gameplay:

Enter the Gungeon is the closest to an on-foot bullet-hell shooter I have seen in a while. While the early stages are simple with enemies wielding pistols and shotguns, it gets intense in a hurry. The enemies start multiplying quickly each with their own type of attacks ranging from firing hails of bullets, setting cobwebs on fire to suicidal sticks of dynamite that chase you down. The bosses are nothing special since they feel like bullet-sponge versions of the standard enemies with multiple firing styles. The variation while quite nice at the start gets overwhelming due to the sheer number present, this makes picking an enemy to target a major pain especially when under constant fire.

The chambers are randomly generated so you can’t memorize a standard path to get through them. To help you get through the chambers you can dodge bullets and flip tables to use as cover. There are also tons of guns hidden in chests that have to be opened with keys. All of them are unique in their little ways from their rate of fire, the damage they deal out and some of them are just strange like the pistol that becomes a shotgun on every alternate reload. However, not all the guns are improvements compared to your characters starting gun so you have to give each of them a try to figure out what works for you.

Adding to the variation is items that you find in the world. Some improve your health; some gave your guns elemental abilities and one of them lets you make all the bullets on the screen go bye-bye.

In the chambers you occasionally find other characters to talk to who will give you small tasks to do for rewards like bullet shells that act as currency for the store found in each chamber or keys to unlock cases. You also find keys that unlock prison cells who release characters that you can interact with at the hub world. So there are reasons to explore the chambers rather than just running to the boss.

In an attempt to improve replayability: Enter the Gungeon has special cash which is only dropped by bosses which you use to buy upgrades in the hub world. While a decent attempt, it is just adding fuel to the fire of confusion. At a point, you just give up caring about what to buy and just buy everything you can afford.

As I said at the start the variations of enemies, guns and items can get overwhelming quick. I would have preferred less variations with the guns and human-made chambers instead of the randomly generated ones that were thought out.

Conclusion:

Enter the Gungeon is fun in small bursts but is not something that can be played at any time. The randomly generated chambers accompanied by the number of guns and items gets annoying in a hurry. While I complain about the lack of variation in many games today there is something to be said for limiting variety too. People don’t like too little variation and they don’t like too much either.

Pros	Cons
Worlds look nice	Randomly Generated Worlds
Lots of items	No clear idea of what they do
Good sound variety	Sound could be improved
Fun gameplay at a shot	Gets confusing and overpowering at a point