Quick Look: Enter the Gungeon

Loving this game currently! My favorite gun so far has to be this one where it literally turns into a lightsaber, sounds and all, and deflects back enemy fire.

Oooooo Saturday morning uploads!

So far, I super dig this game.

This game looks cool. Any idea if there will be a vita version?

@mems1224: the dev said it wasnt out of the question but the game would basically need to be rebuilt to support it. It isnt planned in the near future at any rate.

@derador: The Fightsaber! That's my favorite too, not only is it powerful and rapid fire, the reload lightsaber animation is great.

Enter The Pungeon

The same way Jeff mentioned last night on UPF that he's really bummed out how a lot of high profile games coming out are MOBA's these days, I'm super bummed that a lot of really neat looking indie titles are roguelikes. I get that as a smaller indie studio it's much easier to create a set number of assets and have a random generator spew forth "infinite" hours of gameplay rather than meticulously hand crafting a 6-8hr experience level by level - but man do I find the roguelike formula extremely repetitive and boring.

Thats not to say it's bad since a ton of people obviously enjoy it, ain't nothin' wrong with that, but it's totally not for me. I so much rather get more games like Hotline Miami, Hyper Light Drifter or Gunpoint than a Spelunky which theoretically would last me way longer than all of those games combined.

I've enjoyed my time with Gungeon, but I can see the point. Mercenary Kings wasn't a roguelike, but man, I was really bummed about that turning out to be some odd Monster Hunter game, instead of a Metal Slug type one.

I really want to like this game but I'm terrible at it.

To meet the shortcut guy you have to jump down the elevator shaft once the elevator disappears when you start a level. I only found that out falling down the shaft by accident.

Great game and glad the GB guys seem to be getting into it after Binding of Isaac never caught on. It matches what I love about games of this type - very difficult with tons to uncover and learn, but a great ramp for the player as you get better and learn more. Very satisfying to gradually learn and start making it deeper. Or to take down bosses flawlessly after previously getting destroyed by them.

But while I definitely like the action of this game more than Isaac, I'm still unsatisfied with the build variety and depth. Even for runs that make it down to the deeper floors, I still almost never have a build that is cool or wildly different from what I've done before. Just the occasional cool gun or passive, and some basic upgrades to speed/damage/health/rate of fire. My favorite part of Binding of Isaac was reaching the lower levels and having 15 different items all stacking and interacting in crazy ways, but I never get that from Gungeon.

Roguelikes are clones of Rogue, a 1980 ASCII-based RPG. We've been using the term to mean this for 36 years

Roguelites feature elements of Rogue and Roguelikes, but aren't clones of Rogue. This term has been around since probably the original Spelunky came out

Yeah, it's clearly a Doom-clone, after all it has guns and health.

Its the sort of mindset that could make you overlook games that transcend the genre tropes or you could like.

@kid_gloves: I think it's just a preference more than anything. I simply don't like wandering around randomly generated levels, floor after floor, looking for a shortcut to unlock and then dying and having to do the whole thing all over again. I like linear, hand crafted experiences for the unique nature and sense of perpetuity that goes beyond unlocking shortcuts or passive buffs. Also I'm just at a point in my life where I rather experience several shorter but really unique games from start to finish than play the same one over and over again for 100 hours.

Great soundtrack in this game.

Thank you Giant Robot!

How did Dan not discover that when he was a ghost and did the AoE-blast, he cleared the projectiles in hist blast.. That was so obvious and yet he only thought he could attack, and by attack I mean push enemies down pits. HOW?! I don't even..

On my first try I was wishing there was an active reload. Then I almost immediately found a pick-up that made it possible. It looked like a gear.

Great game, but I'm terrible at it.

@deathpooky: Feels like there aren't enough passives in the game or at least not early on, maybe as you unlock more things in the shop I dunno. In general though I agree I wish there were more passives with interesting synergies the way you can get stuff like brimstone + Ludo in Isaac.

@humanity said:

Yeah, it's really sad to see less and less handcrafted indie game levels. Indies used to be the one place you could consistently find similar world/level layouts to the 16bit era which was awesome, but now they're mostly filled with lifeless procedural stuff. I like me some good roguelikes (nuclear throne is great and I think for its gameplay style it honestly works better as a roguelike), but the notion of an indie roguelike has just completely lost its luster. I'd much prefer something in the vein of zelda/metroid/castlevania.

Oh man, seeing their co-op run get screwed over by that bugged teleport was a bummer. Really blows when you've got a good one going and are stopped by something that's completely out of your control.

It just seems like a dour point of view that adapts what you aren't playing into something that isn't worth playing. It is filled with a bunch of assumptions about the type of game. Like how it could only be fun if you played 100 hours of it, it is inherently all meta game unlocks, that you can't hand craft procedural content (its not called random for a reason). Bad to mediocre games absolutely fall foul of those sorts of problems, but that is the case with pretty much all genres. It isn't fair to assume that everything that fits in one subgenre is guilty of all its associations.

Interesting perspective - I'm generally with you that I far prefer shorter, crafted experiences and have fallen off overly padded 30-40 hour games filled with repetitive actions for the most part. But I still love this sort of game. Doing repetitive tasks in something like Assassin's Creed or Far Cry bores me quickly, while a game like this it's extremely satisfying to learn and gain skill over time. The repetitive nature of it isn't really an issue because I can see myself getting better and making it deeper over time, plus each run is unique.

The only negative is that it's hard to get into multiple of these games. I've put hundreds of hours into the various versions of Binding of Isaac, and I could easily see myself getting into this for dozens of hours as well. But I never caught on to Spelunky or Nuclear Throne.

My initial impression of this game is that it's for people like me who aren't really good enough to play Nuclear Throne.

B U L L E T.... B U L L E T....

Looks decent, looks like a good next roguelike to jump into from Nuclear Throne

I love this game so much. It shot right through my expectations.

you can give stuff to the guy in the shop by bringing up your map, then select an item using left/right and drop it

This game is so good. BoI is still my favorite of the genre (whatever genre that may be... I shan't name it, for there are already stirrings from the "It's nothing like Rogue!" folks), but EtG comes close.

Also: Now that this game exists, let's just call this genre "gungeon-crawlers". It separates them from both Rogue and traditional dungeon-crawlers.

This seems less interesting than the two games it takes the most inspiration from: Nuclear Throne and Binding of Isaac. =\

wow that lower case r gun is the dumbest gun i've seen in a video game since the gun that screams when you shoot it in bdl2

Of course the first item Dan picks up in this game is a Metal Gear reference.

got and then promptly lost the moonscraper. :( that thing was rad if possibly clunky and useless.

also im pretty sure jeff purposely pushed that table in front of dan lol.

Dark Souls 2 reference with that Chloranthy Ring!

Bullets shooting bullets?

Is this game the ironic hell for NRA members?

I absolutely love how much flair this game has - but between Hyper Light Drifter and Nuclear Throne I've been spoiled when it comes to character movement. The way this game plays is so stiff, I'm finding it incredibly difficult to enjoy.

Been playing this a lot the past few days. Really great game, a lot of fun! The roll dodge is real satisfying!

The music in this game seems real grating and repetitive.

In this neverending sea of emotional platformers and walking sims, I've always been a firm believer in the fact that real games have guns in them. By my calculations, Enter the Gungeon is the most realest game.

Here's a handy chart:

@deathpooky: Ironically I'm the exact opposite! For some strange reason I'm still able to totally get into the run-around of an Assassins Creed game or most recently The Division, but when that upgrade driven gameplay loop is distilled into the most raw concentrated form of a roguelike I don't enjoy it nearly as much.

@kid_gloves:I'm not quite sure I understand your point of view on this. Maybe it's me that isn't being too clear? I'm saying I don't like roguelikes, and you seem to be saying that it's a dour point of view to not try roguelikes just because I don't like roguelikes. I understand what you're saying, in that keeping an open mind to new experiences lends itself to discovering fun new games you wouldn't normally think of playing. At the same time if you don't like a particular style of game then most of the time you won't like various permutations of it either.

If for example I don't like fighting games but I love RPG's and they come out with a fighting game that has amazing RPG elements, then I still won't really enjoy it because at the core of it all is a fighting game which I inherently dislike.

This looks pretty cool, but I've never played Nuclear Throne. Should I get Nuclear Throne instead of this for now?

Nuclear throne is more focused on frenetic twitch-action and understanding of enemy patterns, while Gungeon is a slower and more dungeon-crawly/loot-driven experience.

So take your pick from there!

@verysexypotato: Okay, thanks!

bought the game for $7 because of this QL

This is helpful to have it laid out in a handy chart. I've had a hard time keeping this straight.

I'm liking this game, but it's no Nuclear Throne. It's maybe a bit too much BoI and not enough NT. Still, "roguelites" are one of my favourite genres, especially roguelite shooters so I'm pretty happy to keep seeing more of these things.

But yeah, if you want something faster and more skill based, go pick up NT.