Enter the Gungeon

Enter the Gungeon is a twin-stick bullet-hell rogue-like. For those not hip with the lingo, let's unpack what all that means. “Twin-stick” just means one hand controls your movement and the other hand controls the direction of your attacks. “Bullet Hell” is, as the name implies, a hell of a lot of bullets. The gameplay revolves around dodging waves of bullets from numerous direction, and implies a certain level of difficulty.

“Rogue-like” is a term I could go into great detail explaining. And, since this is my blog, I guess I will! Rogue-likes are so named for their similarity to one particular game, Rogue, released in 1980. It spawned an entire genre of games, and it's a genre I personally can't get enough of. Rogue-likes are a varied bunch of games but generally they have two things in common: Permadeath and procedural generation.

Permadeath just refers to permanent player death. So, once your character dies, that's it, game over. If you want to play again you do it right from the start. Some people might be asking “What's good about that? Starting all over again every time doesn't sound like fun.” Well, the fun is partly in the challenge of it. Each time you play, it's a challenge to yourself of “How far can I make it this time?” Also, it should be noted that while these types of games take a while to master, they are fairly quick to actually get through. A successful playthrough will generally take less than two hours.

The other thing that makes the permadeath enjoyable is the second point, procedural generation, which just means randomly generated levels. What that means is that each time you play, the game is different. The map is different, the weapons and power-ups you find are different, the enemies and bosses are different. So while each playthough is a test of skill, it's also a roll of the dice. It means each chest is always exciting, each unopened door is always a bit scary.

So, that's what I mean when I say this game is a twin-stick, bullet-hell, rogue-like. Put all those concepts together and you get Enter the Gungeon.

The story in this game is that there is a dungeon on some far-away planet where everything is a gun somehow. It's a strange place, haunted by the walking gun-dead. Adventures come from all over the galaxy in search of the treasure that lies at the heart of the gungeon: The Gun That Can Kill The Past.

Now for the actual review. What do I think of the game? Honestly, I love it. I've played it for over 160 hours and I'm nowhere near sick of it. I'm also not very good at it, so in my 160 hours I have yet to finish the game once. But I've gotten close, and I still feel like I'm learning. So every day I normally have at least one quick game of Enter the Gungeon to see how far I can get.

I'm trying to think what it is I love most about this game. Partly it's definitely the cute theme of the game. It's a silly game, where you have guns that shoot sharks, bees, peas, pillows, and many more. Guns made of all sorts of ridiculous things, skeletons, mailboxes, the letter r (which kind of looks like a gun) even a barrel that shoots fishes, a gun which I really love the idea behind. The gungeon is a strange place where even the phrase “shooting fish in a barrel” has fallen under the spell of the gungeon and somehow formed into a gun.

So yes, it's a fun theme. But mostly what keeps me coming back is the fun gameplay and the challenge of it. Unfortunately because of the difficulty of the game, I can't flat out recommend this game. First I would say: Play Binding of Isaac. Binding of Isaac is a similar twin-stick rogue-like, but a lot easier. It's also my all-time favourite computer game. Now if you've played Binding of Isaac and you loved it and want more, then Enter the Gungeon is the first game I would recommend to you.