Enter the Gungeon for Windows

Enter the Gungeon is a twin-stick shooter with roguelike elements that tries to differentiate itself from the competition, giving players more freedom to control.

If you are familiar with the representatives of this genre, then you will not have to get used to the basic controls for a long time. If not, then in the tutorial, following Manuel’s instructions, you will learn the very basics of the game, and then move on to more advanced techniques – rolling with timings, flipping tables for cover and using items called “dummies” to stop any enemy fire and remove all the shells they have already sent. All these learned skills you will take with you to the Weapon mentioned in the title in order to try to complete the main mission, which is to find the aforementioned gun.

Enter the Gungeon Review

The game takes place in a giant castle, which is definitely going through hard days. Already on the first floor of the Weaponry, you can see elements of roguelikes woven into the game. Each time you enter the Weapon, the layout of the level is different from the previous time: the location of the guns and upgrades changes, as well as the composition and spawn points of enemies. This means that you can relax only after clearing the rooms, and so, you will have to move almost always. Otherwise, moving bullets armed with revolvers or shotguns will riddle you, or the knight, striking the ground with his sword, will kill you with a whole wave of bullets.

However, unlike most roguelikes, in which your progress is largely dependent on luck and a random number generator, Enter the Gungeon tries in every possible way to make every attempt fair. For example, rooms in the game are not randomly generated. Instead, the game selects them from a large number of hand-crafted rooms, and with this approach, you always have enough room to maneuver, and often have cover at hand to take cover from enemy attacks.

Another strong point of Enter the Gungeon is the sheer amount of curiosities hidden in the mechanics of the game. Certain guns, for example, have special abilities that activate on reload. Some objects on the surface, such as tables, can be knocked over and used as a temporary mobile shelter. Co-op is amazingly fun, allowing you to destroy and toss objects to help your partner, and focus fire on the boss when there is a moment’s respite. But the game somehow forces the second player to start in the guise of a cult character who has the ability to resurrect the first player when he dies. As you might guess, this is a strong and rather curious class, but it’s a pity that the second player does not have access to many other unlockable characters that are available to the first.

Let’s face it, what makes Enter the Gungeon so special is the in-game tools you need to deal with room-filling opponents. A wide range of cannons are found in the chests that you find throughout the levels. Any weapons you find can be used in your seemingly endless quest. To put it mildly, there are enough weapons here, and each has certain characteristics: from guns from the real world, for example, M-1 or Makarov, to others that came straight from fantasy, like, say, a barrel that shoots bees, or a light cannon simulated similar to the NES Zapper and sending out laser beams, and in the final round, releasing an 8-bit duck.

In general, diversity is one of the strengths of Enter the Gungeon. You will be able to choose from several different characters, each of which starts with certain unique guns and abilities. In each playthrough, you will stumble upon very different bosses, enemies and various, also threatening death threats. You will unwittingly create builds that you never even dreamed of, just bumping into weapons and items in a certain order.

Mastering the found guns is simply a must, since the game is extremely difficult, although it cannot be called completely unforgiving. It has all the features of a roguelike, so in case of death, you lose all the improvements you found before and must start from the very top. There are, however, a few welcome changes to the roguelike rules, such as a special store where you use credits for new upgrades to help repair an elevator, allowing you to skip levels and teleport to certain levels, which definitely makes them easier to complete.

At the end of each level of Enter the Gungeon, a boss awaits the players behind a massive door in the shape of a bullet, and each of them will surely be able to surprise you with both their appearance and complexity. For example, at the end of one level, you can stumble upon a giant bird’s nest with a minigun lying in it. Soon, players will see a bird fly down from above, pick up, put on a minigun and begin to show off and flex its muscles so hard that its feathers will fall off, exposing a muscular torso. Such a circus is not an isolated case, but in fact only the tip of the iceberg of the comedic and ridiculous nature of the game. There are many references to popular culture in it, though not so many that they outright overshadow Gungeon’s own unique humor. The world you inhabit and the enemies you fight are also absurd in themselves. On your way, among many others, there will be walking bullets armed with cannons, flying bullets with bat wings and ghosts with Kalashnikov assault rifles. And this is just the range of enemies that are presented on the first floor.

Crafted with great pixel art, Enter the Gungeon demonstrates what you can achieve when you’re not feeling nostalgic and trying to pay homage to pixel art from the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis era. The explosions and destruction you wreak are nice to watch, and the character animations and views are impressive despite the game’s isometric view. An energetic electronic soundtrack will accompany your progress through the levels, and the opening theme may be so memorable for you that you will hum it even when you are not playing.

Put all of the above together and you have a great, demanding, yet rewarding roguelike twin-stick shooter, in which the visual aspect is perfectly connected to the gameplay, and the music energizes you so much that you absolutely do not want to stop, but make your way deeper. , through hordes of enemies. Enter the Gungeon does a good job of explaining important mechanics through the tutorial and the Patronomicon, which I think makes the game a great first step for anyone wanting to become familiar with this unique and increasingly popular genre. The game, of course, does not bring anything completely new and not seen before, but what is presented in it is surprisingly skillfully done.