Enter The Gungeon

Rating: 8.2

Happy Price: 14.99

Gameplay

Enter the Gungeon combines skill and random events that create an unpredictable flow of events each time you play. The difficulty is high, but unlike Dark Souls that aren't any patterns you can rely on to adapt to. It plays more like FTL where enemies and environments are randomly generated with a set of minimum and maximum parameters. There is a lot of shooting, dodging, and rolling involved. Your main objective is to make it through a bunch of dungeons, saving ominous NPC's and defeating bosses.

Combat

The main focus is reacting to heavy gunfire and rushing enemies. There are many different enemy types that have different weapons coming at you simultaneously. This is balanced by a roll feature which makes you invincible for the amount of time you're rolling. There are four characters that can be picked from, each with their individual trait that makes them unique. Arguably, if you're good enough, you could beat the game with each characters starting weapon. However you'd have to be on some pro status to accomplish that.

Upgrades

There are two types of upgrades that exist, guns and passives. Upgrades are applied by unlocking chests that contain them. Upgrades come in forms of items, either a type of gun or strange item that has a unique property to it that influences the player's abilities. In order to unlock a chest, one must get keys for them. Keys can be purchased or found, however it's not obvious how to get enemies to drop keys. Depending on what upgrade you get can define how your gameplay run will go, getting an extremely powerful weapon combined with a great passive will significantly increase the odds of you winning. It can be very disappointing however, when you open a chest and the weapon inside is just slightly more powerful than your starting weapon. This is the risk you take each time you play the game, you just don't know or have control over how it's going to turn out.

There are so many gun types it is overwhelming, but adds an element of surprise each time you get something new.  Shown above is a Tommy Gun, but you can get laser weapons, attacking bees, grenade launchers, missile launchers, snowballs, and many other weapon types. It will take hours to uncover them, but there exists a dictionary where you can see all the weapons that exist in the game. There just isn't a clear path to unlocking them. After defeating bosses, there is a currency that is dropped that can be used to unlock weapons that "join" the game. These will get added to the array of weapons available each run. You can always purchase weapons, keys, and other needs at a shop. This adds some predictability to your run, but at the same time you'll have no idea what appears at the shop.

The same goes for the passive upgrades. These things do random stuff like make your bullets bounce off walls, divide into 3 bullets, freeze enemies, electrocute enemies if rolled into, etc. Getting a combination like a beam weapon that bounces off walls can be a huge upgrade since now you can play the game completely differently. Essentially destroying enemies while behind cover. Or when tackling a boss, you don't need to be super accurate all the time and can focus on dodging the onslaught of bullets. 

Boss Battles

Even boss battles will be unpredictable. The game is divided into five different dungeons. Each dungeon has an array of bosses that it hosts. You won't know which boss you face, and therefore won't really know which weapon to purchase if you're in the situation where your weapons are not sufficient. It's guesswork, but after enough time you'll learn the patterns of the bosses and it won't be an issue early game. There are some that argue to save your ammo for dungeon three, and just use the starting weapon against bosses which I thought was too difficult. The bosses are one of the high points of the game, each is a character in its own right and has a combat style that complements it. For example, Medusa is bat shit crazy and uses dual uzis with the ability to turn you to stone. She reminds you of crazy ex girlfriend.

Art

The 2d pixel art is top notch and totally encompasses games of the era it's trying to emulate. The fact that the environments are dynamically generated and the tilesets totally work without any issues is a huge technical feat. It's difficult to create tilesets that don't conflict with one another when they are as dynamic as they are in the game. With the huge variety of weapons and ammo types, there was a good attention to detail, no stone was left unturned. Guns have the appearance for what they do. A missile launcher is big, or if it's small, has a quirky name like the Little Cricket. I spent a lot of time looking for a flaw, but could not find one. Now my expectations are something funny or intelligent each time I get an upgrade. I expect it to look great and feel great, and haven't been disappointed.

Summary

Not a casual shooter by any means, however it appears it would be. There is a lot of depth that is difficult to cut into with purpose since there are many random events happening. It starts off great, but starts to lose its luster after about the 10 hour mark. However people that love shooters and games like FTL can likely play this game for hours on end. It's very difficult to beat.

Rebel Galaxy

Rating: 8.5

Happy Price: 19.99

Gameplay

Rebel Galaxy has many things going on, and many things are done well. You start the game as a guy with a spaceship, and from that point on build yourself as a pirate, mercenary, merchant, miner or space do gooder. Adopting many professions usually suits the player best.

Combat

Combat is done with a naval style setup where the player has to position themselves parallel to the opponent to use the main broadside turrets. Players can use the smaller turrets if they want, but it proves to be difficult to maneuver when doing so, so that method is seldom used. Essentially you outfit your spaceship with a bunch of turrets that automatically target enemies, while you the player control the broadside guns or cannons. This way you can aim and control the ship at the same time. There is good mix of enemies during most battles, usually consisting of many small fighters and a couple of large destroyer ships. It makes for fun battles as you strategically place yourself in position to take out the smaller ships and gradually working toward taking out the bigger ships.

There are many weapons to pick from, each excelling in different attributes. Some weapons excel at distance but have limited fire rate. Some have better shield penetration or hull penetration. Combining these weapons together to create balance is key to success at outfitting a great ship. Some of the more powerful weapons to pick from have an ammo count, so it requires the player to replenish their ordinance at outposts which cost resources. This effects players on long missions where they can possibly run out of ammo with one of their most reliable and go to weapons. Balancing these things is key, especially early on in the game.

Economy

The economy fluctuates allowing the player to buy low and sell high. Early on in the game, this can make quite the difference. Making 10,000 on a deal can be the difference when buying a weapon that costs 45,000. However, later in the game this goes away as weapons and ships cost millions of dollars, while margins on products remain the same. That aside, there are news boards that tell you if there is a surplus or deficit somewhere so you can capitalize on what items you have in your hull. The annoying part about that is, it becomes difficult to search for planets to actually execute your trades. By the time you travel across the galaxy or star system, you may get there and the economic status has changed. It can be a time waster, so most of the time I would stop at outposts when it was convenient and hope the odds were in my favor. I found this to be pretty efficient, but it's nice to have the option and information at your fingertips to take advantage of certain economies on different space stations.

I found a great way to make money was mining early to mid game, as you find valuables without having to pay anything. Mining lasers also serve as weapons against enemy craft, so using this saves money in more than one way. Late game, I found the best way was to take on large bounties and hope that the enemy was carrying a turret or defense modification that could be worth millions. Bounties would earn about 60k, while the weapon they dropped could be added to my ship or sold for a ton of money.

Story and Dialogue 

The story is straight forward but has some missing gaps in between, and some things remain unresolved. It doesn't detract much from the gameplay though, since you're focused on so many other things. I used my imagination to fill in the gaps of the story, and it made for a good one. With a fleshed out script the story has great potential and even though it wasn't realized, I don't think it mattered much. For every ship you hail, you do have the choices to either give up your goods or take the goods of an enemy. If you approach another pirate, your only option is to drop your cargo for a peaceful exit. For a trader, you have the option to buy/sell from them, or have them give up all their stuff. There is a penalty for this however, as you will lose faction points from citizens and the military. It is not wise to do this, since most side missions are given by citizens or the military, and siding with pirates yields high rewards but it's difficult to come across missions from them. Having the choice to be a crime seeking pirate or an up class space citizen is fun and encourages replayability.

Soundtrack 

The soundtrack fits the game very well. It's a country rock theme that bodes well with rebellious nature of the game. The songs loop over and over again, but they are not overpowering and are nice to listen to when on long hauls. I would imagine a mercenary from the 1700's on a horse hunting someone down would listen to this type of music, it's edgy but southern. I honestly could not tell you what the lyrics are saying, but the tone of them seems to serenade you with the struggles you face over and over again as you trek through space. It helps combat the loneliness of being on a ship traveling from star system to star system all by yourself in a delightful way. 

Summary

This game is a hidden gem. There are some technical issues with missions that require escorts, and the final mission which is very frustrating. Had those technical issues not been present, this game is an easy 9. I can't let those things slide though, as they took away from the experience and cost me a few hours of my life (or at least it felt that way). If you're looking for a fleshed out and ambitious indie game that was completed, you have to play this game.