I recommend: Enter the Gungeon

 Taking aim at roguelikes

So I guess I'm a convert for Rougelites now. How did I get interested in that kind of thing? Should we all like Rougelites now? What's the official line the Church's taking on Rougelites? I seriously cannot reconcile the person I used to be with the rougelite fantatic of today, who gobbles up these types of games like kibble. But would you believe me if I said I'm still not sure how I fall on the whole genre? I mean they're fun to me, I think, but I wonder if I'm more addicted to the struggle of trying to force through them than the moment-to-moment enjoyment of randomised chaos. At the very least, I like the prospect of games that can be played to completion in short bursts, as they fit nicely in with my schedule of doing literally anything else all day, thus it's should come as no surprise that I quickly fell for Enter the Gungeon when I saw it.

The first time I saw this Devolver Digital title was actually back before it's first release during a preview, believe it or not, and the game stuck with me because of one simple word: simplicity. It was a game that seemed to knowingly whittle down itself to the core essence, making this top down shooter with roguelite elements a pixel-art bullet storm shooter with agonisingly simple controls and an almost obnoxious commitment to it's theme of everything firearms. There's no need for grand storylines, AAA 3D renders and several volumes worth of lore if you know what you are and nail it to an impeccable degree. The only stipulation is that you must nail it, because when you've laid yourself out that bare it doesn't take much for everything wrong to stick out and ruin the experience. In that simplicity there is beauty, and Enter the Gungeon is a very simple game.

It's a dungeon crawler. One that tasks the player with selecting a character and running through randomly laid-out rooms full of enemies of various types who are all chomping at the bit to fill you full of holes. All you have at your disposal for protecting your preciously slim health pool is the arrow keys, a very useful roll and the oft-forgotten ability to flip tables like this is a John Woo movie. Yes, this game is so obsessed with sticking to the '80's action movie' aesthetic that the name invokes that it even borrowed table flipping. I mean, it's not all that useful and, in all honestly, it's more than a little cumbersome to have to seek out a surface and then turn it over; (In the knowledge that it's a very destructible cover too) but is there any better way to embody the spirit of a gun-toting badass? Of course there is. It's sliding across tables whilst shooting at enemies. And you can do that too. (Though, again, so unwieldly that's it's really only for bragging rights.)

The real 'Rougelite' part of the game comes in the items that you collect from the randomly generated chests on each floor, or purchased at the item shop or looted off of bosses. These items can be anything from extra hearts to special boosters that cause an enemy damaging impact whenever you flip a table. (Really like that one) Honestly, the effects of these items are almost criminally underexplained which makes it hard to really be excited when I find one, but the key to any successful run is usually gathering the most useful ones in the same go anyway. So far so normal for just about every dungeon-based Rougelite ever. But where Enter the Gungeon really earns it's flair is where it lives up to it's name; this is a Gun-geon, afterall, thus what you really want to be finding in those chests aren't item boosters, but newer more powerful, or more whacky, guns to change up the way that you fight.

It's yet another example of a simple concept realised to frightening efficacy. The pace of bullet hail shooters are so often decided by the movement of the player as well as their means of offensive defence. What's my rate of fire, how straight is my shot, do I have any recourse for enemies who aren't directly in front of me, etc. Similar games in this field, Binding of Issac comes to mind, recognise this and have the basic attack be subject to evolution with certain items that you can pick up, in the knowledge that as the way you fight changes the very speed and feel of the game does too. Enter the Gungeon takes that concept and balloons it to a whole new level by making a collecting game out of the sheer number of shooting implements you come across. Each gun behaves differently and changes up how you fight to survive, letting the pace of the game be set at a dime by random chance and the niftiness of the player. Are you making do with the rapid, but weak, starter pistol or do you have a slower, but reliable, spread shotgun? And that's without even taking into account the identity of the guns themselves.

Because, you see, almost everything in Enter the Gungeon is a gun pun. I mean everything. From the enemies, known collectively as the Gundead, to the various bosses, including but not limited to the Ammoconda, everything has a gun theme. Yet no part of the aesthetic is more wild than the guns themselves. You have guns that are bullets which shoot guns, as wierd as that sounds; guns that are boxing gloves which daze the enemy with a projectile fist; Guns that shoot sustained beams, guns that bounce bullets, guns that create little homing bullets after first launch, guns that start fires, guns that freeze, guns that shoot around corners and guns that create black holes. Each of these weapons have their own identity and the player is encouraged to collect an arsenal's worth of them for rainy days.

The balance comes, surprisingly enough, in maintaining ammunition supplies and choosing what weapon to whip out when. The plentiful amount of ammo that you're saddled with gets quickly offset with the number of Gundead hordes chewing at your ankles, so before long you'll actually find yourself picking between mowing down hordes and saving up for the boss encounters. At which point you'll start seeing the immense value of the refill boxes that top up a single gun, whilst weighing their worth against the mid-fill boxes that fill half of all your weapons. (the trick is timing) Then there's the blanks which are limited per floor but wipe out all bullets on the screen, and the currency you'll be picking through at the shop. Nothing I've listed about this game is inherently genre rewriting, but the mere flawless execution of them all together is what makes this game such a classic.

I would have to recommend Enter the Gungeon to all those that feel interested, yet intimated by the Rougelite genre, because of all the one's I've played this is certainly one of the most casual friendly. It's easy to pick up, provides rapid fire runs, requires no long term investments with so much to lose upon death and even gives handy quick restart options in the vein of Spelunkey to feed into that 'One more time' cycle of addiction. And bare in mind, with my recommendation, that there's vast layers of item synergies and secret bosses that I haven't even begun to delve into myself, so there's a lot for you to discover even beyond what I've covered. I just thought it was worth the write up anyway to let you know that even without becoming involved to the minuet-level: Enter the Gungeon impresses in spades. All I need to do now is Exit the Gungeon. (Which is the actual sequel/spin-off. That might just be next)