I beat Gun Devil shortly after my last post, and although I do think it’s an okay game overall (especially since it’s free), the game does have its fair share of problems (such as laser beams being active for a bit too long, cheap hits only indicated by tiny, barely-animated ground tiles, etc.), and the game ends with a message basically saying that it was planned to be longer, and that the dev might finish it if given enough attention/feedback. Does that mean it’d be better to wait for the hypothetical finished game that maybe also fixes some of the issues with this version, or is this all it’ll ever be? Would saves be compatible, or would the player have to beat those eight levels again?

Plus, since the game’s short, I figured I could combine it with a post about another game, but since my luck with games has gone back to being…average, I figured I should go ahead and get it out there.

• Chenso Club
  

  3 hours playtime

  12 of 26 achievements

Hack ‘n’ Slash/Platformer hybrid. Left/right move, A jumps, X does normal attacks, Y does special moves, and B dashes. If you find a subweapon, you use it with the R button. The game does the Smash Bros thing where your different attacks are neutral, up+atack, and down+attack. I played on Standard difficulty.

The core gameplay is your standard “lock you in a room until you beat all the enemies,” but it sets itself apart from other hack ‘n’ slash games that pretend to be platformers by having some actual pitfalls you need to avoid during the battles! That said, it kinda tapers off after the second level so it ends up just being the enemies and some ground that’s higher than the other ground. Plus, I think the main reason the game even gave me platforming as far as the second level was because the game randomly put me in the Seer room who offered to make the level “harder”–and of course, the game never explains what “harder” means (in this case, it also meant “lots of barely-visible traps”).

Oh yeah, the game is also part roguelite. The rooms you end up in are randomly chosen, and they can even be the same as a room from a previous level (with the only real difference being what enemies spawn through the portals). Levels are broken up into six sections and the boss, with each section consisting of around three or four rooms, and if you die, you have to start the whole level over again.

There are five different characters (you unlock a new one for each level you beat, except the final level EDIT: and the second level), and although they all play differently, part of these differences are due to the devs deliberately making the controls less responsive (or worse in some other way). The first two characters can only attack once in mid-air, the second character’s weapon hitbox is at the end of the weapon (meaning it’s entirely possible for your attack to go THROUGH an enemy without damaging it), and both have a slight delay between when you hit the button and when your attack actually happens. The 3rd and 4th characters finally let you move and jump while attacking, but the third character has a half second delay before you can attack again, and the fourth character has the shortest attack range of them all (EDIT: the 4th character’s Y attacks are longer range, but weaker (unlike all other characters’ Y attacks which are stronger) and they force-drag you to the enemy’s position on hit). The fifth character has an actual projectile weapon by default, but it can run out of ammo, and you have to use your neutral-Y to reload because your up-Y and down-Y are also attacks that consume ammo. Plus, the fifth character has the lowest jump and shortest dash, so you have to compensate by shooting downward to boost yourself up further. On top of this, you can’t move/jump while reloading, so that’s back.

The rest of the game can also be kinda cheap. Despite your first two characters having delayed attacks, enemy attacks happen instantly, sometimes without any warning (such as the flying green enemies that’ll immediately shoot downwards once they get directly above you). The worst are the ghosts, because not only do they home in on you, they do so very quickly, and their hitbox doesn’t extend to the bottom part of their sprite, meaning it’ll look like your shot connects but it goes through harmlessly anyway.

Still, the game wasn’t too bad at this point, and I even made it far enough to unlock all the characters, so what made me give up? Turns out, the game treats the final level quite a bit differently than the others. First, it isn’t part of the stage select; you have to pick another level and go through at least one enemy wave there before you can transfer over. Secondly, enemies in the final level are much more damage-spongy and deal a lot more damage to you than normally, making the game’s already cheap elements that much worse. Plus, the game suddenly decides to go hard on the platforming side of things (despite how underdeveloped it is in the rest of the game), with large gaps between platforms and even parts where you have to fall below a floating wall and dash upward on the other side to progress…all while being hounded by enemies that are very much not built around being part of a game with level design. Oh, and instead of being screen-by-screen arenas, the level scrolls, making the cheap moments that much more sudden. It’s here you realize why the game keeps telling you that “dying” takes away your powerups, and why getting game over tells you how many “runs” you did, and why the final level can only be accessed from another level (EDIT: and why the game stresses that you “can’t go back” after entering the final level even though dying sends you back just like normal): you’re fully expected to GRIND to get past this part. See, it’s not just dying, but ending your run at all that takes away your upgrades, including the larger upgrades that drop from bosses (the ones implied to be permanent since that’s right before the game saves). You wanna take a break? Powerups gone. Wanna try out that new character you just unlocked? Powerups gone. Normally, this isn’t an issue since enemy strength always goes back to 1 at the start of a fresh run (and your unlocked stages remain unlocked), but the game makes sure you know that enemy strength in the final level is 4, meaning you’d have to replay over half the game in one sitting (without dying!) to be at the level the game expects you to be at.

I tried six times to beat that level without grinding, and on my last attempt, I finally made it to the third section of the level, where the game suddenly decided to have the final boss hover on the right side of the screen, invulnerable, and shoot lasers at me while I had to traverse the level’s usual platforming + enemy section. The boss’s lasers are foreshadowed by a thin beam for about a second or two, but since the boss tracks your location, the only surefire way to avoid the main beam is to dash vertically right before the beam is fired–again, while also dealing with the platforming and the regular enemies. Problem is, I didn’t notice any secondary warning for when the beam is about to fire, so it’s still pretty ambiguous with the long delay between foreshadow and attack. It killed me in three hits (EDIT: despite me having 25% more than max HP due to a powerup), and the only way to try again was to redo both previous sections of the level in one go, so I decided I’d had enough instead.

This could’ve been an okay game if the final level wasn’t such a massive difficulty spike that forces you to redo so much if you die (and can kill you so quickly).