GUNGUNGUN

GUNGUNGUN is self-described as “a frantic bullet filled 2D arcade arena shooter.” Although the core gameplay is fun, the overall scope of game is rather limited. Yet if you are in the mood for frantic fun in a small package, this game might just be what you’re looking for. With a title like “GUNGUNGUN,” be ready for a fusillade of fun as you shoot, dodge and rack up a bounty in this title.
STORY
The Prologue is both a tutorial and the only real story bit you will ever receive in the game. The female protagonist (whom I’ve grown to call GIRLGIRLGIRL) decides to steal from a group of presumed bandits but is caught in the act. The bandits give chase as she scrambles aboard a nearby train to escape her pursuers. This is a just framing device to explain the enemies and level theming.
GAMEPLAY
In this game, its all about the guns and shooting. There are 8 different guns to collect and use, ranging from pistols to even a heavy-duty rifle. You start out with your default USP9 pistol and can carry any 1 other gun to fight back against the bandits. There are 4 enemy types to fight in this game:
Bandits who use pistols and shotguns to shoot at you
Knifers who charge in, swinging knives
Bombers who carry dangerous TNT payloads
Heavies who can soak up 2 or more entire magazines before dropping
Alone, none are particularly dangerous. However, as an arcade arena shooter, you will have to constantly deal with numerous of these enemy types on screen at once. Each brings a unique threat and coming in groups makes them even more dangerous. The game is thrilling as you try to last as long as you can in a given stage.
Each stage has a varying layout with several platforms/ levels to stand on. Each platform is solid so good positioning is a key as you cannot simply jump up or fall down/ through a platform. Enemies will either parachute in, jump onto the train from horseback or even just fall in from the sky. Each stage is made more engaging as platforms essentially become death traps once enough enemies start pouring onto it and surrounding you. Although holing up in a corner may be safe, can you kill enemies fast enough to keep it that way?

The game has some neat features as well to help make combat more fun. For example, you have an innate double jump to avoid projectiles or get to higher platforms. You can shoot enemy projectiles to destroy them and it only takes one shot to do so. You can crouch to avoid bullets, but I scarcely used it.
Being an arcade game, the only real objective is to see how high you can get your score. In that regard, once you play a few rounds you see everything the game has to offer unfortunately.
Likewise, there are a few game design decisions that make gameplay a bit frustrating. Firstly, you cannot switch your default USP9 for any of the other handgun-type guns. It is mostly there as a reserve gun, but it is outclassed by every other gun in the game. I seldom used it outside of the first few seconds of a level or for the related achievements.
Reloading is manual only. However, I see this as more of an intentional choice for realism.
Next, you pick up guns by simply walking over them. The headache is that you cannot CHOOSE when to pick up a weapon; you will automatically ditch your equipped gun if you make contact with a new one’s hitbox. This means that you may accidentally throw away a weapon you like because you had to relocate and run over a gun drop (which is very frequent occurrence). Compounding onto this, you must wait out each reload fully, even if you switch weapons mid-reload and the new magazine/ chamber is full.
The conditions for health pack spawns are also mysterious if not inconsistent. Sometimes I play a level and none spawn at all. Sometimes I get 2-3 within minutes of each other. In a game with limited hitpoints and infinite enemies, it honestly feels like RNG if I would survive longer than 5 minutes. Additionally, health packs despawn over time and are auto-consumed upon contact. Thus, getting a health pack is even more annoying as you can’t properly ration them out.
Nevertheless, GUNGUNGUN is a game I can pick up at anytime and have fun due to the simple yet engaging gameplay loop. This is a game that definitely tests your skills and reflexes.
VISUALS
Overall, I think the pixel art is pretty good. It is very abundantly clear who/ where your character is and what type of enemy is on screen. The train cars/ levels are believable and have realistic designs. Backgrounds seem to have received less attention but each is distinct from the others. The gun designs are excellently crafted and truly reflect their real-world counterparts. Bullets are distinct and you can see when one is coming at you.
There is even a hat store where you can trade in the gold coins you receive at the end of every mission. The hat economy seems unnecessarily grindy for the bottom row as they cost several hundreds of thousands of coins to purchase. To put this in perspective, you usually receive around a thousand gold per level assuming you perform well.
My biggest complaint is that there isn’t more full art of the characters which is very cute and expressive.
I liked the snow stage the least because the yellow bullets are hard to distinguish against the pure-white background that is constantly scrolling by.
The game has an innate camera shake to it to simulate firing a real gun, but sometimes it is a bit too much and I start to feel dizzy/ nauseous after extended play. I wish there was an option to toggle it on/off or at least lessen it.
AUDIO
There are only a handful of 8/16-bit musical tracks to listen to, but they are all pretty good and have an energetic feel to them. However, they are all loops and a bit short.
The gunshot sounds are very well-crafted and I could feel the passion put behind them. They all sound distinct and satisfying to shoot. The other sound effects are also quite good.
PERFORMANCE
The game ran perfectly well for me. However, there isn't a dedicated pause button. Pressing Escape simply terminates the current session and brings you to the main menu without your post-round rewards. As an arcade game, I am split on this decision.
Keys can't be rebound nor can you preview controller layouts. Discovering the controls is purely trial and error.
Steam screenshots also seem to not work for some reason so I unfortunately can't share mine here.
OVERALL
As “a frantic bullet filled 2D arcade arena shooter,” I feel that the game definitely delivers what it is advertised as. Gameplay is very tense yet fun due to the endless hoard of enemies and colorful variety of guns at your disposal. I commend the developer for their vision to keep said guns accurate to their real-world counterparts. Nonetheless, there are some game design blemishes that impacted my overall enjoyment of the game.
Yet for a small game at a reasonable price, I can definitely say “give it a whirl” if arcade shooters are your thing.
7.5/10
WORTH A LOOK
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I got the opportunity to try this out at PAX East, and I'm glad I did-- I found a fun game, I learned about a sale price, and I was able to pick up a copy for myself. The game is very straightforward and fairly easy to pick up, and leaves no illusions as to what you're supposed to do. You shoot things. You shoot the shit out of things, and you do it fast. I tend to shy away from shoot-em-up platformers out of habit, but this is honestly a fun one.
Now, I don't even have half an hour logged in this-- but it took even less time to see what the game has to offer. It's at this point where I note that this is, as stated, Early Access, so I wasn't expecting this to be a 10-hour playthrough. It's fast-paced, quick restart, high octane arcade gameplay. The "Bounty" system (the coin payout at the end of a match) is a little slow at first, but if you rack up good combos and dedicate a few minutes, you'll get thousands. I'm not kidding-- thousands. And at the moment, the only thing to do is buy accessories, worth 20 coins apiece.
I don't think I need to explain how I'm the schwayest GUNGUNGUNner.
There are a couple of little bugs (Hats disappear when you crouch, the game froze up when I chose Quit, small hiccups) that aren't much of a bother for an Early Access. They come with the territory. For a five dollar game (or three on sale!) with more to come than what it's got, it's a GREAT timekiller and I look forward to seeing what's next.
PROS
Cool style/theme
Solid gameplay
Varied maps
These maps are all on trains (so far)
I'm serious, trains are great
Accessories provide a reward for your progress
That Henry rifle, man, holy hell
Controller support
CONS
No keybinding/controller layout to learn controls
A couple of minor bugs (to be expected)
Limited gameplay (also to be exptected)
I can't wear all of the accessories at once (still expected)
TL;DR
Great $5 fast-paced arcade-style time-killer that's going to have more stuff. Not a bad deal at all.

i already played a bunch of this game on the gamejolt release, but why have that for free when i can pay the people who masterminded this game a few bucks?

I think this is a very well-designed game and it is really fun and very challenging. It's easy to get used to and straightforward to play. Each game takes a few minutes at the most, well, for me anyway. There are a couple of small bugs, but this does not affect any overall gameplay.
It plays as a survival shoot-em up platformer. Your character is a female lead who is running away from bandits after stealing their money. The goal is to kill as many bandits as possible and gain more bounty money so that you can purchase hats from the hat store. *I am not sure if there is a whole lot more to this at this time, this is what I have gathered from my time on the game so far.*
The overall setting for each game is a randomly generated stage that is fairly limited in scope, on a train because your character ran onto a train to escape everyone coming after you because you took their money. There are small platforms and there are a number of dropped guns/ammo/health, etc.
It has a lot of replay value, in my opinion, though if the stages were larger, that would be nice too. Due to the short nature of each game, it is a great way to get a quick game in if you are in a hurry.
It would be great if you had an option of which guns to pick up instead of just picking up everything you run/walk into because if you are trying to hold onto a gun while jumping into a pile of loot to get ammo/health, you will inevitably pick up another gun. You only get your starting weapon and one other gun that you pick up. Everything has unlimited ammo, so the ammo drops are just to quickly fill up your gun mag without having to wait for the reload delay.
There are very few enemy types to be found in this game. In fact, as far as I can tell, there are four of them. Here's your enemeis. 1. There are the standard melee gunts that comes after you and tries to slash you from arm's reach. They walk and jump in blind directions, so it is a bit odd, if they run past you with their swining knife, they do not turn around and try to come at you again until they have reached an obstacle when they stop to think. I suppose they act like berserker out of control until they come into a obstacle and they then think from there. 2. There are the gunmen who are armed with various guns from the game that aim and fire at you. There is a small glitch associated with these gyns in that if you are standing right on top of one, (as in your sprite overlaps the enemy,) they seem to fire their gun without the ability to injure you. Of course this is only temporary and you usually do not stand still for very long. Of course you are also unable to injure them with your gun of choice should this situation occur. 3. There are dynamite men that carry a small bundle of dynamite and no matter whether they set the explosive next to you or you kill them and the explosive drops, they will all explode and cause massive damage to you and enemies alike, if within the blast radius. 4. The final enemy are the heavies that are heavily armored and fortunately they do not carry guns. They try to walk up to you and slash you to death. They walk slowly and seem like they should be fairly easy to dispatch, but when there are a couple of them coming at you and several other enemies near by, they can form a pretty deadly gauntlet. (perhaps there are more enemy types that I have not come across yet. I still find it difficult to survive consistently beyond 3 minutes per game.
The bullets are different sizes and speeds, giving the game a rather dynamic feel. In addition, you can fire at and destroy enemy fire, so jumping/ducking/running away are not the only ways to deal with enemy fire. I like this aspect of this game, gives you just that one more option to avoid being hit.
I ran across a glitch that involves the gun gallery unlocks in the extras menu. For some reason, I have had enough Kalashnikov kills, and it now reads a negative unmber to unlock that screen. Other gun screens unlocked without difficulty. Otherwise every time I quit the game, the game crashes instead of quitting properly, which is not a big deal. It has only crashed once on me mid game.
All in all, this game is fun and a good addition to a general library. Despite its difficulty, it also has a learning curve and you have 5 health to start, so you do not have to keep restarting in those unforgiving one-hit kill games.

I don't remember how i got this game. I think i watched a video on game development on YouTube and the YouTuber recommended this game that "his friend" made in GameMaker. I think it's pretty neat though when you want something simple, fun, retro, slightly fast-paced and arcade-ish. Even if the game itself isn't liked it's still a worthwhile purchase because of the soundtrack and low price.

A quick and fast-paced 2D shooter with randomly-generated arenas and a ton of different guns to massacre hordes of enemies with. The gunplay looks and feels great, and building up combos feels very rewarding and gives you an incentive to keep a killstreak going as you dodge your way around. While there isn't a ton of content to be had here at the moment, with only a few enemy types and one game mode, GUNGUNGUN will be sure to fill that need for Contra-like gameplay for you and a friend.

Takes you back to the days when Mom forced you to go do laundry with her in the laundrymat and you found yourself playing arcade machines trying to beat your highscore.
GUNGUNGUN is mindless fun that makes you want to stay alive for as long as possible. What feels like 10 minutes turns out only to be less than 3 minutes, and what feels like hours is only actual 6 two-minute rounds. As time elaspses, the amount of enemies increase, making it harder to keep track of who is shooting, when to jump, and who you should be shooting to keep your combo higher. You just get so into the action that you eventually start making dumb mistakes that could've been avoided.
For a game that was just released, it seems to have everything in order with only minor kinks that don't completely ruin the gameplay, but should be looked into.
-Pressing ESC will take you to the main menu and end your game
-Double jumping removes your cosmetic
But for a game I snazzed for only $3.99 (on sale), very fun.