Enter the Gungeon Review - Shell is Other People

[Encaen]

Enter the Gungeon Review - Shell is Other People

Enter the Gungeon has just about every kind of gun you can name, imagine, or hallucinate in a fevered delirium, but there's only one gun you care about; the Gun That Can Kill the Past.

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[Baresark]

It's more like Isaac meets Nuclear Throne. It has a deep system of synergistic effects like Isaac has, but it has the great gameplay of Nuclear Throne. Great game.

 

[Cowabungaa]

It's more like Isaac meets Nuclear Throne. It has a deep system of synergistic effects like Isaac has, but it has the great gameplay of Nuclear Throne. Great game.

Interesting. I was really disappointed by Nuclear Throne's roughness but I loved the concept. So I might give this a go when I can afford it.

 

[sXeth]

It's more like Isaac meets Nuclear Throne. It has a deep system of synergistic effects like Isaac has, but it has the great gameplay of Nuclear Throne. Great game.

The synergy doesn't come into play often enough, I find. The review kind of mentioned it too. The RNG and very limited item opportunities generally seem to combine poorly.

I enjoy the basic level of the gameplay, but 30 and change runs in, usually hitting third or fourth floor, and I've only managed to luck into an actual synergy once. Maybe twice if you consider boomerang+molotov launcher a synergy.

 

[Amir Kondori]

This game is amazing. Any roguelike fan should pick it up.

 

[Amir Kondori]

It's more like Isaac meets Nuclear Throne. It has a deep system of synergistic effects like Isaac has, but it has the great gameplay of Nuclear Throne. Great game.

Interesting. I was really disappointed by Nuclear Throne's roughness but I loved the concept. So I might give this a go when I can afford it.

Roughness? What do you consider roughness? Nuclear Throne is one of the most polished games in the world in terms of game design and feel.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Roughness? What do you consider roughness? Nuclear Throne is one of the most polished games in the world in terms of game design and feel.

In terms of game design, yes it's extremely solid. But it did really feel like a slightly fleshed out prototype. I can taste the GameMaker through it. It didn't help that because of that there was an issue with AMD graphical cards it ran very poorly when I bought it.

Now that it's working well I'm having quite a bit of fun with it. But now that I also got Enter the Gungeon the feeling that Nuclear Throne is a fleshed out prototype hits me even more.

 

[Callate]

I think someone needs to hold a workshop or seminar for independent game authors on how it's possible to use RNG in your game without generating game worlds that are a waste of a player's time and that random/procedural generation, while arguably a good way to extend your game's longevity and available assets, is a terrible excuse for not balancing your game properly.

Any time a "rogue-like" generates a play session that causes a reasonable player to say "this would have been enjoyable if only the game had spawned 'x'/not spawned 'y'" is a place where the creator probably should have intervened and imposed a rule or two on the series of random tables that created their game world.

 

[weirdee]

It's more like Isaac meets Nuclear Throne. It has a deep system of synergistic effects like Isaac has, but it has the great gameplay of Nuclear Throne. Great game.

The synergy doesn't come into play often enough, I find. The review kind of mentioned it too. The RNG and very limited item opportunities generally seem to combine poorly.

I enjoy the basic level of the gameplay, but 30 and change runs in, usually hitting third or fourth floor, and I've only managed to luck into an actual synergy once. Maybe twice if you consider boomerang+molotov launcher a synergy.

same thing happens in isaac tbh, where only some seeds are actually favorable to the point where you can make it all the way to the actual end

I think someone needs to hold a workshop or seminar for independent game authors on how it's possible to use RNG in your game without generating game worlds that are a waste of a player's time and that random/procedural generation, while arguably a good way to extend your game's longevity and available assets, is a terrible excuse for not balancing your game properly.

Any time a "rogue-like" generates a play session that causes a reasonable player to say "this would have been enjoyable if only the game had spawned 'x'/not spawned 'y'" is a place where the creator probably should have intervened and imposed a rule or two on the series of random tables that created their game world.

you could see the process in real time in starbound's development, where randomly generated worlds started off with no apparent means of player progression and massive dead zones with no purpose were refined over time to include more set pieces arranged in a meaningful order to provide a experience that the player actually wants, instead of merely being "different" for the sake of it

space may be unexplored, but it's also got a lot of really boring parts that you should skip

 

[sXeth]

It's more like Isaac meets Nuclear Throne. It has a deep system of synergistic effects like Isaac has, but it has the great gameplay of Nuclear Throne. Great game.

The synergy doesn't come into play often enough, I find. The review kind of mentioned it too. The RNG and very limited item opportunities generally seem to combine poorly.

I enjoy the basic level of the gameplay, but 30 and change runs in, usually hitting third or fourth floor, and I've only managed to luck into an actual synergy once. Maybe twice if you consider boomerang+molotov launcher a synergy.

same thing happens in isaac tbh, where only some seeds are actually favorable to the point where you can make it all the way to the actual end

Even farther in now, rescuing NPCs does add more chances to get items. But they're often still in shop form. Shop form is a problem because the money is so broadly random. I've kept track for 25 runs now and its a range of 19-123 for the first floor. Which adds the double layer of both having to roll up decent, and ideally synergistic items, and having to roll the cash flow up to acquire them. Even chests often require buying extra keys, as keys seem to be the rarest drop even if you do steadily clear rooms in fashion to raise your Cool(luck) stat.

The framework's there, it just seems like they need to tune the drop for Casings and maybe Keys. Or make them not so omnipresently necessary. Or more of the unlock encounters should be challenges like the pinball target range, and not just a 2nd/3rd shop on a floor.

 

[Amir Kondori]

Roughness? What do you consider roughness? Nuclear Throne is one of the most polished games in the world in terms of game design and feel.

In terms of game design, yes it's extremely solid. But it did really feel like a slightly fleshed out prototype. I can taste the GameMaker through it. It didn't help that because of that there was an issue with AMD graphical cards it ran very poorly when I bought it.

Now that it's working well I'm having quite a bit of fun with it. But now that I also got Enter the Gungeon the feeling that Nuclear Throne is a fleshed out prototype hits me even more.

I don't think I can disagree more with this. I've got over 700 hours into Nuclear Throne and I'm the kind of guy that pours thousands of hours into games. Nuclear Throne is a tight design from start to finish and I don't know if you've ranked or looped but Nuclear Throne is 100% the better designed game.