Exit here.
Exit the Gungeon, a spin-off that follows in the wake of 2016’s Enter the Gungeon, presents itself as a bright, whimsical game that is part dungeon-climber, part bullet hell. Whilst it’s far from a pure shmup, Exit the Gungeon attempts to stand out from the crowd by virtue of its gun-randomiser ‘blessing’ mechanic.
Let’s move.
Let’s start with the good. Enter the Gungeon has a certain style and humorous charm. The dialogue for the tutorial level is genuinely amusing and the comedic writing doesn’t feel too forced or cheesy. The pixel art style is smooth and colourful. The game looks and sounds good.
MSRP: $9.99
Platforms: PC (reviewed), Switch
Unfortunately, as soon as the player exits the tutorial and enters the gungeon in order to exit the gungeon again, the charm starts to wear off. SimultaneousShooting and moving (and dodging, in this game) is a staple of any bullet hell game. Enter the Gungeon makes this needlessly frustrating, and this isn’t due to its restrictive spacing. The game just feels unwieldy andclumsy.
The biggest cause of this awkwardness is, in this reviewer’s opinion, the control scheme. It simply doesn’t work well for a shmup – or even a shmup-lite. For some inexplicable reason, Enter the Gungeon has a ‘fire’ button (which needs to be held down for auto-fire), rather than simply operating as a twin stick shooter. This makes manoeuvring far more cumbersome than it needs to be – with the game’s emphasis on moving, jumping and dodging, it’s difficult to understand why developer Dodge Roll made this choice. It took a little while to adjust to, and simply does not feel intuitive.
Loadout lottery.
Exit the Gungeon has another major flaw – its gun blessing mechanic. Exit the Gungeon prides itself on having a variety of creative and eclectic guns – there are bubble guns, grapple guns, banana guns, and regular guns. Some of these are amusing and really fun to use. However, the blessing mechanic removes the element of choice from the player and instead, guns randomly swap out after a set period of time. It’s basically a loadout lottery.
This lottery means that there are times the player will be stuck with a high damage, low fire rate weapon. Inevitably, this always happens at the least opportune moment. In a game that is predicated on dodging an onslaught of bullets and enemies, having to wind up time-consuming shot after shot whilst waiting on the next gun to cycle through is incredibly frustrating.In practice the control scheme and the key game mechanic simply do not function together well. Instead, this fusion only serves to hinder the player – things don’t feel fluid or natural.
Do not enter.
Exit the Gungeon is ultimately neither a good bullet hell game, nor a particularly fun experience. All in all, it’s a pretty bite size offering that lacks the variety one would expect from a full PC title. The lack of a twin stick control scheme, combined with the gun blessing sweepstakes and the requirement for constant jumping and dodging, means aiming at enemies isn’t fluid.
The blessing mechanic effectively feels like a mod – something a player might try out for fun, or to change up their experience with the game, or to add a new challenge into the mix. In reality though, there is unfortunately no uninstalling this feature.Players are better off sticking to mobile, or more sophisticated shmups.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
