[Review] GunSlugs

• Review Device(s): HTC One S, Asus Nexus 7

A couple of weeks a go we brought you news that the much anticipated 8 bit shooter, GunSlugs, had arrived for your gaming pleasure. Now it is time to see what we think of it.

The Gameplay itself is very entertaining. You have a number of characters to play with, that you earn as you go through the levels. You start off with a guy and a girl, called ‘Johnny Rumble’ and ‘Gun Chick’ respectively.

When in the actual game, you start off being air dropped in with the premise of deactivating the beacons. Of course, it’s not going to be that easy. Along the way you have entered enemies spawn seemingly at random and being air dropped in. To help them, they have tanks, walkers like those from War of the Worlds, grenade launchers and flame-throwers… These are a whole lot of fun once you pick them up and learn how to use them properly.

Naturally, you’re going to want to see explosions when you blow things up. GunSlugs have your covered, complete with blast radius, which can lead to some rather premature deaths if you are not careful with the barrels and mines.

To help you the levels there are the odd buildings that you can into. These are possibly one of my favourite features. Not only can you get more health and ammo. But there are some side games and other random features, including; a princess that looks rather like Peach, a 4 colour Game Boy styled auto scrolling mini game, a jukebox, and a place to buy checkpoints. The Game Boy version is pretty fun.
As you go through the game you pick up coins for blowing stuff up, which allows you to buy the checkpoints.

Something else that is rather cool is that the levels are different each time you play them thanks to some sort of randomisation wizardry that is in use. This means you can go back countless times to do levels, which you will, as it is not the same. The general feel stays the same period area.

As you may have already suspected based on the previous games by Orange pixels, the graphics are very retro, and awesomely made. The characters are well animated and it is quite clear who they supposed to be. The levels are well designed, as are the animations for the weapons and explosions.

This is another area where GunSlugs excels. The soundtrack is actually amazing. The chiptunes are really catchy and go with the game so well. If anyone cares, they’re by Gavin Harrison (link).

The controls are nice and simple. You have 4 action buttons as well as pause. The 4 buttons can be moved around the screen to suit how you hold your device, which is useful on a tablet such as the Nexus 7 as the default controls are a little far apart for comfortable play.

Overall, OrangePixel have done another amazing job with GunSlugs. It’s chaotic retro shooter awesomeness. What’s not to like?

And to make it a bit easier for those with a Nexus 7. You can find it on the Downloads Page. And yes,  I know, it works with a plugged in controller. I just like wireless sometimes.

We will also have an interview with GunSlugs dev Pascal Bestebroer posted this week!

They didn’t lie when they said it was chaotic…