Playing Gunfire Reborn made me remember Immortal Redneck, a game I own but barely played because I didn’t like it when I tried first. I decided to give it a second try…
Coming back to it, it’s true the flaws I remember are still there. But to be fair with it, it also has at least a few good points.
-It looks very nice despite being a 3 year old indie game, and the performance is good.
-It has a decent variety of rooms, and plenty of them feature verticality, or complex layouts, it doesn’t limit itself to simple square-ish arenas.
-Movement is fast, even more with the double jump, you have 3-4 weapon slots and there is no health or shield regen, you isntead heal with health items you pick up.
However, it ends up a flawed game, with things like:
-Boring metaprogression. Buy defense points upgrades, health points, damage points, ammo count, etc. Although this is a minor issue, in comparison with the rest…
-Not only boring, but long:
Buy 75 upgrades of health. 30 of crit chance, 50 of attack, 20 of ammo, 50 of defense, etc.
-Mediocre gunplay. A few weapons are just average, most are mediocre and a few are plain bad,with no effort in animation, sound, f/x, etc.
-Some of the worst visual design for the enemies that I’ve seen. With bad animations. No/or bad hit feedback. Bad, floaty unsatisfying ragdolls. Some of them don’t properly telegraph their positions with sounds. And 60% of them aren’t particularly interesting to fight against.
-Speaking of sounds, I noticed something missing in the game: a good “tell” sound for when enemies spawn in the room, to avoid enemies appearing behind you and hitting you without noticing what had happened.
-Several character classes, but the differences aren’t that big.
-The random scrolls you find are mostly boring, 75% of them are just nice bonuses to have and won’t change how you play.
-And now, after playing some hours, I actually noticed a big flaw that I couldn’t see before: for a roguelite, the experience is really very static, because the enemy spawns are much, much less random that I supposed. I’m not sure if they are 100% static or not, but after a while I noticed how room A with the thin column always have 4 teleporting guys, how room B with the central pillar the enemies is always a group of boards, how in room C there is always two hanged mummies in the side corridors, etc.
Also, first time I reached the 5th floor and the game stuck a monster in a wall:
I had to give up and kill myself in the lava.
(and no, it wasn’t accessible through another path behind or below it the wall, I searched the room four times before giving up).