Enter the Gungeon – PAX East 2015 Hands On

As part of the Devolver Digital entourage at PAX East 2015, Dodge Roll Games are on the show floor with their  gunfight dungeon crawler, Enter the Gungeon. Playing as one of several of selectable heroes in the game, players will set out to seek personal absolution. The only way this can be achieved is if they locate the Gungeon’s ultimate treasure, a gun which can kill the past.

Reaching this ultimate prize will not be easy as there are many enemies along the way who want you dead. These foes are called the Cult of the Undead and they are dastardily characters who stop at nothing to prevent anyone from advancing in their dungeon. Expect to encounter multiple different types of enemies, traps, and other tactics along the way. Here is probably a good spot to let you know levels are procedurally generated and the game is a rogue-like. Yes, this one is not for the faint of heart.

Like the developer’s name says, players will need to “shoot, loot, dodge-roll, and table flip” in order to clear rooms within the labyrinth. And now for the obvious, there are many guns within Enter the Gungeon. Due to the fact that the game is a rogue-like, you’ll die often and lose everything but the more you progress the greater the loot pool becomes. Thus more and more guns will become available in subsequent playthroughs. During our hands on, the developer used backend tools to show us some of the more advanced weapons in the game. Expect to be able to cover the floors in gasoline and then throw a cigarette to ignite the floor. Other weapons consist of guns with black holes and some will even launch green poison on the floor.

Enter the Gungeon will appeal to fans who like games like the Binding of Isaac, Geometry Wars, Diablo 3, and Dark Souls. While the game is created in a 16bit art style, it does contain elements from the aforementioned titles. The team is still hard at work on the game but expect this gem to launch on PlayStation 4, PC, Mac, and Linux before 2015 is up.