Gunbrella [Game Review]
This past weekend I played through Doinksoft’s Gunbrella on Switch, also available for PC. Cutting to the chase – I loved the game.
In Gunbrella, you play as Murray, a woodsman who goes on a mission of revenge when he finds his wife murdered. His only clue is the titular gunbrella, the weapon used to kill his wife. Murray travels through a world decayed from pollution and overexploitation of natural resources, blasting through cultists, monsters, ghouls, and a corrupt corporate police force. The game is a 2D side-scrolling action game, with platforming, gun combat, and some adventure game elements. The story touches on themes of environmentalism, corporate greed, and class stratification, effectively but without much subtlety.
During his journey and investigation, Murray talks to a large cast of colorful characters. The writing brims with personality and humor, and is one of several highlights in the game. This, along with some of the art, music, and sounds, reminded me of Dingaling Productions’ Lisa; this is definitely not a bad thing. As an aside: if you haven’t played Lisa, each game in the series was finally recently released on console and you should buy them.
Devolver Digital
In your interactions during the story, there are a few moments where you have to make some choices that will impact the world of the game to varying degrees. I feel like I made some bad choices in my playthrough, but the game is fun and short enough to replay to see other choices play out. My playthrough took a very satisfying six or seven hours, but I bet I can bring it down now that I know what I’m supposed to do. Part of that time was spent replaying the first chunk of the game, since the demo progress on Switch unfortunately didn’t carry over to the full game. Even so, I sped through what took over an hour initially in less than half the time.
Let’s get to the real star of the show: the gunbrella. It’s not just your weapon, it’s also your main tool for traversal. And traversal in this game is pure joy. Opening the gunbrella gives you momentum in whatever direction you aim, giving you very speedy mobility. Once in the air, leaving it open lets you float down with precision. After jumping, you can only get a momentum boost once until you land or wall-jump again, but there are tricks you can do for even speedier movement such as using the gunbrella to dash along the ground, quickly aiming into the air to get some lift, and then opening the gunbrella again for a double aerial dash with more lift.
Sam Kahn / Devolver Digital
Just like the movement, combat is snappy and has a great feel. As a weapon, the gunbrella works like a single shot shotgun by default. It takes time to reload, with upgrades shortening the wait. There’s unlimited shotgun ammo; most other types of ammo you pick up have limited uses, and you can’t carry much. While much of the special ammo is powerful and useful, I found myself almost never using it because the action of the default gunbrella shotgun just feels so good.
The game’s detailed pixel art perfectly conveys the oppressive nature of the game’s world. Things are dirty and grim. I love when games effectively use lighting effects in a 2D environment, and Gunbrella nailed it. The game’s default film grain effect setting also contributes to atmosphere; I left it on. There are also some very cool, stylized blood splatter effects for the environment during combat. Really, I eat it up when games look like this.
Devolver Digital
I had only two pet peeves in the game. The first was the inability to skip some cutscenes, which is important on replay or after death. I had to fight the final boss a few times, and each time I had to watch the beginning animation of the fight. The second was the inability to sell or trade items in bulk. There's a character that takes a certain item in trade for either money or upgrade materials, but instead of giving her all you have at once, you’re forced to trade one at a time, repeating all of the associated dialogue each time. Selling in the shop, you have to go through selection and confirmation multiple times instead of selling a whole stack. But really, these are the least of things; they weren’t tasks I was doing constantly.
Gunbrella is another triumph for Devolver Digital. I can’t wait to see what the Doinksoft team does next, especially since I think this game is much better than the already excellent Gato Roboto.
