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Wildcat Gun Machine is a bullet hell dungeon crawler indie game developed by Chunkybox Games. Enticing players with an overall solid bullet-hell experience with minimal downtime between, gradual difficulty bump, on the move decision making and a steady influx of new items/spells. Gameplay is coherent enough, it doesn’t try to stand-out of the crowd, rather introduce another stepping on point for further exploration for this specific genre. Where it did surprisingly great was its soundtrack and weapon/enemy variety with them introducing new mechanics constantly, and then testing you if you can remember what each enemy can do. Another one of those games where mastery is rewarded and figuring out how to deal with each obstacle is a satisfying feeling.
Gameplay:
With it being a bullet hell at the forefront, we must focus on crowd control, ability cooldowns and following projectiles, as these mechanics will lead to victory. Wildcat Gun Machine starts off being of course easy and welcoming to new players, but as we get more and more into the game it gets gradually more and more unforgiving with more enemies, harder hitting weapons, reduced armour and health pick-ups, and much more. You start going through rooms and beating enemies, whilst trying not to lose much health along the way. From time to time, you get your usual specific room challenge with narrower tiles, so that dodging can be harder, lasers that fire when you get close so that you have to choose whether to stay back. These specific rooms add to the challenge and each player must decide how they would engage them to hopefully not get too overwhelmed.
Progression is serviceable, with each beaten boss you get more and more weapon and skill upgrades. To unlock all these goodies they first need to be bought from a store at the start of each level, letting you choose what to bring, as inventory is limited. You can imagine them as sections of 4-5 weapons on offer and with that section being a set level, and after beating a chapter another set is unlocked. With the steady introduction of enemies, mechanics, weapons, interesting world designs and even for a game long but a few hours, it’s still serviceable.
Another aspect worth mentioning is how the overall checkpoint system works, where when you die you can respawn right before that specific room, but only a few times. After losing all respawns you are brought back to the start of that level and must beat all enemies again up to that same room, and this time to hopefully beat it. Respawns are represented with ethereal cats which were a surprising addition and added to the overall style.
Graphics:
Graphics are always up for debate, as one graphical style could be to the liking of some players, while these same graphics can be atrocious to others. Wildcat Gun Machine brims with creativity when it comes to their enemy designs with them being fleshy/robots with grotesque features. World and environment design is on the backend, as most has gone into those aforementioned enemies and unique weapons.
Music and soundtrack:
Here they did great in terms of soundtrack, even from the start menu when the dark/disco music sets in and the highly stylized menu snaps into place, it’s great. Each time music kicks in its overall great and with every boss having their own unique song never hurts. On the other hand, we have every single weapon and monster, each weapon does have its own unique sound, but they weren’t that different to each other or specifically sounding ‘punchy’ enough. Sadly with it bugging for me so that sound just disappears, it didn’t help its case. Monsters suffer the most from just a bite sized 3-4 second sound looping over and over, I don’t know the reason for it or if it was done so that another aspect could be improved, but this was a heavy let-down.
Customization:
Almost non-existent, but it doesn’t suffer from that. Changing which weapons your character holds is the only visual change there is, but as stated in the previous sentence, it doesn’t suffer from that.
Weapon variety:
Here they did great, weapons are plentiful and offer different play styles, you have your classic ones that just boost up damage with each new weapon, piercing weapons that damage everything in a shot path (extremely useful), exploding ones like RPGs or grenade launchers (great for crowd control), energy beams (great for bosses), heat detection (for when you can’t be asked to focus on who is important and just want whoever is closest to die). Wildcat Gun Machine implements interesting mechanics to break up the monotonous gameplay of a bullet hell, and if it does or doesn’t, it’s a question that each player must answer for themselves.
Difficulty:
Gradual but understandable. The difficulty in Wildcat Gun Machine is constantly ramping up with newer mechanics being introduced to the player. Bosses were lukewarm for me, as most of them were just staying in place and just shooting projectiles everywhere, if they were trying to corner the player at all times it would have increased their challenge significantly, nonetheless they were still well done. Difficulty is great throughout the whole game, but it slightly suffered at the very end. At the end you are tasked with defeating each enemy again in a constant barrage of enemies and projectiles. Except for that specific moment at the end, in which difficulty ramps up way too harshly for comfort everything else was well done.
Visual and Gameplay Bugs, Crashes and Such:
I did encounter some visual bugs from guns not changing to what I have equipped, specific sound cues being cut-off for instance not hearing enemy fire or your own, spells not activating, getting hit by invisible projectiles. A few bigger ones that needed a full-fledged restart thanks to my weapons deciding not to fire or the respawn button doing nothing. It definitely needed more time in QA than what it got, even if it’s for a pretty short game.
Replayability:
Wildcat Gun Machine does offer many weapons with which each player can experiment with, but with those aforementioned sets of weapons, the previous set gets outmatched quite heavily with enemies becoming semi bullet-sponges even if you are slightly behind. In addition, with it being short in terms of overall playtime and weapons only being viable for a set amount of time, Wildcat Gun Machine is a game you play once, and if you like it that much, try to go through it again but with a different style.
DLC:
Wildcat Gun Machine has just one DLC (so far) and it is called a Supporter Pack. With this addition you get two exclusive weapons skins, the whole complete soundtrack (which is surprisingly good) and a companion called "Captain Chunky" which follows you around. It's a pretty cheap overall DLC and it is an additional way to support the developers, but as always, the decision is purely individual for each player.
Wildcat Gun Machine is a solid entry point for those interested into the bullet hell genre and it does offer an option for experimentation, even if it’s to a very limited extent. For about 4-5 hours (it took that long for me) it’s a pleasant experience and an easy game to beat in a session or two. Sadly, with it being filled with gameplay and visual bugs they severely brought down the overall experience.
You can find Wildcat Gun Machine on Windows (Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG.com, Humble Bundle, Green Man Gaming, Xbox App), Xbox (One, Series X/S), PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch.
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