While smartly they aren’t required to progress through the game’s already nigh-impossible climb, it does add some interesting incentive for replaying past stages allowing any die-hard players an option after completing the game’s few hours of content. The game also tasks you with collecting floating green orbs called atomiks that dot each level. It’s not just running and gunning (and jumping) that gets you through RunGunJumpGun’s insane universe of 120+ stages, however.
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Bouncing between space tv hosts to shifty bandits, there’s an interesting stylised vision here that feels genuinely unique. The game’s vibrant colour-scheme and trippy pixel asthetic pairs well with its equally colourful cast of characters, reminiscent of some sort of Mad Max in space. Instead, it takes a backseat to the action only reminding you it exists in small moments between levels via short sentences that connect across different acts. Allegorical tones of climate change can be found here as the game portrays a universe on the brink of disaster, but it’s never in your face about it.
Taking place on three planets, each run by a different tyrannical warlord, their sun is dying as it begins to burn up every planet in its wake. With death so prevalent in the game’s design, it only makes sense that its story circles around a giant dying solar system. This all comes together to expertly dodge what could have been an incredibly frustrating and shallow experience. As you play portions of the game repeatedly it constantly keeps the action moving, making it hard to ever put the game down. However, it’s that same idea of getting back into the action that lends the game it’s addicting nature. The design of the game mirrors its approach to death as multiple moments require countless replaying before a solution is ever understood, and then even more before you could ever even pull it off. The game uses this simple idea to turn replaying stages from a chore to a reevaluation that’s incentivised in the your past mistakes without ever losing the fun. Without any time to rest after dying, there’s a constant feeling of progression even if you’re stuck playing the same level over and over again. Mercifully respawning you at the beginning of each stage the game gets you back into the action as quickly as possible. RunGunJumpGun takes a slightly different approach. Stopping short of calling it the Dark Souls of action platformers, that comparison is still somewhat appropriate (albeit clichéd and lazy) as it teaches you valuable lessons with each and every failure.Īny other game might assume the obvious choice for handling failure is to penalize the player for it. Stages are assorted similar to a Mario game with three worlds that are divided into acts and each act divided further into individual levels. It turns the fairly easy-going nature of Flappy Bird’s design, one in which you must gauge your lift appropriately to dodge obstacles and hazards, into a gauntlet of patience and frustration. All of that may sound like an exercise in some sort of twisted masochistic behaviour but it instead somehow turns that bang-your-head-against-a-wall feeling into something fun and rewarding.
By constricting your control to two buttons – one that shoots in front of you and one that shoots below you creating enough lift to propel you through the air – it forces you to keep moving at the game’s breakneck speed. Its premise has you running and shooting your way through dying worlds at the edge of the universe. RunGunJumpGun’s odd name may not make much sense from the outset but once you dip your toe into this LSD trip in space you’ll begin to understand what it’s all about.
For as unsettling as the end of the universe can be, ThirtyThree’s new action platformer RunGunJumpGun is able to find tons of fun in the perilous final moments of a dying solar system.Įvoking familiar moments of other difficult indie games, this painfully appetising explosion of colour and sound will have you coming back for more even after your hundredth time dying on the same damned stage.
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