Developer: Necrosoft Games, Mystic Systems
Publisher: Necrosoft Games, Other Ocean Group, Mystic Systems
Platforms: PC, PS4, Switch, iOS, Android, PS Vita
Tested on: PC
Gunhouse (PC) – Review
Puzzle games and tower defense games have always been pretty fun games to play, but what would you get if you’d combine these two genres into one game? You’d get something like Gunhouse, a perfect combination of tower defense and puzzling. In most puzzle games, you’ve got all the time you want, but in this one, you’ll need to hurry and create your defense by puzzling and combining blocks before the timer runs out and the hordes of enemies come rushing at you.
Story
Gunhouse is specifically focused on its gameplay, therefore, this game doesn’t really offer any story content. What you do know, is that you are in control of a tower and you need to defend it from all incoming dangers. The levels of Gunhouse are divided into days. Each day, you will be attacked at three specific parts of the day, at noon, dusk and night. At nighttime, the enemies will be at their strongest, taking more hits from your defenses and eventually spawning an enemy boss unit that needs to be defeated to continue to the next day. After clearing each level, you can choose to visit the store or just continue and move on to the next part of the day.
Graphics
One of the best aspects of Gunhouse is definitely its looks. The game is very colorful and has a very unique cartoony style that looks really good. Each enemy has been designed very creatively while also being very detailed. The bosses are bigger and look even better. The neon colors used in the game perfectly complement the game’s art style and it’s clear the designers have really done their best to make each enemy look the best they can. The game doesn’t have any high definition graphics, but the style used for this game’s visual aspect doesn’t need any of that. Each weapon type you unlock will have its own color which makes it very easy to distinguish them.
Sound
The music in Gunhouse is really repetitive. As soon as you start the game, you will hear the music going on in a loop of not more than ten to fifteen seconds and it’s on repeat. This will encourage you to get the heck out of the menus and start playing as it could drive you crazy in mere minutes. The music will change a bit when you start playing, but not all that much. The music will stay very repetitive, but its volume will go down, which makes it a lot less irritating than it is in the menus.
Gameplay
Gunhouse is a tower defense puzzler that lets you puzzle blocks together while taking care of your own tower by activating the defenses you’ve just created to blow your opponents to smithereens. The gameplay of Gunhouse isn’t all that hard, but it takes a while to get used to. What does help, is that the game offers full controller support, which is a fairly easier way to handle this game.
Your tower is filled with eighteen blocks with rows of three blocks each. You can move small blocks to the sides of your tower to delete them and make room for new blocks. The empty spaces left by the removed blocks will be filled with the blocks that were sitting above the row you moved. When 4 blocks of the same color form a square, they will merge in a bigger block. These bigger blocks can be enlarged even more by adding more blocks of the same color to the sides of these blocks. When you’re pleased with the size of the block, you can move it to the left or the right side of your tower to make a gun to attack enemies at the height of the gun or a skill that attacks the whole area from above or below.
Your tower has three slots on both sides, the left ones are for guns that will shoot your enemies while the slots on the right side are for skills that attack the whole area. When a block is in-between two slots, its power will be divided over both slots, meaning it will create a weapon or skill in both slots, but with less power. You can also add more blocks of the same type to existing weapons to boost their power. The more the weapons and skills are shaking in the slots, the more damage they will deal to your enemies. In addition, a specific weapon type will be designated in the upper part of the screen. When you create a weapon or skill with the type shown, it will double its power, so it’s smart to make use of this a lot when you get the chance to maximize your damage output.
The first time you start the first level, you’ll be introduced to the game’s mechanics. In the first levels, you definitely need to find out how the blocks in your tower are going to fall when you (re)move a block underneath them. After a few levels, you should get the hang of it, making the game a bit easier to play. Each level has two phases that will switch constantly. The first phase is where you need to combine blocks to create your weapons and skills. Each time, you’ll get twenty seconds to combine as much as you can. When this timer nears its end, something that looks like a garage door will start falling down. You can’t interact with any block behind this gate, so when it starts dropping, make sure to be fast and make your last changes to create that last block before you’re too late. When this phase is over, the enemies will start coming at you and you can attack them with your created weapons. This phase will end automatically after a short while to let you puzzle again and create new weapons for the newly spawned enemies. These two phases will keep rotating until either your life has been depleted or until you’ve defeated all enemies.
Your loadout will consist of three different weapons. These can vary from ice weapons, to fire and many others, up to twelve different types. After each level, you’ll get the chance to enter the store and spend your hard-earned money to buy new weapon types, upgrade your already-equipped weapons, improve your tower’s health and even buy armor for your tower if your health is high enough. As you progress you’ll notice that your enemies’ defense will increase, meaning you need to upgrade your weapons to keep obliterating them.
Aside from the normal game mode, you can also take on the game’s survival mode. In this mode, as the name implies, you’ll have to survive for as long as you can through the days you’ll play in the normal game mode, but without the option to go to the store and upgrade your amount of health and weapons. You’ll have three types of weapons, namely the Iglo, Dragon and Skull weapons. With these three weapons, you need to survive for as long as you can. This game mode is specially built to be a lot harder. Your score will be determined by the money you’ve earned when your tower has been destroyed by your enemies. Survival cannot be saved, so quitting to the main menu will automatically end the Survival mode, meaning you need to start over again.
Conclusion
Gunhouse is a great combination of a tower defense game with puzzle gameplay. The time limit you have each time you can combine blocks to create weapons will always keep you puzzling as fast as you can. In the beginning, it can be really hard to hold out against the waves of enemies, but as you get better and learn to make some easy combinations, the game gets a lot easier and a lot more fun. The twelve different types of weapons add a lot of diversity to the game, which makes it interesting to try different loadouts to see which weapons you like best. If you like puzzling and tower defense games, Gunhouse offers a perfect combination of both. It can keep you entertained for hours as it doesn’t really get boring at all.
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