Gunlocked

It’s a good game, one of the best shmup, but I can’t recommend it and tolerate the developer’s attitude. On PC, I can’t play it properly because of the bug with full-screen mode, the bug the developer is aware of but hasn’t fixed. On the Nintendo Switch, the game is so poorly optimized that the later stages literally become a turn-based game. And honestly, I’m tired of making excuses for a small indie developers who can’t fix technical issues. I’m not Donald Duck with a pool of gold coins, I can’t just throw money around left and right without being able to actually play the product I paid for. P.S. And yes, I bought the second game too, but it turned out to be incredibly bland.

[b]6.0[/b]/10. Although the execution wasn't perfect, I can see the potential of a game like [i]Gunlocked[/i]. The pieces are there. The weapons and powerups are good, the gameplay loop is a fun, progressive challenge (once you lower the difficulty to account for the spongy enemies that make early-run gameplay a boring chore) keeps you coming back for more, and the pixel-art presentation looks pretty great. But it still falls a bit short of being easily-recommendable. The main issue certainly revolves around early-run mechanics. For the most part, starting weapon options are either too slow-firing or too weak to be effective, and you'll find yourself struggling to level up sufficiently for the first boss fight even though you're unlikely to take much damage until that point. Considering that your weapons all autofire, it's hard to blame the player too much. The parts of both survivor-likes and vertical shooters that are typically fast and satisfying become boring and mostly unsuccessful grinds. Once you lower that difficulty, though? The whole experience takes off. The problems I had with *Gunlocked* didn't really arise from the mechanics; they're mostly derived from some insuffic…

A Survivors-Like but in a shoot-em-up! Cool idea, and seems to be executed well, I'm just not too into roguelites atm so setting it aside.

just a great little appealing game.

6/10 solid foundation, but in desperate need of a large QoL and balance update. All hitboxes are rectangles, but many enemies are very much not rectangular. There is no way to view the stats of your weapons/utilities, and a very significant number of upgrades are stuff like "+10% damage" or "-0.5 delay", so you just kinda have to Know what everything is. There is also a lack of external information, steam only has 2 guides, one listing all achievements and one listing all symbionic upgrades, and i was unable to find any game wiki.

Really good roguelite especially for the price. Slick presentation, smooth gameplay, satisfying bullet heaven combos, lovely pixel art.