Guncho

Excellent puzzle type of game in the vein of Hoplite, Vactics, and ENYO…I’d say it’s more fun than ENYO, and slightly less fun than the other two. Has great potential. Various suggestions for the developer would be some new upgrades (the upgrades seem frustratingly limited) and made it more quest-like with a branching story similar to Vactics-FTL and added more upgrades choices and LEVELS to play, then it’d be even better, and more bosses and boss fights. Right now it’s very short, being just The Normal Game and the Expert game. I do think it’s awesome that since I bought the game I noticed that new enemies were added and it really spiced things up a lot, with the shot gun guy, fire arrow guy, and barrel guy. I really like this game.

I am impressed with the consistent quality of games from Arnold and his teams. Guncho is as great a game as Card Thief and Card Crawl. They are all deceptively intricate mechanically, but there is no deception in Guncho. You will realize quickly that the game is unforgiving and each encounter is open to several solutions. I appreciate player choice a lot, especially when it meaningfully impacts the story or gameplay, so I am already hooked. The game is free and not freemium/pay-to-win/etc. Normal mode and daily challenges are available to the player for free without any interruptions. This is consistent among several of Arnold’s games. It is a breath of fresh air in the bloated selection of free mobile games. While there are no interruptions in the free version, it has significantly higher stakes. When you die in a stage, you have a limited number of replays, but these can only be activated by watching ads or purchasing the game. This is the standard of how ads should be implemented, and it says to me that Arnold actually considers the player’s enjoyment when he develops a game.

Bug Report: (“report a problem Just says bad gateway and I didn’t see reporting on linked sites): if leaping away from dynamite the dynamite pushes you away after the leap as though you had been standing next to it. Seems to be checking start of turn flag or something to decide if pushback. ________ This is something to point at regarding smart, concise game design. The controls are smooth by being integrated with the core game mechanics. Typically used do a lot of sub-menu hunting to indicate intent, but this game keeps interactions tight. One of the core conceits, that your direction of shooting is tied to the bullet representation and selection display *seemed* like it would be too surreal to work, but interacts deftly with the pace and strategy of the game. (Adding a bit of planning and play, but not bogging the game down.) Atop all that the game is high-impact + strategy, which makes for fun plays where you set up moves to avoid, attack, and use opposition and environment to your advantage. Great game. Easier to pull up rules for environment objects would be nice though.