#alien trap

Gunhead is a great generator for stories like this. Every stage is a miniature heist in a claustrophobic space station, taking down system after system to work your way to the squishy brains of the craft. And like a great heist story, there’s plenty of pleasure in seeing a plan come together, but the real stories are the ones where something goes wrong--where a small overlooked detail causes a chain of disasters, or your own arrogance puts you in a situation you should have never been in. 

The 3D follow up to Alien Trap’s action roguelite Cryptark, Gunhead follows your small crew as you do jobs for The Corporation, pouring over blueprints, making plans and attempting to salvage what you can out of abandoned space stations.  Play cautious and careful and you generally get out with a few scrapes and a decent haul of new weapons and items. So of course The Corporation offers big bonuses to make sure you do anything but that, and makes sure to berate you when you fail to achieve them. 

To breach these ships you’ll hop into one of a few mechs, each with their own armaments and traversal abilities. The default has a decent blaster and a jetpack that recharges quickly, while others might exchange some armor for unlimited jetpack use, a grappling hook or load up on the armor and forget the jetpack entirely, opting for a few double jumps instead. Universal to all are the four armed weapon system, allowing you to quickly rain fire on a target when fully equipped. One of my favorite combinations was an explosive and projectile weapon on the main arms, with a grappling hook and pile bunker, allowing me to inflict big damage with hit and run tactics. 

Unless you have big cash reserves, you’ll rarely be going in with your ideal loadout. Operations are subject to the luck of the draw, and while you can purchase certain weapons ahead of time, it’s not feasible to do for every run, meaning you’ll be improvising with whatever weapons and powerups you can find on the ship. 

The loop of planning and improvisation is the central joy of Gunhead. Satisfying weaponry and traversal are plenty common in roguelites, but the time spent on the map screen adds back a bit of the cerebral elements often cut from action roguelikes, and introduces a more immediate sense of short and long term planning to the mix. It plays well with the narrative framework, giving each level the sense that it’s another day on the job, but also a tense situation that can possibly lose thousands of dollars in assets that your team needs to keep themselves afloat. Progress IS inevitable, but success isn’t--at least not for anyone but The Corporation. 

The narrative isn’t a strong presence in the game, but it is surprisingly good flavor. I often find myself quickly exhausted with quippy crew members in other games, but Gunhead’s writing and voice performances are just enough to keep the crew endearing, and not annoying. The Corporation continually watches and evaluates your every move, and the contrast between their dialogue and the crew fills in enough to suggest a greater world.