 Hey everybody, I know I said I'd have a video about Neo and Neo 2 next, but instead I spent the last couple of weeks playing Destiny 2 and a small little indie game that's so good I think I should get up a quick video about it. Every time I do a video about a small little game It gets half the views I normally get except for that one time I made a very early video about dead cells. But if I convince even one person to spend $13 in this game I'll be pretty pleased. So yes I'm still working on the Neo video and the best RPGs of the generation And I feel like a video about Destiny 2's future is something I want to do But today let's talk about a small indie roguelite FPS from a first-time dev from Hong Kong The game is Gunfire Reborn and this is why you should buy it today And as always be like what I have to say or at least how I sound saying it do us both a favor and subscribe Yada yada yada after the logo. I buy a lot of games too many honestly And even so I've still got like 60 games on my wish list I've also got like an embarrassing pile of games I bought on sale and played for like an hour and a half when you count replaying old games They're just so many great games out that a title usually has to hook me very quickly This is especially true for indie games I assume I'm like most players in that I tend to purchase the big releases and only really go shopping on steam for Games when there's a month or more without a title coming out Well, we're in one of those months now and I went diving through steam trying to find something new Steam's recommendations, which have gotten much much better in the past year or so said that I seemed to enjoy games with the tags FPS roguelite and indie game That's all true So it recommended a game with only about 250 reviews that is an FPS roguelite indie game very clever steam The game's 1299 and that's about the price point where I can comfortably feel like it's no big deal if I waste my money I generally don't return a game unless I think it's terrible Like the first game I returned in ages was recently and it was Resident Evil 6 because I was blown away at how terrible it was But for the most part if I think a game is even reasonably decent I hold on to it. This means I have a massive pile of unfinished games in my library So I should really stop taking chance and buying new ones still again 13 bucks is the price point where I don't feel Guilt anymore. I mean hell I can't count the number of times I've either hated something I got at a restaurant for that much or had a few drinks and threw them up later So as it was priced right and because steam told me so I bought the game gunfire reborn and right off the bat There's something interesting just in the title. It's kind of clunky. Almost like there's a translation issue gunfire reborn That's kind of weird. Well gunfire reborn is exactly what it looks like It's an indie FPS roguelite that doesn't speak English very well Translations on items and tooltips is bad very bad so bad you occasionally can't figure out what the game's trying to communicate This would be a terrible first impression But luckily by the time you pick up an item and puzzle over what the hell is description means You'll have noticed something shocking That gunfire is a very very good shooter and that you're holding the gun with tiny little pause Because you're a Chinese cat or really a cat from Hong Kong, I guess I mean, I don't want China to kick me off YouTube So Hong Kong belongs to China and the destiny of the Chinese people cries out for one people in one nation Okay, let's move on by talking about that shooting for a little bit Shooting and looting Lots of times when I play shooters I kind of try and put my finger on what makes one shooter feel so much better than another It's a weird thing really I mean you put a gun on the screen and a little target reticle in the center and then you click on the bad man's head until he dies Any game that does those things should more or less feel like any other game that does those things But in practice, this is absolutely not the case One of the best examples of this is the difference between Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3 These games have the same enemies the same art style many of the same guns And yet Borderlands 3 feels just thousands of times better to play. I recently played a demo of a game I've been waiting for it's called hellbound and it's basically a throwback to doom or quake similar aesthetic similar weapons no reloading circle strafing and yet the difference between this and this is massive Why? The answer to that question goes a long way to explain why gunfire feels so good Just as a shooter a great feeling shooter is a mixture of a bunch of little things Hado enemies react when you shoot them. Do the guns look good? Do they sound good? Do the animations look convincing? Do the arenas act as spaces that give the player options for combat or are they just a room? Gunfire reborn does almost all of those little things right. Let's start with the enemies First off each of the three levels currently in the game have enemies that require specific responses from the player And they all feel unique and interesting to deal with not only is the art design of the enemies just adorable But their attacks and roles are legitimately interesting and well-designed The game has enemies that will slow you down enemies that let you on fire Enemies that charge you that snipe you that teleport some that summon exploding minions It has little crabs that lob explosions at you and a tremendous tank like enemy That's called get this the arrogant lobster. I mean that is objectively awesome Gunfire borrows the damage matching system from Borderlands, and it works just as well here Enemies with the yellow armor bars are weak to corrosion Blue shield bars are weak to shock and health is weak to bullets and fire This means that players will constantly be switching between their two weapons enemies are fun to fight here because of a mix of their Animations their attack patterns and the sound it makes when you hit their weak spots Positive feedback goes a long way to making a shooter feel good things like an enemy staggering or hearing the ping sound when You shoot their heads or watching an enemy shield break after you shoot it a bunch or even something A seemingly banal is how the damage numbers pop out of your enemies All this contributes to how the game communicates to the player here crits and super crits Which the game calls lucky shots pop up on the screen and combined with sound and enemy reactions To make it feel really good when you're melting an enemy who gave you trouble in your last run You improve at the game by learning which enemies must go down first and using cover and the environments as well as your skills To take down threats with the right skill elemental effect and gun Each of the levels has about six or seven unique enemy types and the game combines those enemies in challenging ways and puts them in Interesting arenas so the combat is always satisfying Even when you progress enough that you're just face rolling the first level as far as the weapons that are already in the game There is definitely a meta and that some guns are immensely better than others But that is always going to be the case in games like this almost all the guns are original in art design feel and sound Let's check out some of that sound design animation watch Now I normally like my shooters to have fast movement and that is not the case here But the combat is fresh and the enemies are fun to fight and the arenas have enough going on Tactically that I'm okay with movement being very slow The game has a dash dodge that's useful in combat and just crucial in boss fights I only twice found this scroll that let me dash dodge three times in a row and it was amazing But it's relatively common to find items that increase movement speed by 30 percent Or cut the dash cooldown from three seconds to one second I still think the game would be better with the movement speed and dash cooldown being Defaulted to what these scrolls accomplish, but that's a matter of taste I suppose and it certainly makes finding those items exciting Speaking of which let's talk about the items and progression within each run It's definitely a roguelite There are two basic forms of roguelites out there There are the permanent death ones where each run ends progression completely And you eventually advance through skill and unlocking different items that can drop in future runs These are games like binding of isek enter the gun jinn nuclear throne Streets of rogue and risk of rain Then there are games that have that plus a layer of permanent progression thrown on top Having this second layer progression means that even when you fuck up you at least still have gotten more powerful for your future runs These are games like dead cells Hades rogue legacy And gunfire reborn I love all of these games and isek is one of my very favorites ever But I find the latter games easier to enjoy at the beginning because dying doesn't mean me throwing my keyboard out the window and scaring my dog Gunfire reborn perhaps more than any other roguelite. I've played Heavily leans into cross run progression This is because getting better items with crazier afixes isn't just luck In order for those things to start appearing and drop with better stats You need to unlock them and Invest in the skill tree that makes them more common to drop This requires several hours of playthroughs until the really crazy combos start appearing Not only that but hugely crucial things are on this skill tree things like how much damage resistance you have increased damage with guns your critical damage multiplier Skill cooldowns how many grenades you have in fact when I first started I kind of thought this was cheap because a huge part of being able to progress is beyond your skill You're very unlikely to beat the second area until you've upgraded your damage at least a little bit And the third area requires you to have really invested in crit damage This rubs against all of my hardcore gamer instincts, but yeah, it's actually pretty neat The reason it works so well is because the skill tree and upgrade currency isn't grindy as fuck And it's perfectly tuned to that as your skill is improving your stats are also improving It's a major accomplishment that the progression feels so damn smooth and linear But a great roguelite needs more than smooth skill progression and power growth My favorite roguelites are the ones that allow stupid synergies that take you from struggling to obliterating everything in your path That is the hook that makes me click start over and over again after failing Because in the rare instance that everything comes together and you get the right items with the right rolls and the right upgrades It all feels so damn good As an example, this little kunai weapon here is a beast. It sounds great It looks cool and it applies the corroded status effects that slows enemies by 50 percent And you can get this thing with a 400 percent increase to crit damage And then 50 percent more to enemies who are in the corroded effect And then also makes them explode on death and apply corrosion to nearby enemies now to be clear You usually won't get that group of affixes But you can The amount of effects that can roll on guns is just large enough to make the powerful combos feel rare But not so rare that the pool is flooded with mostly garbage and is therefore frustrating So the game has a borderlands-like weapon system that rolls random effects on guns That's a huge part of each run's progress But then on top of the guns there are scrolls that affect your character And these scrolls use risk of rain system where finding the same one multiple times improves it So you'll find a scroll that adds two more grenades Then you'll find another that adds four more and then you'll find the final one that adds eight more So you have like 16 grenades and they now make enemies explode when they die There are scrolls that improve elemental damage Scrolls that improve or change your super ability, which for the cat is an energy ball that freezes mobs and then explodes And in a unique twist you can drop scrolls if you no longer want them Or if your teammate wants the one you've got from a chest like the guns There's not a huge variety of scrolls, but because there's three levels to each one There are more than enough so that each run is definitely different and it's rare to fully max a scroll out It's rare, but it happens In one run I ended up with maxing out both lightning and crit damage, which increases those elements by 120 OP builds are just common enough to keep you playing I'm not totally sure I love the idea of locking pure damage increases on a skill tree As I do think it devalues how well you play and makes the later levels pretty brutal early on But that's the way the game's made and in total it is very fun It's early access Gunfire reborn is an early access game This means it's likely to see changes to systems and hopefully some more content But to be honest what's already here is good enough Polished enough and has enough content and progression to keep you playing easily for 50 hours In my opinion it is well worth $25 and at 13 it's an example of an indie game being a tremendous value The fact that it's well-designed Fun and content and feature rich does not mean it's perfect. However Here's the part of every video where I nitpick a bunch of shit that annoys me Gunfire plays really really well as a two-person co-op game In fact, I would say that this is the optimal way to play it If you've got one other person to play with then you will have a great time However, when you use the matchmaking system, you'll be put into a four-person game And I don't think it actually works that well like this Many of the maps especially early on are very small and with four people enemy counts are ludicrously increased as well as the health of enemies I find that many things on the screen distracting So I think the game doesn't play as well with four people as it does solo or with two However, I find there are some solo issues as well The final boss is exceedingly chaotic especially in the final phase and feels like it's almost been totally balanced for multiple players This boss spawns adds has an aoe attack that engulfs an entire third of the arena And spams ridiculous amounts of projectiles and aoe poison orbs When you're playing with other people It is very rare to have every one of these attacks aggro on you And if you die in co-op your teammate can revive you There's even an entire skill tree devoted to improving the speed and survivability of reviving your teammates But playing solo it's kind of too much to keep track of It is asking a lot of a player to kill three mobs and a heavy and watch the floor for an insta kill boss attack And shoot the boss and shoot the big projectiles from the boss and dodge bullet health skulls And shoot poison orbs that slow and poison you it makes me mad man It's unlikely that this boss will be redesigned at this point So you're just gonna have to understand that unless you are running a very powerful build and weapon loadout that allows you to melt adds and orbs instantly This will be the source of repeated frustration In fact, I'm gonna go out on the limb here and say this fight is total bullshit solo unless you are running an awesome build at the time I'm aware that rogue lights should be difficult. I like them difficult But this final fight feels kind of ridiculous I mean it's impossible to look at the floor if it takes 15 seconds to kill the enemies that spawn because they are incredibly tanky A bunch of the items are very strangely categorized Some of the most common ones are ridiculously great while many of the rare legendary ones are garbage I just find it kind of crazy that one of the rare legendary scrolls increases your damage by 30 But eliminates your ability to crit like that is insane and terrible But then some of the common ones are amazingly good This isn't a translation issue. It's just a weird balance issue I mean, it's nothing huge or game breaking, but it's something to keep in mind In fact, it probably works in the favor of the player to be honest, but still it's pretty odd The translation problems are a serious serious problem I honestly don't understand what some of the things do because of how they are translated Also, I think the second class is clearly inferior to the cat After a while, you want to lock a little dog that you can play as The issue is he's completely less viable in solo and duo play because of his skills The dog is salvador from borderlands 2. His skill is gun-zirking This sounds cool But many weapons don't really work very well like this because a lot of them are single shot And playing with a mouse the weapon on the right is of course mapped to your left click But then when you dual wield you end up with a disorienting fact that suddenly your right hand is mapped to your left click And your left hand is mapped to your right click Maybe this isn't an issue for others, but I've always found it weird when games do this Now salvador is my main in borderlands 2 and dual wielding is fun But when you compare a brief dual wield and exploding grenades to an ability that completely freezes enemies in place for up to six seconds And then explodes as well as grenades that do damage over time and make enemies move 50 slower And applies corrosion which then lets you find guns that do double damage to enemies in corrosion It's obvious the cat is way more powerful as a class Finally the game has a bunch of like secret areas and most of them are very cool But several of them feature platforming challenges and they are awful Just absolutely terrible First person platforming is very hard to get right It requires smooth movement and this game while it is an excellent shooter does not have smooth responsive movement You move slow. It feels kind of off Sometimes you'll press the spacebar and the guy won't jump and then almost all of these platforming challenges require jumping and dashing But the dash is on a three second cooldown Which means that you jump dash land and then wait literally for three seconds then jump dash land Wait for three seconds. These areas are timed challenges. They're terrible. Just terrible Okay Guys, that's it for today. No deep analysis or literary references this time Just a heads up about a game that you should buy right now It's not perfect and it certainly has a bunch of room to grow But what's already here is just great With the right support and a few more levels This game could be as good as any of the other roguelite hits out there And I deeply hope that this game does become a hit if you like shooters or roguelites Check out gunfire reborn. All right. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye