Gunnhildr Reviews

Awesome game, plays sorta like a scifi Binding of Isaac, really cool, high difficulty curve at the start. Unique about this game - Weapons have infinite ammo, but can overheat, in order to reduce heat you need to jump and dash, sort of a "Move or Die" type mechanic which keeps things fast paced. Really awesome Idea, and something that makes it stand out amongst other games of the genre.

For an Early Access game, this already has a depth of story, dialogue, and gameplay that is intriguing and entertaining. I might not always have the controls down yet (dash to cool down is all well and good until I'm surrounded and agitated and don't remember how to click the buttons), but I am driven to get better at this. Fairly generous drop rate of items and power ups, so there is always something new to consider. I genuinely feel like this deserves consideration from anyone watching the trailer and wondering, "hmm, is this for me"? It is also wonderful to have what seems to be good support for 32:9 screens natively! The number of settings within the menu is also nice to see even in Early Access: with the right rig, even Fantastic graphics settings flow smoothly. Nice job, RatDog! Excited to see where this goes from here.

I love the idea of the game along with it's gunplay- but that's all the game has going for it right now. The voiceover is choppy, the levels are all mostly the same, and the game is ridden with bugs left and right that require you to just throw away a run to even try to play. Most progress triggers in the tutorial don't work, forcing you to manually skip sections of the tutorial via the pause menu. I look forward to what this game could become with steady development, but it's not worth purchasing yet.

Very fun game, sad final release no more update D:

EDIT: Came back a few months later, here's my take on the updates. I've invested a few runs into this game and feel like I've seen enough to give a first impression at least and help others on the fence about this game. First off, I love roguelikes, especially ones with tangible, permanent progress and good variety between runs. I feel like, so far, this game provides that, but here are a few points I'd like to call out. Pros: - Gunplay feels good and solid - No ammo; you just are left managing heat, which is reduced via double jumps and dashing - Same with grenades, no item management, only a recharge - Weapons have an excellent variety; even if you run across the same gun, the stats and bonuses on it will be different - A lot of good feeling paths for upgrades think investing cells in Dead Cells - The powerups have a mix of basic ones and epic, impactful ones - The melee attack is excellent at pushing people away, and the finisher you can do for extra currency is pretty nice - UI is clean and easy to use/understand. I especially like the heat indicator around the crosshairs - Rooms have many traversal options: doors, elevators, trap doors, and what looks like explodable walls. Meh: - The story and lore spoke as you go through levels are fantastic but hard to follow and somewhat choppy due to him pausing when the action starts then picking back up again later. Shorter, more contained stories would have been better, in my opinion. Cons: - The grappling hook knack you get feels good until you try to let go. You basically can hook shot to a wall, ceiling, etc., and you stay there. You're supposed to be able to jump to let go, but I've jumped more than three times in a row and remained stuck to the wall. In the tutorial alone, I fell into the pit four times, I kept jumping to use the grapple again, but I never knew which jump would be "the jump" that got me free. Also, god help you if you accidentally press it mid-combat, RIP - Kinda along the lines of the regen. If you lose your shield mid combat, and there's multiple enemies left, chances are you're toast. No real mechanic to hide or heal to help you out. Update: - Guns seem to be more interesting with more mods - The game seems to give out upgrades more often which is nice - The bad part is those upgrades don't feel impactful (2% grenade cool down, 0.01 shield regen per second, and I even had a +0 grenade count a few times) - The boss icon over the doors helps you from getting lost - The persistent up grade system is still great - The shotgun seemed odd? I would shoot some people point blank and only seem to take about 25% HP off, where others would die in one shot, of the same mob type. - The story is still rough to follow. Just when he starts to talk I am jumping into another room. I guess you could just sit there in an empty room mid run and listen to it. - There is only one boss, after that you just start over. Returning to this game I beat it my first run and was disappointed to know it was over so soon.

An interesting rogue-like shooter. I like the art style, but it's really rough around the edges on the technical side. I'd only suggest picking it up on a sale.

Wooow, this is some pretty janky shit. I know its early access and stuff, but uploading this alpha stage demo to steam? Really? Maps look the same. Effects looks like they were made in ms paint. Fov just resets with dashing. You cannot rebind melee. Dashing and jumping sounds like a revolver for some reason. The AI is supercrap. And my favourite: you you can see the radius for explosions, but if you are near the radius you still get damaged. WTF DUDE? The only two good parts are the voiceover, and the weapon cooling mechanism. This game needs at least 4 more years.

I still haven't beaten this game yet, but I'm hooked. It's not perfect by any means, but when it sings, it sings a beautiful, siren song. The weapons feel good, and each run sees you trying to assemble a play style that you enjoy, or salvaging your luck and making due with the circumstances, making an interesting challenge. There's a bunch of hidden stuff to look for too! Overall, it's worth the time and money to investigate this hidden gem

I played Gunnhildr on stream with one of the developers in the audience. We had a great time chatting about the game, and laughing at my lack of skill at it. Gunnhildr is a roguelike first person shooter with procedurally generated levels, enemy layouts, gun drops, and weapon/player upgrades, all dressed up in a unique sort of techy Norse mythology skin. It's somewhat like a cross between Doom and Binding of Isaac, and takes inspiration from a lot of well known entries in the genre. I can't speak for how much content is currently available in the game, as I wasn't able to make it past the first miniboss, but even in its current state of Early Access, there is a large variety of player and weapon upgrades that affect the game in fairly major ways, a small arsenal of weapons to choose from, and enough unlockable upgrades to last a player for quite a while. The developers are always working on fixing bugs and adding new features, and post regular updates on their public discord group, which they also use as their main development channel. If you're interested in seeing the development process of the game, that's the place to be! Personally, I found Gunnhildr to be rather difficult. My skills at aiming with the mouse in most first person shooters in general are not great, but combined with the lightning fast movement speed, emphasis on constant use of movement abilities, and the pinpoint accurate weapons currently present in the game, it was very hard to be effective at everything at the same time. I would do alright against a couple of enemies at a time, but any time I entered a large room that contained more enemies, I was only able to avoid taking damage when I had some of the more overpowered upgrades that allowed me to clear the entire room quickly. A single shot from an enemy seems to deal about 50 damage to your shield, with melee attacks dealing slightly less. After your shields are depleted, any amount of damage will kill you, but it doesn't appear that damage that removes your shield carries over to your health, making the game feel a little bit like Sonic, in the sense that as long as you have any number of rings, you'll have a second chance to get back into the game. That being said, the only way to regain your shield is to clear the room and use your currency to recharge it, or to do a special finisher move on a stunned enemy. Enemies only become stunned when you hit them in their weakpoint, which is a small white power core on their chest (in the case of the large berserker enemies, it's on their back, and the small melee enemies don't seem to have a weak point). Much of the time, enemies hold their weapons and arms in front of their chest to take aim at you, so getting a shot on the weak point is no easy task to begin with. Once it's done, you have to enter the special finisher move by hitting the melee button while looking directly at the enemy. If you're not looking at the right spot, you'll do a normal melee attack instead, which usually ragdolls the enemy and removes them from their stunned state, wasting your chance to get your health back. You're also able to accidentally kill them, dash into them, or have them die to an environmental effect before you get your special move off. After all that, if you're lucky enough to successfully get the finisher to work, it rewards you with a measly 10 shield energy, meaning you'd have to perform the move five times before having enough shield to block a single shot! Do take my notes above with a grain of salt. As I said at the start, my skills in first person shooters in general are not great. I'm sure more experienced players would have a much easier time dealing with the situations presented in this game, but I think it's worth taking a look at the game from a casual side as well. I think much of the frustration I had could be mitigated by a few changes to the finisher move, such as moving the weakpoint to a location less obstructed by the enemy's geometry (such as their head, a fairly typical "weakpoint" location in most shooters), making it more difficult to knock enemies out of their stunned state, and increasing the detection area for finisher button presses around the stunned enemies. In the end, I had a good time playing Gunnhildr, and I'm sure other players interested in FPS roguelikes would have fun with it as well. I found a few technical hiccups during my playtime, such as an enemy spawning on top of the level geometry, but overall the game ran quite well. I'm sure things will only improve as the game continues its development!

Gunhildr isn't going to win any awards, but what it does win is my respect for atleast trying to big something much larger than what its budget clearly allowed for. The foundation is here, decent story with lore galore, decent weapons with decent movement and enemy variety, and decent ideas like the overheat mechanic. Nothing here however is above average, its all decent which would be fine for a $10 or even $15 game, but the $20 price tag puts it into whole new bracket, filled with titles like Gunfire reborn, Noita, even Spleunky 2 is only a single Andrew Jackson. Im not saying the game is bad, but you need to do better if you're going to price it so high with so many A+ titles. At max currently, a $10 game to play when you're bored. Assuming they make a sequel, try to make a more interesting draw to suck people in. You could have told me this game was made in 2015 and i'd 100% believe it, it screams Unity just from the screen shots alone. I respect the effort, and look forward to a potential sequel.