It worked so well, and so fast, that I can honestly not remember a playable version of the game that did not have the mechanic.
Enter the gungeon series#
The entire team counts Dark Souls among their favorite games, and including the i-frame laden dodge roll from the Souls series was an early suggestion. When we discussed merging a bullet hell game with a dungeon crawler, we immediately started talking about hot to “pull an Ikaruga” - or otherwise give the player a way to deal with the massive amount of bullets, that wasn’t just weaving through them.
The dodge roll is the first mechanic other than shooting that went into the game. Why did you include a dodge roll option in the game? My favorites are probably Gatling Gull- because he was our first boss and has had the most refinement, the Beholster- because he is the easiest symbol for our game and what we are trying to make (D&D meets bullet hell) and the High Priest- because his attacks are ruthless and varied, and mastering him means you are probably good enough to beat anything Gungeon is going to throw at you. After that, our gameplay programmer (David Rubel) would start experimenting with bullet patterns, which the whole team would give feedback on. In general either our artist (Joe Harty) or myself would pitch the idea for the boss, and as a team we would hash out the basic details. The design process for them is fairly varied. How many bosses are there in the game? What are your favorites? Always having to care about the active reload was a bit too much- but it worked well for advanced play. Eventually we decided to put this feature onto an item because we found that players really had enough things to worry about and learn when they started playing. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who don’t agree with that decision, but I enjoy learning the rhythm of a gun and its reload timing.Īctually, when we first prototyped the game, all guns had an active reload system very similar to Gears of War. Why no auto-reload? And were there any inclination to incorporate a quick-time reload system?ĭuring development we briefly had auto-reload, but the moment of tension created by needing to reload is something that the whole team appreciated. The Demon Head should be familiar to Shadow Warrior fans, and the Serious Cannon will drive Sam fans mental. The Bounty Hunter Arm will be a favorite of Metroid enthusiasts. The Mega Hand will make Megaman fans happy. The light gun is an obvious reference to the Zapper from the NES. There are a huge number of guns in our game inspired by other games. I would get into work one day and he would just say “ Hey you should check out this Lamp gun I made.” Many of the funnier or wacky guns came came from our artist. We honestly just messed around over the course of two years. How did you come up with the designs for the guns? I don’t think we quite hit that mark, but Zelda dungeons and the layouts of the Gungeon share various similarities in structure. I like to say that we tried to teach our game to make Zelda dungeons. The biggest challenges for making a procedural dungeon are: 1) making it fun but fair, and 2) making it have a sense of structure. "These designs are very much influenced by the Legend of Zelda, with a splash of D&D." We created a room and played it over and over again, and then structured floor layouts based on rules that we think make good dungeon designs.
Enter the gungeon generator#
We quickly realized that the game was going to be more fun and more fair if we hand designed the rooms. This made teaching the generator layouts a bit simpler.
Enter the gungeon trial#
It came out of a great deal of trial and error. Was it challenging to come up with the procedural generation algorithm for a dungeon crawl game? How do ensure that whatever room that comes out of that procedural generation is fun to play with? Other influences include Wasteland Kings (Nuclear Throne), Spelunky, Dark Souls and Metal Gear Solid. Sitting above my desk is a signed boxed copy of Super Meat Boy. Edmund McMillen is a personal hero of mine.
Binding of Isaac is one of the most wonderfully designed games I have ever played and it was easily the biggest influence on Enter the Gungeon. Were there games that you drew inspiration from?Ībsolutely. We hashed out the basic lore of the game over lunch, and the rest slowly fell into place over the first weeks of development. I asked a buddy what about a game called “Enter the Gungeon” and he just said: “ Yes.
(Beginning with an explanation of its unique name.) Can you tell us the idea behind the game? How did you come up with it?ĬROOKS: I was listening to Doseone and Kozilek’s Gun Godz soundtrack, and the next day the word “gungeon” popped into my head. We spoke to Dave Crooks of Dodge Roll for more background on the design decisions that went into making this surreal dungeon crawler.
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