Back in the day Doom and Quake had a style of play that was totally incongruous with their creepy gothic/hellish (delete as appropriate) level design and atmospheres. No cautious advancing and room clearing for them, no sir. Movement was everything. If you wanted to survive, you never stopped moving. Since then FPSs have assumed a more deliberate pacing, and even more recent id games like Doom 3 are rather stately affairs. In general it’s been left to games like Painkiller and Serious Sam to hold the Bunny-hopping Torch of the Circle-Strafer. Until now…
Tower of Guns is more of an id game than most recent id games. It looks… well… look. It’s been a long time since I watched a trailer and my only reaction was a long pause followed by “Holy shit.”
Bullet hell games are great. I suck at them, but I like them. A lot. And I like Serious Sam too. Here we have Serious Sam after a heavy night snorting pure, uncut Gradius. I think I might be in love. Also, the music is just perfect. Even the studio name – Terrible Posture Games. I giggled.
Tower of Guns is out in March. Until then go and drool at its Steam page.
I will however dispute the popular community tag of “roguelike”. There’s more to that than random levels. Grr. Is Minecraft roguelike? Solitaire? It’s not even turn-based. Stuff off with your roguelike tag.