Finished yesterday's new release, Gunbrick: Reloaded (by Nitrome), and I figured I'd give my thoughts to anyone considering picking up the game.
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Absolutely worth picking up. Once again, Nitrome have crafted an excellent puzzle-platformer by taking a simple idea - the
Gunbrick - and building upon it through incrementally harder level designs and gimmicks.
You control the Gunbrick - a brick with a gun on one side, and a shield on the other. You rotate as you move through stages, and to progress, you often need to orient the Gunbrick in some way, to aim the gun in the right direction. If you aim the gun down at the ground, you can propel yourself upwards; aim it sideways, and you push yourself in the opposite direction (the recoil). The game gets complex when you need to figure out
how to use these ideas (rotation and recoil) to get yourself to face a certain direction in order to progress. The review from
EGM sums the idea up far better than I have.
The game starts off simple, but by slowly increasing the complexity of the required movements and then by introducing new ideas into levels, the game ends up feeling very satisfying to progress through, with a great sense of cohesion between levels. Levels are short and fairly focused, usually focusing a core idea or two. The game features 48 levels, 12 of which are unlockable through the main campaign, plus the original 10 levels from the Flash version of Gunbrick (all the way from 2012). The only levels which stick out as bad are the 3 boss levels, at the end of each Pack -- they're just a bit clunky and not overly engaging to play through. The game lasts roughly 5 to 6 hours, if you go for 100%.
The game has the same general art design as Bomb Chicken, Nitrome's earlier Switch release, which lends it a simple yet charming look. The music is equally "simple yet charming" - nothing you'd listen to on repeat, but enough to lend each set of levels their own identity. The new content in this Reloaded edition are the 12 new isometric levels, which are far more complex than the majority of the main campaign. They have the same great design philosophy as the main campaign, but I do feel they run on for too long.
In all, this game is great and well worth playing! My only other complaint is that the level select is a bit... weird at times. The developers are aware of the bugs with the level select, however.
They won't stop you progressing, but your cursor can get stuck if you flip between worlds when picking a level.
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