Guns and Ghosts is a first-person shooter developed and published by DRUKEN APES. And after playing this little Serious Sam-like adventure I’m wondering if the game was actually programmed by a couple of drunken apes mashing away at a keyboard.
As you might expect, Guns and Ghosts is an indie title released on Steam by a small two person team that made the game in their free time. That’s all well and good, but sometimes it’s best if your little personal pet projects stay, well, personal. [perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”12″]Developer: Drunken Apes
Publisher: Drunken Apes
Style: Indie, FPS
Release: Nov. 16 2018
Price: $4.99
[/perfectpullquote]But, to be fair, the studio claims right up front that their titles are going to be small, raw experiences and the team is pretty darn open to feedback and talking with fans. It’s a lot more than most indie games do, especially ones that aren’t going to ever compete with even other indie games with a decent budget.
As stated, Guns and Ghosts is a first-person shooter that follows in the vain of games like Serious Sam and Painkiller. You grab some guns and enter an area that will close off until to take out everything that stands in your way. It’s about as simple as an FPS can get, but done right can offer up a ton of fun.
Well, that isn’t the case with Guns and Ghosts as the game is even more basic than even the earliest Serious Sam game released over a decade ago. You play as “Mr. Gun” and shoot enemies that feature zero artificial intelligence. The game’s enemies are simply trained to move toward you and attack.
This means that you’ll slowly strafe around an arena and shoot. But ammo isn’t ever really a problem because you can pick up an unlimited amount in the hub area of each area. Ammo simply respawns over chests allowing you to keep picking it up until your ammo count goes off the screen.
So you simply stock up on ammo, find yourself a nice spot that enemies can’t reach and start blasting away everything, including the bosses at the end of each wave. Collision detection is also broken as you won’t be able to climb up steps/stairs. Well, you can, but it’s like fighting upwards against a hill made of ice. Sometimes it’ll work, sometimes it wont.
Along the way you can collect treasures but I’m not actually sure what these do other than raising the score that you can’t see. There are also only four stages meaning that you aren’t getting a lot of content here, but it also means that the game won’t wear on you either.
Just around the time Guns and Ghosts loses the “so-bad it’s good” appeal the game comes to an end. The developers seemed to know just how much gameplay they had going, and instead of dragging things out they simply keep everything nice and tight; a very good call.
Graphically, Guns and Ghosts looks fine (at least in stills), although I have a feeling everything here are simply stock assets from some package. The environments are the highlight here, even though there’s an odd grainy filter over everything, but the weapons and enemies are pretty bland in comparison, leading me to think this is just a mishmash of assets.
Enemies just don’t quite fit in the world that’s being presented. Some enemies like skeletons look straight out of the days of the PS2 and somehow also bleed when shot. Most other enemies simply have this ghost aura around them making them look really cheap and bland.
Then there’s the audio which is pretty hilarious. Mr. Gun pulls quotes from so many other 90’s FPS heroes such as Duke Nukem. The problem is that these come completely at random during the game, and more than a little cringe inducing. You might simply be exploring the hub area when you scream something insane as if you just decapitated some killer enemy.
Look, Guns and Ghosts isn’t a good game, but it’s a fairly impressive feat for a team of only two people in their spare time; if that’s actually the case. The game will cost you less than a fiver over on Steam, but even then I feel it’s asking a bit too much for what you’re actually getting.
At the very least Guns and Ghosts works –mostly. Unfortunately, we can’t really find any reason to recommend this one outside of a few quick laughs. That said, the game shows potential from this small team for future games to come. I’ll be happy to see what else they put together down the road, building on what they learned here.
Final Score:
2/5
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