Day Twelve: Gunpoint
Sneaking into Santa's workshop and stealing the presents
Gunpoint? More like Funpoint
First we got Assault Spy, then Deadlink and now Gunpoint. Three games about corporate espionage. I swear I didn’t plan this. I don’t plan anything, unlike in Gunpoint, where you have to plan things. I promise it’s a lot more fun than what I just described.
What is it?
Gunpoint is a 2D stealth puzzle game. You play as a corporate spy who takes missions to go into offices and steal company secrets. Break into the building, hack the terminals and manipulate the security system to do what you want. Then, sneak around, avoiding guards and disabling lights to get your prize and escape. You can be a ghost and avoid detection, or go feral and smack all the guards while making a racket.
Each level has an objective you have to reach. It’s usually locked in a room inside the building. You can see every room at all times, and you can see all the electronics and how they connect to each other. Your first step is usually to enter the building. Find the right door and get in. Next, find the room with the control modules. Hack those, and you can take control of the security system. Next, use the system to your advantage. You can change connections and mess with circuits. You can take a security camera, hack it and make it open a door instead of activating an alarm. You can even hack a guard’s gun to and have it negligent discharge when something else triggers it.
At the end of the level, you get rated on your performance, and given a quick review labeling your playstyle. If you do a level without getting caught and being very tricky, you get the titles of ninja, ghost and thoughtful. I’m not 100% sure what they mean, but they act as a way of acknowledging your efforts. You also get a letter grade and your completion time. You can replay missions for better outcomes.
Once you’ve cleared a path, sneak into the building and find what you need. Then make your escape. The game is a mix of puzzle solving and stealth. Both halves of the equation are well made and offer their own unique challenges, and they blend well together.
Short
Gunpoint can be completed in around 3 hours. Throughout its length, the game offers a good number of puzzles. They start off somewhat simple, but quickly get more and more complicated. You’ll have to think them through for a bit before attempting. Then you need to actually pull the heist off, which sometimes exposes holes in your planning.
Three hours might not sound like a lot, but it’s enough. It offers good, varied puzzles with multiple mechanics in its short runtime.
Worse Graphics
Gunpoint goes for a sleek style. It’s detailed enough to be interesting and convey information, without being too busy, cluttered or visually noisy as to be a distraction. It looks kind of like a flash game, which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not the latest in graphics technology, so investors won’t want anything to do with it. Even if you sneak into the shareholder’s office and download their browsing history.
The characters don’t even have faces! How’s the audience supposed to connect with a character if it doesn’t have a face?
Speaking of connecting with characters, to add some weird irony here, the game has way better writing than most triple-A games.
There’s a soundtrack, too, and it’s good. Jazzy spy music that sounds like a smoky bar. Good, warm bass and sultry sax licks accompanied by subtle electric guitars that say “this guy’s up to no good”. The soundtrack is nice, but I turned it off. I don’t have the cerebral bandwidth to do puzzles and listen to music at the same time.
Made by People Paid More to Work Less
Gunpoint was made by Suspicious Developments, a small indie team of “usually 3 people”, as it says in their Twitter bio. Gunpoint was solo developed by Tom Francis, back before they were a team. He made it using Game Maker in his spare time over the course of three years. It was successful enough that it allowed him to quit his job and go into development full-time. Since then, Suspicious Developments has published more games, including Tactical Breach Wizards.
A small passion project made in someone’s spare time out of love for the medium. Gunpoint was even nominated for a BAFTA back in 2014. Sounds like it’s better than working 60 hour weeks at Rockstar.
Conclusion
Gunpoint is an interesting game that combines puzzle and stealth well. You can find cool interactions between the devices in a stage, sneak around with some competent stealth (even if the AI is a bit trigger-happy) and the game is also funny intentionally and unintentionally. It has a dry, sarcastic wit to it, but the biggest laughs I got from the game were from whenever a plan failed spectacularly. Once I had calculated every move, and went to execute it. Everything went without a hitch, until the very last door that I opened. I had opened every door on that floor, and once I opened the last one, it left a clear line of sight from one side to the other, where a guard I had forgotten about popped me in the head the instant I got into his vision.
I definitely recommend Gunpoint. You can get it for just $10. Totally worth it at full price, in my opinion.
Brilliant game. Glad you noted the writing - Tactical Breach Wizards also has unusually superb dialogue and story. I highly recommend their second game, Heat Signature, too.