Gunhouse

Genre: Falling Block Puzzle / Tower Defense

Players: 1

.

Review:

Gunhouse is a game that combines elements of a Falling Block Puzzle game and a Tower Defense game, with players controlling a tower-like facility with guns needing to be loaded by colored blocks that are matched in 2×2 patterns. This game was originally released on mobile devices in 2016, ported to PlayStation Vita in 2017, brought to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2018, and then ported to PC in 2020.

The presentation in this game is absurd, with a hand-drawn style that has both your own arsenal and the various enemies you’re facing come in a seemingly random manner of forms, with you fighting evil enemy ice cream cones and dog-mechs with vegetable cannons, rains of skulls, and snowblowers, to name a few. The game features an energetic soundtrack, though you’ll be hard-pressed to even notice it with all the chaos happening onscreen.

Unfortunately, chaos seems to be the name of the game as far as gameplay goes, as well. Players have a brief time limit to load up their weapons (three guns on the left, three special weapons on the right), which must be done by matching like-colored blocks in 2×2 patterns and then shunting them off in the direction of the weapon in question. Unfortunately, making these matches doesn’t come naturally, as the way this game’s puzzle systems work takes some getting used to.

Additionally, players seem to be discouraged from making just any matches they see, as some weapons are better for some situations, and loading up an empty weapon with anything takes precedence over making an easy match next to an already-loaded weapon. This feels extremely counter-intuitive.

Once your time is up, it’s time to fight the oncoming horde with whatever weapons you managed to load up. Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be any set amount of time before you can reload – this will happen after a brief moment once all your weapons are used up. This leaves you feeling like there’s little reason to hold back on any of your weaponry, as leaving it unused just means it’ll take you longer to reload it again. Again, this feels highly unintuitive.

The result of all of this crazed, unintuitive action is a game that feels like it intended to have a fair amount of thought and strategy to the gameplay, but ultimately results in a crazed mess that’s interesting, but feels like it’s effectively shallow and not very fun.

I will note that this really does feel like a game that’s meant to be played using a touchscreen, and indeed, the Nintendo Switch touchscreen feels like a natural fit here. Using a standard gamepad works about as well as could be hoped, but it can make for a jarring transition from the Puzzle gameplay to the Tower Defense-style combat.

In the end, Gunhouse feels like an interesting experiment at mixing the Puzzle and Tower Defense genres, but one that simply hasn’t been refined enough to make its elements truly click. Everything feels chaotic and counter-intuitive, and as a result it’s hard to feel like there’s much strategy – only rushing to try and do as much as you can before the next thing you have to do. It’s not a terrible game, but it feels far too shallow to be one you’ll want to spend much time with.

tl;dr – Gunhouse is a game that combines Falling Block Puzzle and Tower Defense elements, but the result is a chaotic mess where you’re constantly being pushed to do things that are non-intuitive. It’s an interesting experiment in gameplay, to be sure. It’s just not an experiment that works.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are MB, Andy Miller, u/wonderponder, Johannes, Stov, Ilya Zverev, and Eli Goodman. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}