Gunkid 99

Genre: Action-Platformer / 2-Stick Shooter

Players: 1

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Review:

Gunkid 99 is an Action-Platformer with 2-Stick Shooter elements released on PC in 2019, then ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2021. This game puts players into an enclosed arena with spawning enemies and guns, with players tasked to keep grabbing guns as they appear without leaving any unclaimed for too long.

This premise sets this game apart from most others of its ilk, as the game’s goal isn’t to take out enemies, but just to keep collecting guns, and players are only taking out enemies to make it easier to get more guns. Constantly being compelled to get more guns also ensures that there’s some variety in the gameplay, as the weapon you’re firing will constantly be changing.

However, even with that mechanic, things do still get somewhat repetitive thanks to a limited variety of enemy types. Also, this is a game that really feels like it could have used a multiplayer mode that is sadly not present here. And I also have to mention somewhere here that the menus are needlessly annoying, requiring you to slowly move a cursor around the screen to select options rather than simply snapping from one to the next.

As for the presentation, Gunkid 99 uses colorful but simple pixel art visuals (your character is a featureless white humanoid with a black border, just a step above a stick figure), backed by a sufficient but forgettable synthesized soundtrack.

Overall, I enjoyed Gunkid 99, and think its central concept holds a lot of promise, but this game needed to build on that promise a lot more to be truly great. Add in a wider variety of weapons! More interesting arenas! Add in Roguelike-style upgrades! And for goodness sake, this game really needed multiplayer. Without this content, Gunkid 99 is still a good game, but it feels like it could have been much better.

tl;dr – Gunkid 99 is an Action-Platformer with 2-Stick Shooter elements where players fight enemies within an enclosed arena, but their primary goal is to just keep grabbing up weapons as they appear. This is a great concept with a lot of potential, but this game doesn’t do quite enough to make good use of it, with one of the bigger omissions here being a lack of a multiplayer mode. As a result, this is still a good game, but it feels like it missed an opportunity to be a much better one.

Grade: B-

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