Gunpoint (Demo) (PC)

Gunpoint is described as being a stealth puzzle game, which is a combination that personally makes me want to run screaming, but I'm also curious about it. It's been promised to have an innovative rewiring mechanic letting you make progress by tricking enemies, and hey I like innovative things! So I'll give it a chance to prove its greatness.

Anyway you should be aware that I only have the demo version of the game here, on account of it not being released until tomorrow, so if it ends up being reworked into a gritty first person shooter or something by the time you get your hands on the final product then I apologise for my misleading screenshots.

Whoa, that's pretty zoomed out. Also pretty; I like the art style they've gone with. That's my character in the air by the way, wearing a brown trench-coat and gracefully arcing his way through a double-defenestration.

It's not clear yet whether he jumped or was pushed, but I'm just amazed he survives it. That's a clear twenty meter drop onto a solid floor covered in broken glass he just walked away from. Well, crawled away from.

It'd be near impossible to see anything in a regular screenshot so I'm going to break with tradition and zoom right in to show the action (also the fine pixelwork.) The game never changes zoom level itself, so it took me a second to even notice this character was even talking to me.

This concerned onlooker works in the gun company I just crashed into and by pure coincidence she was actually about to call me anyway about something else. She'll fill me in with the details after I've dragged my battered body upstairs to her office.

Getting around seems straightforward enough, with WASD used to control the character directly and activate objects in the level. There's no option to properly redefine keys, but it at least lets you switch to arrow keys.

Oh shit, I just noticed that the woman on the phone has been assassinated! Man, events really don't draw attention to themselves in this. I was so focused on getting the doors to work I didn't even realise what had happened until her body hit the ground outside.

I've got a perfectly rational phobia of security cameras, but that elevator it's guarding is the only way I'll get out there so I'm going to have to just pull my fedora down and risk it.

I couldn't catch the assassin, so I tried investing the body for clues. Sometimes moving the mouse cursor over stuff brings up info, so I figured clicking on her would probably do something. But what it actually did was bring up this arc of dots and then sent him leaping along it. Interesting...

Anyway there doesn't seem to be anything at all to do out here, so I'm making a run for the level exit.

Hey, that's almost the exact amount of time I've been playing! Probably.

And so the secret of why he was flying through the window is at last revealed! He wasn't being hassled by a gang of thugs, or making a daring getaway, he'd just been too stupid to realise that when the manual for your brand new ultra-jump hypertrousers states that they're for "Outdoor use only", it kind of implies negative consequences to using them indoors.

Hey, Ark of the Covenant cameo down there, also it seems that someone's been spying on the murder victim from the office above for a while now. Plus is that a horse's head on his hat rack? So many details hidden in a place most people would only see for 10 seconds (from a distance), it's awesome.

Oh right, it turns out that I'm playing as Richard Conway (Freelance Spy), and I've been contacted between levels by the boss of the character murdered earlier. She wants me to delete the security camera footage catching me entering the building so that the police will have no choice but to actually do their job and hunt down the real killer instead.

Hmm, so the shady gun company owner who's employee was just murdered to ensure her silence wants me to delete the only evidence proving without a doubt where I was at the time of the murder and erase my ironclad alibi? Sounds fair enough to me.

There are multiple backups though, so I'll have to delete the footage from a number of locations (in ascending order of difficulty). Between these missions I get to upgrade my character and buy new gear.

Well I get to upgrade my pants anyway. I don't have enough money on me to actually buy anything yet. Though if Melanie keeps paying me to break into her own offices like this that shouldn't be a problem for long.

Jump onto a guard to pin him to the ground you say? Don't mind if I do.

So now I know I can take out guards pretty easily as long as they're alone and facing away from me. The trouble I have though, is that the guy down there guarding the computer I need to hack is facing right at the only door inside. Oh, also it's a locked door that only he can open, so that's a bit of a problem too.

The game suggests turning the lights off to lure him outside, as the only light switch is in the room adjacent to the one he's locked inside. The room I'd have to be standing in. Sounds like a plan with no possible drawbacks to me!

Well it turns out that Rick can survive a 20 meter fall, but a single gunshot will instantly end him. I suppose I should've probably been hiding on the other side of the room, deep in the shadows, ready to pounce the moment he opened the security door.

In happier news, this loading screen is awesome. It autosaves every six seconds, that's insane! I'm not sure there's any point at all in rewinding time by 2 seconds, but I suppose I'll eventually find out. Either way it's nice to have options.

Alright, I've finished another job and now I've finally hacked enough computers to be able to afford a new gadget! And seeing as the crosslink is mandatory I suppose I should buy that first. This thing is apparently used to reconnect any electronic device to another, which sounds potentially handy. I suppose I'll have to try it out first to know.

Crap. This time there's three armed guards and a security camera between me and those three computers I need to hack.

Well okay the ground floor door is locked so I can't get in that way, and the top floor window has a bloke looking out of it, so my only possible entry point is the wide open door on the middle floor. The meeting room there has a door to a staircase leading up or down, but neither way seems very appealing right now. Again it's a choice between being instantly shot, or being stuck behind a locked door.

Alright, it seems I've got to use my new crosslink device here somehow.

Activating the crosslink turns everything blue, distorts the background music and reveals the electrical connections between switches and the devices they activate. Though it doesn't freeze time.

In this mode I can use the mouse to drag new lines from object to object, like from this light switch next to me on the top left, to the light on the ground floor. Then I merely need to flick my switch to leave the guy downstairs stumbling around in the dark. He'll go over to turn the lights back on using that switch on the left, giving me a chance to spring out of that door in the middle and jump him while his back is turned. How can it fail?

And... JUMP! Wait, what? Where's he gone?

Huh, he went upstairs as I was coming downstairs? Well, uh, okay then. That solves my problem just as well I guess, as long as he stays put.

I head through the open door just off screen to the right and hack the first computer. Two more to go.

Well now I can rewire the top floor lights to lure the guard out of the locked computer room on the top right, but that still doesn't give me a safe path. Using that elevator over on the right to get up there would be suicide, as he'd probably hear me come up and immediately turn to shoot me dead as the door opened.

Wait, I've got it! I only need to lure the guy at the window on the top left away and then I can climb around silently.

I'm Spider-Man, motherfucker!

(P.S. don't turn around, don't turn around, don't turn around...)

I climbed right over the building and entered on the open door on the right. With the guard here facing left it was seasy enough to leap over and knock him out. And now the traditional hacking minigame can begin.

Actually I only have to press up (or W) and the job's done. That's two computers down now, one left.

But now I'm stuck, as that guard up there is standing right next to the elevator and I can't think of a thing I can do to lure him away.

Oh shit, I can't believe that worked! I wired up one of the palm-print locked security doors to a fucking light switch and not only did it swing wide open, it also knocked the guard out. Man, their security is hilarious. Hilariously awesome.

Anyway now I'm free to hack the last computer in the last room and destroy the final backup of the security footage. Then I'll be free to slip out quietly through the back door into the shadows, making the minimum amount of noise in the process... or I could just throw myself out of a window.

In my defence, the game rates you on the time you took just much as it does the noise you make. Not that it seems to make any difference, you get the same cash reward either way. It's just to give you something to improve upon when replaying levels from the level select screen (+500 points for having a level select screen).

Right, now there's absolutely nothing left linking Rick to the murder,,, except for forensic evidence putting him at the scene, his bloody footprints all around the body, and a trail of glass leading straight from his office window to the Rooke gun company building. So he's pretty much off the hook!

Ah.

Oh.

Wow, that's... an excellent opportunity for Rick to make some extra cash by clearing this analyst's name. You know, assuming she's not actually the murderer (there isn't a huge list of potential suspects right now).

Wait, what the fuck? Someone's replaced my 'Start mission' button with a 'Buy game' button. But I wanted to start the mission! How incredibly cruel.

Well at least I can continue chatting for a bit longer, inflict a few more of Katie's uncapitalised text messages on poor Rick. The dialogue isn't voiced by the way, but that's probably a wise choice. Not that the writing's bad, much the opposite, it's just obvious that the game's budget wouldn't have stretched to hiring decent voice actors.

Yeah, I can see where this is going. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.


I don't think I've seen enough of Gunpoint to say for sure that it's going to be a good game, but after that demo I'm definitely optimistic. Luring guards around by rewiring switches is a pretty original concept and it seems like they've pulled it off well; I've got no complaints about the controls or interface and the game gets infinite bonus points for letting me rewire the hated security cameras to use for my own devices. The graphics on the other hand are... well, okay they're fine too. It's not exactly rivalling Mark of the Ninja in the visuals department, but the pixel art more than gets the job done, there's raindrops dancing across the parallax scrolling backgrounds, and it's all got an appealing look to it in motion.

But where it all falls down is the music... is what I'd say if it wasn't perfectly decent. It's got a mellow soundtrack that often sounds like something out of a 40s film noir, and it suits the game perfectly. Honestly I'm struggling to find anything bad to say about anything I've seen of it so far, though to be fair it is just a demo. There's always the possibility that the designer couldn't drag the concept out long enough to support an entire gameful of levels, but somehow I get the feeling this is only going to get better as the puzzles get more complicated.

I'd say it's absolutely worth a look if it seems interesting to you.

You can grab the demo of Gunpoint yourself at the game's website: gunpointgame.com.
The game will be released on June 3rd.

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