Researching and Analysing Enter The Gungeon and Hotline Miami

 I have decided upon a top down action game for my first project. Having made this decision about the kind of game I want to create, I sought out a couple of similar titles for research purposes. The two games that immediately jumped to mind for me were Hotline Miami from Dennaton Games, and Enter The Gungeon by Dodge Roll. Both of these games are excellent examples of what the genre has to offer, and they’re also two very successful independent games. I played each game for a couple of hours, taking notes, so that I can see what they do well, what doesn’t work, and see what influence I can take from these games into my own project.

Enter The Gungeon

   The two games have very differing themes and story. Enter The Gungeon is set in a dungeon on a distant planet, that is home to an ancient artifact; a gun that can kill the past. You play as one of four characters, each of whom have a dark past, hence their desire to ‘enter the Gungeon’ and kill the past. The Gungeon is guarded by the ‘Gundead’, a series of enemies ranging from walking bullets that shoot at you, to big angry mushrooms. As you can tell from even just this very brief summary, the game doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s tone is very light hearted, a bit tongue in cheek. This is in stark contrast to Hotline Miami, a hyper-violent, stylised 80’s action film inspired game. In Hotline Miami you play as a sociopathic character, who falls into homicidal rages on a regular basis, killing entire swathes of people who stand in his way. The ultra-violence alongside the psychedelic 80’s aesthetic and soundtrack is reminiscent of early Quentin Tarantino films, clearly where the game creators have drawn some inspiration from. The developers have looked at the tropes of the genre of cinema they’re aping, and have really rolled with it to create a distinct and deliberate style.

Hotline Miami has a very distinct style

   The story serves a similar purpose in both games, predominantly just to give purpose and context to the player’s actions, with neither game leaning heavily on a narrative approach. However the way that the games deliver their stories is very different. Hotline Miami has what you would consider a traditional delivery of the story, with each level being preceded and succeeded by a cutscene, and scripted sequences in the levels adding player agency to the story in the form of boss fights. On the other hand, Gungeon has a skippable opening credits sequence when you load up the game that gives you backstory and context for the world if you want it. From then on in, the story and lore of the game is also completely optional. You can interact with NPCs, read descriptions of weapons, items and enemies, and interact with secrets within the Gungeon in order to get as much or as little story as you want. I have always been a big fan of this method of storytelling, ever since playing Bioshock and discovering all the audio diaries. Not all players will want to hear your story, and they will appreciate not having it thrust upon them, and those that do want the story will feel a greater sense of reward when they find those little bits of backstory and lore.

   Both games grab you with their theme and style, but they sink their hooks in with fantastic gameplay. Gungeon, a classic roguelike, will see you shooting, dodge-rolling, flipping tables, collecting weapons and powerups, defeating bosses. Hotline Miami is a ludicrously fast paced action game, where meticulous planning combined with twitch reflexes will see you slicing and shooting your way through hordes of enemies in seconds. Both games have a selection of weapons, with Gungeon’s wacky theme allowing for some awesome and crazy finds, whilst Hotline has a much more grounded and realistic set of melee and ranged weapons. The selection in Gungeon is excellent, with hundreds of different guns offering different fire rates, projectile types, some guns are chain or beam weapons and there are some nice references such as the Megahand, which will see your character don the iconic Megaman blaster. The sheer amount of different weapons and the variation of them, coupled with random loot drops means that no two runs will be the same in the Gungeon, and you will have to change your strategy based on what weapons you have at your disposal. Hotline Miami’s weapon’s are much less inspired, and whilst there are a fair few different guns and melee weapons, they function similarly for the most part. All blades will kill in one hit, whether it be a switchblade or a katana, all blunt objects will knock an enemy down to be finished and so on. This gives the player the illusion of having a nice variety of weapons, however there is a palpable sense of disappointment when you get your first katana, only to realise it is no different in substance to the knife you swapped for it.

Enter The Gungeon has an extensive selection of weapons and items

   The health system in the two games is different, in that Hotline doesn’t have one. One hit and you’re dead, forcing you to start the room again. This sounds frustrating, but the fast pace of the gameplay coupled with the quick restart times between deaths means that dying isn’t a grueling punishment, but is rather a learning experience where the player can learn from their mistakes and adjust their strategy and approach accordingly. Gungeon on the other hand has a conventional health and armor system, where the player can take six hits before death, with health and armor pickups available in random loot drops. In my game I feel that my tendencies lean more towards Gungeon’s way of doing things in terms of health systems and the overall gameplay being more roguelike, whereas I believe for the theme I am going for the more grounded weapon selection will suit my game more than a wacky selection, however I want to avoid the Hotline Miami problem of weapons feeling the same as one another.

  Both games have a high level of polish and consideration in their design. Whilst most roguelike games have completely randomly generated levels, Dodge Roll have developed a system for Gungeon whereby each room is hand crafted, and the rooms are put together in a random order to create a ‘floor’. This gives all the benefits of random generation when it comes to replayability and unpredictability, but the thoughtful design that has gone into each room ensures a level of quality throughout. Another aspect of the design that both games get right is the idea of permanence in their levels. Permanence is an important aspect of game feel, things such as shell casings littering the floor when you shoot, breaking pots or barrels leaves debris, blood splatters and corpses remaining until the level is completed, all of which are prevalent in these games. This permanence of the players actions gives more weight and consequence to everything the player is doing, which increases the player’s immersion and emotional investment in the game. Hotline Miami’s permanence is doubly important, as once you have killed the last enemy in the level, you must double back through the building the way you came to escape in your car outside. If the level were empty at this point, this would be a boring way of padding out the game. However because of the permanence of the bodies, blood, broken windows and all the other carnage you have caused, you have time to reflect and feel the weight of your actions in this down time, reflection you just don’t have time to experience when you’re lopping heads off at one hundred miles per hour. This idea of permanence is one I want to integrate into my game, and I can take lessons from these games in how to use permanence to add emotional weight to the player’s actions, particularly Hotline Miami.

The permanence of Hotline Miami lets you feel the weight of your actions. Your terrible, terrible actions

   After playing these two games, I have a clearer idea of some of the staples that need to be in my game. The rogue-like elements of Enter The Gungeon are what I want to base my game around, while the very deliberate style of Hotline Miami gives me ideas of how to take cliches and tropes of genres and use them to give a game a distinct theme. Throughout development I will continue to look back to these games for reference, ideas, solutions to problems and as very rough guidelines for the game I am aiming to create. These games stand out to me as two excellent examples of independent development in a genre that matches the game I want to produce, and if I can learn lessons from them then I will be starting off on the right foot.