Gunbrella is one of those action games enlivened by a little bit of recurrent magic that never really fades. The magic lies with the Gunbrella itself. This is a 2D platformer and blaster, with a focus on exploration and a bit of light RPG stuff in the quests. But at the heart of it all is the Gunbrella your character wields, both gun and – yes – umbrella, and an absolute delight in every way.
GunbrellaPublisher: Devolver DigitalDeveloper: DoinksoftPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: 2023 on Switch and PC.
At its simplest it’s a shotgun that has a shield mode. Pull up the umbrella and you can deflect shots. Get the timing right and you can direct them back where they came from. Very handy against turrets. But there’s more to it too. Traversal! Jump and open the umbrella and you get a sort of double-jump effect. You catch the wind and are lofted higher. You can also use the umbrella for dashing forwards and backwards, and for hitching to clotheslines so you can ride the rails.
Lots of clotheslines here, here being a sort of steampunk western landscape where you’re out for revenge of some sort. Everything’s patchwork and delivered in lovely pixel art: houses will have missing tiles or busted shutters. Trains will whip past at double speed when you arrive at a station. Baddies are spectacularly villainous, with skeleton faces and natty toppers. Everyone’s hunched and caped and heavily shouldered. We’re all moths in this world.
I played Gunbrella’s demo a year back, I think, and now I’ve had a bigger chunk of the game it’s lovely to get a sense of how it plays out. It’s not quite a Metroidvania, because I think you’re always moving forwards, but it’s not a straight-up action game either. Enemies are paced out amongst traversal and dungeony stuff and the odd puzzle, and the whole thing is linked together by the quests – main and side- – that you take on regularly.