Review Date: Thursday, 18th February 2016
Hours played prior to reviewing: 12.6
Achievement progress: 15/36 | 43%


Welcome to the Wild West! A Fistful Of Gun is a fast-paced top-down shooter with rogue-like elements separated into 2 main modes: Arcade and Story. There's 11 different characters to choose from, each of them comes with unique controls and their own fighting system. The game has full controller support but for some characters you have to switch to keyboard & mouse, otherwise the game won't let you play them. When you start up the western action for the first time, you most likely begin with Arcade Mode that lets you pick all of those characters. Which is nice for practice purposes but can be terrible if your first choice is one of the guys with very odd controls. I have to admit I rage-quitted the game after two short runs of Arcade because I thought there's something wrong with the Steam Controller bindings (I'm using a template from the community). The character 'Noah' was the reason for it though. He's on the very left of the character select screen and why would you not start from the left?
Well, obviously I gave the game another shot after checking the discussions and finding that other cowboys play very differently. I didn't regret starting it again because I found myself getting addicted to this little gem. Let me know tell you more about the main modes:

Arcade: You can select any character and start on a warm-up map. The goal is to clear the screen to get to the next one and reach the highest score. The maps and enemies are randomized but get significantly more difficult over the time. After you cleared a screen, the game gives you the option to choose among 5 random upgrades to make yourself stronger. One shot or hit of an enemy kills you and takes a life (in form of a card). You start with five hearts but a horse - that you can either steal from an enemy or get through an upgrade - or an armor upgrade take 1 bullet instead of you which basically means an extra life. Arcade can be played in single-player, local and online multiplayer.

Story: Unlike Arcade mode, you can only pick one of the three already unlocked wranglers to start your journey with. The goal is to reach the 3rd chapter and kill the railroad baron Clayton Boon, the reason for all our troubles along the way. Each chapter ends with a unique boss fight and is 14 miles (= 14 screens) away from the start. Just as in the other mode, the enemies, type of maps and events are randomized, although you decide which direction you want to continue on. But keep in mind: There is no going back. Coins that you collect can be spent on several things such as new weapons, upgrades, playing cards (very important to increase the amount of your lives). Unfortunately the story can only be played alone or in local co-op and there is no support for playing it online.

★☆━━━━━━━━━[RATING: 8/10]━━━━━━━━━☆★

• Pixelart / Graphics: I adore them. The gunslingers have been designed with love and look super cute despite them being badass killers with moustaches and all. The maps itself lacks a bit of details on first glance - but honestly, it would make the bullethell just more confusing.
  
• Gameplay: The gameplay is incredibly fun if you learn how to play with the characters and pick one that you like. You will get addicted to Story mode after experiencing new things you haven't seen before and secrets that still need to be revealed.
  
• Easter Eggs: It would be too spoiling to reveal too much, just let me tell you there's a lot of stuff randomly going on that you wouldn't predict and that will make you laugh for sure.
  
• Soundtrack: The soundtrack fits the setting well and is neither annoying nor too minimal, they really did a good job balancing it.
  
• Events: The developer organizes special community events occasionally. Unfortunately I couldn't participate in any yet but I hope another one is happening soon! (These events are required to obtain some of the achievements)
  
• Steam features: Achievements - check, Trading Cards - check. Perfect! Cloud saving might useful to some players, I personally didn't need it. Workshop support would be pointless for this game.

• Difficulty: A Fistful Of Gun is not easy. Not at all. In almost 13 hours of playtime I still haven't beaten the campaign yet. I lost 30 lives in some screens and died because they really were impossible with the setup / loot I had. You need luck to get gold, to find a merchant and card players and you need luck with the screens you land on. Challenging games can be good and make you become ambitious but sometimes it felt like a pain in the ass.. The achievements are (too) hard and rare as well.

• Mac / Linux Support: Not available. Every game should have support for all platforms on Steam or at least offer support for one additional OS.
  
• Online Story Co-Op: You can only play Arcade and Versus online with friends. But the focus should be on the story and that mode can only be played alone or in local co op.

This game was played on my Windows computer.

[b]Review Date[/b]: Thursday, 18th February 2016 [b]Hours played prior to reviewing[/b]: 12.6 [b]Achievement progress[/b]: 15/36 | 43% [h1]Review[/h1] Welcome to the Wild West! A Fistful Of Gun is a fast-paced top-down shooter with rogue-like elements separated into 2 main modes: Arcade and Story. There's 11 different characters to choose from, each of them comes with unique controls and their own fighting system. The game has full controller support but for some characters you have to switch to keyboard & mouse, otherwise the game won't let you play them. When you start up the western action for the first time, you most likely begin with Arcade Mode that lets you pick all of those characters. Which is nice for practice purposes but can be terrible if your first choice is one of the guys with very odd controls. I have to admit I rage-quitted the game after two short runs of Arcade because I thought there's something wrong with the Steam Controller bindings (I'm using a template from the community). The character 'Noah' was the reason for it though. He's on the very left of the character select screen and why would you not start from the left? Well, obviously I gave the game another shot after checking the discussions and finding that other cowboys play very differently. I didn't regret starting it again because I found myself getting addicted to this little gem. Let me know tell you more about the main modes: [b][u]Arcade[/u][/b]: You can select any character and start on a warm-up map. The goal is to clear the screen to get to the next one and reach the highest score. The maps and enemies are randomized but get significantly more difficult over the time. After you cleared a screen, the game gives you the option to choose among 5 random upgrades to make yourself stronger. One shot or hit of an enemy kills you and takes a life (in form of a card). You start with five hearts but a horse - that you can either steal from an enemy or get through an upgrade - or an armor upgrade take 1 bullet instead of you which basically means an extra life. Arcade can be played in single-player, local and online multiplayer. [b][u]Story[/u][/b]: Unlike Arcade mode, you can only pick one of the three already unlocked wranglers to start your journey with. The goal is to reach the 3rd chapter and kill the railroad baron Clayton Boon, the reason for all our troubles along the way. Each chapter ends with a unique boss fight and is 14 miles (= 14 screens) away from the start. Just as in the other mode, the enemies, type of maps and events are randomized, although you decide which direction you want to continue on. But keep in mind: There is no going back. Coins that you collect can be spent on several things such as new weapons, upgrades, playing cards (very important to increase the amount of your lives). Unfortunately the story can only be played alone or in local co-op and there is no support for playing it online. ★☆━━━━━━━━━[RATING: 8/10]━━━━━━━━━☆★ [h1]Positive[/h1] [list] [*][b]Pixelart / Graphics[/b]: I adore them. The gunslingers have been designed with love and look super cute despite them being badass killers with moustaches and all. The maps itself lacks a bit of details on first glance - but honestly, it would make the bullethell just more confusing. [*][b]Gameplay[/b]: The gameplay is incredibly fun if you learn how to play with the characters and pick one that you like. You will get addicted to Story mode after experiencing new things you haven't seen before and secrets that still need to be revealed. [*][b]Easter Eggs[/b]: It would be too spoiling to reveal too much, just let me tell you there's a lot of stuff randomly going on that you wouldn't predict and that will make you laugh for sure. [*][b]Soundtrack[/b]: The soundtrack fits the setting well and is neither annoying nor too minimal, they really did a good job balancing it. [*][b]Events[/b]: The developer organizes special community events occasionally. Unfortunately I couldn't participate in any yet but I hope another one is happening soon! (These events are required to obtain some of the achievements) [*][b]Steam features[/b]: Achievements - check, Trading Cards - check. Perfect! Cloud saving might useful to some players, I personally didn't need it. Workshop support would be pointless for this game. [/list] [h1]Neutral[/h1] [list] [*][b]Difficulty[/b]: A Fistful Of Gun is not easy. Not at all. In almost 13 hours of playtime I still haven't beaten the campaign yet. I lost 30 lives in some screens and died because they really were impossible with the setup / loot I had. You need luck to get gold, to find a merchant and card players and you need luck with the screens you land on. Challenging games can be good and make you become ambitious but sometimes it felt like a pain in the ass.. The achievements are (too) hard and rare as well. [/list] [h1]Negative[/h1] [list] [*][b]Mac / Linux Support[/b]: Not available. Every game should have support for all platforms on Steam or at least offer support for one additional OS. [*][b]Online Story Co-Op[/b]: You can only play Arcade and Versus online with friends. But the focus should be on the story and that mode can only be played alone or in local co op. [/list] [h1]Hardware Information[/h1] [table] [tr] [th][u]Hardware[/u][/th] [th][u]Windows[/u][/th] [th][u]Mac[/u][/th] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]CPU[/b][/td] [td]2.2GHz Intel Core Duo[/td] [td]2.6GHz Intel i7[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]GPU[/b][/td] [td]GeForce 9100M[/td] [td]GeForce GT 650M[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]RAM[/b][/td] [td]4GB (only 3 in use)[/td] [td]16GB[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]Storage[/b][/td] [td]1TB HDD[/td] [td]256GB SSD + 1TB HDD[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]OS[/b][/td] [td]Windows 10, 32 Bit[/td] [td]OS X El Capitan[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]Resolution[/b][/td] [td]1920x1080[/td] [td]3840x2400 (Retina)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b]Controller[/b][/td] [td]Steam Controller[/td] [td]Steam Controller[/td] [/tr] [/table] This game was played on my Windows computer. [h1]Disclaimer[/h1] [code]Vegan™ - No animals got killed for this review.[/code]