Disclaimer: Gunfire Reborn is still currently in Early Access so things are subject to change on release.
Overview:
Gunfire Reborn is a first-person shooter rogue-lite game. There are currently three stages to fight your way through with a fourth planned for launch. You fight through mobs collecting randomly rolled weapons, scrolls to empower you, and picking one of three character-based ascensions at the end of each floor. This leads to a lot of things being randomized causing each run to feel VASTLY different which helps to keep things fun and fresh.
Gameplay:
This game feels very good all around. I play on keyboard and mouse but it does feature controller support as well. The aiming feels smooth, the weapons all feel unique with just the right amount of recoil. My only personal gripe is the base movement speed feels a bit slow compared to most FPS games but there are plenty of ways to increase this through scrolls and some ascensions as well. There are jump puzzles in this game that pose a bit of a challenge at first but become easier to clear the more you do it.
Game Systems:
The game starts you out with one character, to unlock more you must level up by purchasing talents. Your talent tree is where all of your universal upgrades come from. These are your bonuses that will be permanent unlocks to help you progressively get stronger over time. Characters each have individual small talent trees that help them specifically.
Upon starting a new run, you will be on the first floor of stage one. The Enemies are fairly basic and easy to kill, getting progressively harder the further into the game you get. Once you get to the end of a floor, you will have a chest you can open to get some coins, ammo, and pick an ascension.
Ascensions are essentially how you define your character’s build in a run. There are 3 different ascension trees for each character that typically focus on either your primary ability, secondary ability, or your weapon damage. You get to pick one of three random ascensions at the end of each floor that let you choose how you want to tailor your build.
Floors can also have hidden areas called vaults which are found by looking for the glowing cracks on a wall. You shoot it and a portal opens up. Vaults can be many different things from mini-boss fights, to jumping challenges, to dodging boulders. These vaults all have a chest at the end with a scroll to help you. Mini-bosses can drop weapons, scrolls, or even a goblet which lets you pick an additional ascension.
Scrolls are ways to buff your character in many different ways. You can get scrolls to increase your movement speed, how many times you can dash, increase weapon damage, increase critical damage, and a large number of other awesome things. These are typically found from random stage challenges, golden chests, and vaults and can dramatically alter your run. There are also cursed scrolls in the game that can hurt you in ways so you need to be careful!
There are 3 stages in the game currently. Each stage has 4 floors before you face the boss. There are currently 2 different bosses you can face at the end of each stage. There is a normal stage boss which will be the only one you can face to begin with, but after defeating each boss a certain number of times, you will unlock the alternate bosses. This will make it a 50/50 chance of fighting either one on subsequent runs. The bosses can be VERY tricky when first starting the game, but once you learn their attack patterns and how to avoid them, they will begin to get a bit easier to defeat.
After playing and leveling up a bit, the game may start to feel a little too easy, if that’s the case, don’t worry! There are multiple difficulties in the game including Elite, Nightmare, and the just recently added Reincarnation modes! These will make things much tougher and continue to keep pushing you to try harder and make the absolute strongest builds you possibly can.
Heroes:
All of the heroes in this game feel very unique and have vastly different playstyles and builds you can create. They have their own unique primary, secondary, and ultimate abilities. The character design in this game is great and they do an awesome job at keeping things balanced without completely nerfing certain builds into oblivion.
You start the game with the one character available; the Crown Prince. To unlock the other four characters, you must level up by unlocking talents. Each talent that is unlocked is considered a profile level: Ao Bai can be unlocked at level 25, Qing Yan, at level 40, Lei Luo at level 55, and Tao can be purchased at any level.
Characters are purchased with Soul Essence which is an in-game currency that you get while playing through runs, with the majority from killing bosses. This is also what you use to unlock talents and only a small amount can be carried over until you unlock talents that allow you to save more between runs.
Co-op:
There is 4 player co-op in this game so feel free to bring your friends along for the ride. The difficulty will scale based on the number of players involved so be prepared for a tougher fight! Though sometimes co-op can make the harder difficulties easier to accomplish, all difficulties can be done solo by a skilled enough player.
Replayability:
The replayability of this game is very high. If you enjoy games like this then it will keep you hooked for a long time. The weapons, scrolls, ascensions, and everything else that leads to completely different character builds each run will keep you coming back time and time again. No run will feel the same and challenging yourself with higher difficulties once you’ve gotten the hang of things will add many hours of gameplay.
Overall Feelings:
Gunfire Reborn is a game that I absolutely love and cannot wait for the full launch. For a game still in Early Access, it’s great and has its hooks sunk deep in me. The build varieties, excellent character design, the balance, awesome weapons, and the always fun boss fights keep me coming back to this game time and time again. If this is the kind of game that interests you, it is available on Steam in Early Access for $11.99. It is expected to release version 1.0 in the Fall of 2021 which will include a fourth stage, more weapons, another new character, and a campaign mode!
Available on Steam, and plans on being available on console and mobile devices.
