We planned a staggering amount of content, particularly in new levels and bosses, a few I am quite sad never made it.
#Enter the gungeon items to buy right away plus
However after our first major update, Supply Drop, that slowly shifted to two free updates plus a larger paid DLC that would act as a sort of pseudo-sequel. Because of that, pre-launch we had a rough idea of “some DLC after a break.” I think for a long time, we planned on doing two free updates, and that was it. We had no idea, or dream, that Gungeon would be as successful as it has been, and as it continues to be. How did the long-term plans for Enter the Gungeon change? After years of this steady climb in implementation complexity, adding new interesting guns and items slowed to a crawl, and became less fun to work on as it became more fragile. The more interesting stuff we added in, the more difficult it became to add anything else without things breaking. New content had to be interesting, had to be different and worthwhile with hundreds of guns, items, enemies, and bosses, the options within the framework of the game become slimmer. Gungeon is a game where, by design, everything interacts with everything else, and everything is decided at runtime.Īll new content had to play well and not break countless other decisions that had been architected in different development “eras.” We couldn’t just add Orbit Bullets for example they had to interact nicely with 8 fundamentally different weapon categories, companions that shoot fundamentally different kinds of bullets, and other complicated bullet movement modifiers like Helix Bullets. After five years of developing Enter the Gungeon, with many interesting and potentially creatively fulfilling ideas and opportunities passed on, combined with increasingly annoying technical slogs to get new features working without generating new bugs, we just needed to move on to stay happy, to stay productive, and to stay sane. Why did you decide to cap off Enter the Gungeon’s lifespan now?Ĭreative and technical fatigue. We caught up with designer Dave Crooks to discuss about the team’s decision to exit the Gungeon with one final update, Farewell to Arms, and the challenges of meeting unplanned expectations. The game sold one million copies in 13 months and has been a long-term success for developer Dodge Roll Games and publisher Devolver Digital.īut it’s not been smooth sailing for the studio.
Combining Binding of Isaac style dungeon crawling with Vlambeer gunplay, Enter the Gungeon hit hard when it launched in 2016.