Gunhouse

Art Style: Rad Music: Dope Gameplay: Good... mostly What do you do in this game?: Well, as the name implies, you build guns... on a house. Also, the house is an orphanage, and you use your house guns to protect your orphans from kidnappers. How do you play?: This game has two distinct elements. A matching puzzle element which is how you build guns and special attacks and a tower defense mode where you activate your guns and specials to defeat the enemies. How is the puzzle element?: The puzzle element is definitely the better part of the game. You match weapon icons to form larger icons. The larger the icon the more powerful the weapon becomes, and the more weapon slots you can fill at once with it. Sliding the icons to the left of the house builds guns, sliding them to right will build special weapons. It's a simple yet addictive system. How is the tower defense element?: It's... passable. There doesn't really seem to be any strategy to it. The screen will fill up with enemies and you click on your weapons to activate them. There is no aiming or turning them off to save ammo for later or anything. Just tap and let it do it's thing. How do they work together?: At the start of a round you have a short amount of time to play the puzzle element. After the timer runs out the puzzle section will be blocked off and the enemies will start coming. During this time you use your weapons to attack. Once you run out of weapons or don't activate any for a few seconds, time will stop and the puzzle section opens back up for a short time again and the cycle continues. Can you upgrade your weapons or house?: Yes to both. Defeating enemies will get you money. You can use that money between rounds to buy upgrades or new weapon types at the store. Final thoughts?: Even though the tower defense element is underwhelming, the visuals are a treat to the eyes and the soundtrack is fun to listen to while sliding your weapon blocks around. As of writing this review, the game is only $6.99 which I think is more than fair. The soundtrack is currently only a buck on Bandcamp as well! If you like simple yet addictive puzzle games, I recommend picking this one up.

I like it...but...I'm a few minutes in now and the puzzle is personally so counter-intuitive for me. It feels like riding a backwards-upside down bicycle, and since there's no practice mode, I have...what...18 seconds to not to figure it out all over again. It's just not my kind of puzzle.

I appreciate the effort this game made to be original, but this combo just doesn't work. The puzzle part is the best mechanic of the game. I would call myself a fan of puzzle games and the type of puzzles this game incorporates feels pretty satisfying and fun. Unfortunately, you never get time to immerse yourself into the puzzle aspect of this game since it keeps taking you out of that style every 30 seconds. Instead, you're shoved into this tacky and frustrating tower defense section that's annoying, random, and has no strategy to it. The game taunts you with playing only a portion of a perfectly passable puzzle game before making you play the awful secondary mode. The tower defense part of this game ruins everything. It feels like you have no control on what guns get replaced or if anything becomes a special move. Wouldn't it have been neat if there was some strategy and thinking behind that? Or maybe even a way to get more guns and weapons to use at once rather than be stuck with your three slots? But that doesn't seem to be here. I really just wanted to keep playing the puzzle part on its own then be pulled out to play this unnecessarily arbitrary mode. The puzzle mode is fun, albeit unoriginal, because it actually has PLANNING. This mode doesn't, it feels completely mindless and it just feels like watching fireworks for thirty seconds. Sure, its pretty, but I'm just kinda looking at it huh? This system is frustrating. I hate being taken in and out over and over. If this game had you focus on the puzzle portion with the tower defense being in the background simultaneously, this probably would've been handled much better. If you wanna go a more complicated route, have both modes be more tactical or something. The better chains you get in the puzzle portion of the game, the more powerful weapons you get to place. Any of those would most likely be a lot more interesting to me. Unfortunately, this cool concept was made into a game that feels like two clashing game modes trying to compete with each other. It just doesn't work as smoothly as it was intended to and I'm not a fan.

Warning: This game is seriously addictive. The puzzle system isn't the easiest thing to understand, but once you get the hang of it, watch the hours fly by. Choose your favourite weapon types and how you want to use them, mixing and matching in any way you like, whilst hunting down those addictive little objectives and blasting through each day. The art style is bright, vibrant and interesting if not a little crazy and whilst I can't say I'm a fan of all of the music tracks, I do find myself humming along with a few of them. The bosses and enemy types are interesting with little changes to their overall themeing as you get further into the game. I will say there is definitely a difficulty spike as I found Night 33 to be where i hit the wall and had to go back to start grinding to buy upgrades, but on some other levels merely a second try will do and you might get some better luck with the boards. The story behind it was an unexpected extra with a much darker tone compared to the rest of the game, which also made me want to keep going to find out what would be next. So if you like sliding puzzles, tower defense, wacky visuals, interesting bosses and don't mind losing part of your life to it. I'd say Gunhouse is a must.

The puzzle part was actually pretty difficult. I think puzzle games should introduce different patterns, show how some blocks and combos are made. The only example isn't even on a proper playfield, just 4 blocks in isolation. The "tower defense" is really tacked on. The enemies all seem the same gameplay-wise... you shoot them with whatever happened to be made in the puzzle round. The game just stops one genre and picks up the other every 20 seconds... with a few second pause, and fails to do either well.

This game is underappreciated in my opinion. It's a cool mix of tower defense and puzzler that pushes the boundaries of tower defense by reducing the scale. There are so many mechanics and details that encourage tactics instead of the usual strategy. There are some quality of life issues, but it's nothing too bad. I'd recommend watching my full review on youtube to get longer analysis. https://youtu.be/yATrYFtmI28

The puzzle part of the game has a deceptively steep learning curve, but once you figure it out, the total gameplay is relatively short. I beat the campaign in ~3 hours. Despite this, it is a lot of fun, and there's other stuff to do like survival mode. I had a lot of fun with it and the art style is unique and very cool. There's a lot of non-stop action, so don't come to this game looking for a chill puzzle game.

A very satisfying combo of tower defense and sliding puzzle with very unique, hand drawn, surreal art and a cool soundtrack. Plays even better on a touch screen enabled device or using a stylus with a tablet. Every battle is dividied between sliding puzzles pieces to build your weapons as quick as possible, then defending your house using those weapons, that can also be upgraded. Had played a ton of this on other platforms, but also wanted to have it on my PC.

This is a good casual time, the puzzle is pretty fun to figure out and clickin the gunz is chill

The puzzle part is a bit too fast paced for me, and i dislike that guns are consumed when used, destroyed when a different gun type is put there, and that there is no way to remove an unwanted 4x4 or greater block without overriding something. You can't choose where to put guns or ammo - swipe the 4x4 or larger block left and it replaces the guns it overlaps with (which can be 1, 2, or 3 guns depending on height), or swipe right and it replaces the ammo it overlaps with. You get 18 seconds to shovel blocks into 4x4+ combos and load ammo or create guns, and, again, whatever you had in place is destroyed if the new thing doesn't match the old. If you like fast paced and quick thinking required, it's worth a shot.

A unique puzzle game with a colorful cartoony art style. This seems like it could be fun, but unfortunately I couldn't really get into it. I love Puzzle Fighter, which is what the block puzzle most reminds me of, but Gunhouse just didn't hook me.

You're probably here for the art, and the game's probably worth the price just for that, but I had a surprising amount of fun with the gameplay too. About an hour in you'll have an a-ha moment where the way the game is played will just click for you, and that + the simple, flash gamey progression will keep you engaged for the 3-4 hours it takes to beat the game and see all the art. It's a cute little puzzle game.

Mindless game I like to play. Don't need to play with anyone else and I love it!~

i like what this game set out to do, but it's executed in a poor way that ends up not being fun

How are people reviewing this game with less than 0.5 hours on their accounts?! Ignore the doubters, this game is a lot of fun if you have a logical mind that can cope with Rubix-style puzzles.

I hardly understood the game logic, or is it just me?

Actually good 2020 Steam Autumn Awards edit: Still good