9 lives and a big gun.
While Wildcat Gun Machine sounds like the name of a metal band you'd expect to be an opening act for Ozzfest, or at that dive bar you always seem to walk past, it's actually a chaotic bite-sized shooter that feels as if the developers of Cat Quest took their turn at creating the next Doom. With lasers, monsters, and a healthy stock of cat lives, Wildcat Gun Machine is a solid, if flawed, action shooter.
Wildcat Gun Machine is an isometric twin-stick bullet hell, causing you to dodge and maneuver away from various bullet spread patterns and hordes of enemies. This is on top of countless environmental hazards that are just as deadly as any of the slimy creatures or eyeball lasers monstrosities you'll fry or pulverize with one of over a dozen lethal machine guns, grenade launchers, or laser rifles. You’ll often be locked, stocked, and ready to roll.
At an initial glance, the game seemed like it was a procedurally generated rogue-lite, and honestly, given the industry’s love for them, you wouldn’t be wrong for thinking that. But this isn't a rogue-lite at all and each level is purposefully designed and linear with several locked doors and the need to track down the appropriate colored key for each one. As you explore each zone, you'll encounter two mid-bosses that when killed, allow you to destroy the organic lock that hides away that chapter’s boss; rinse and repeat and you have Wildcat Gun Machine in a nutshell.
The game has four chapters, and its opening one feels more suited to be a tutorial with how it's far more streamlined in its difficulty and pathing. This leaves the last three chapters to bring the goods, and while the second and third chapters are the game’s best content, its final chapter sadly does not, and for myself, brought the game down hard, but more on that later.
Each chapter starts you out at a mystical obelisk, surrounded by a collective of white spectral cats that represent how many times you can respawn. While you'll only start with a few, it's easy enough to buy more or simply clear a room and restock them, not to mention refilling your health and ammo in the process; it all comes down to how much you want to backtrack. Despite each level not being tremendously massive, portals that return you there come pretty frequently around these parts. The obelisk is also how you'll upgrade your dodge, purchase grenades, and add to your ever-growing arsenal of weaponry.
As Wildcat, which I am assuming is her name as we are not told otherwise, you'll be collecting a currency in the form of bones, pulled from killing enemies and off the bodies of the downed that litter the halls and various traps. All your guns, upgrades, and grenade varieties all cost them, and they will come pretty damn quick, allowing you to suit up for the challenge ahead, however; there are only a few moments where the game is really challenging at all. While nearly everything will be bought via this currency, armor and secondary weapons will be found in the levels themselves.
Starting your bloodthirsty adventure will see Wildcat packing a pretty basic pistol, and a simple dodge, one with a pretty sizeable cooldown that lessens as you upgrade it. Eventually, you'll find a secondary weapon, one that, unlike your pistol, will have a finite capacity of ammo. Each encounter room will often have armor, ammo, and health, so choosing when you consume them is part of the strategy this game wants from you. You may want to save that armor for an upcoming fight ahead and run back to the obelisk to refill your depleting health before coming back to snag it for what awaits you.
Wildcat Gun Machine follows a standard loop; hallway, room, hallway, room, boss, with the amounts of rooms and hallways obviously being more than that simple description. This is constant throughout its first three chapters, giving you three bosses per location. The final bosses of each chapter are generally a massive hulking monstrosity and will usually present you with a new gun just before you enter their lair. Sometimes those new weapons do the job, but more often than not, you'll find something earlier that you may end up returning to the obelisk to swap back to as you can only carry one pistol and one secondary weapon at a time. One such example of wanting a specific gun at my side was a fight where the boss would send out a pulse that forms into honeycomb patterns skittering away from it. While they are easy enough to dodge, the zoomed-in camera often prevented me from seeing the actual boss as often as I would have liked. This caused me to rely on a long-distance laser gun that while somewhat weak, was the only way I could comfortably strike him without having too much random spray and pray since it gave me proper feedback when it was hitting him. It was effective, but killing him off-camera wasn't that satisfying.
This loop, as I mentioned, makes up the structure for the game’s first three chapters, but not for its final one. The final chapter starts off in one single room with a drip-feed of everything you’ve fought up to that point. Since the stage is massive in comparison to the view given to us via the camera, it can be fairly difficult to read the room to where you can comfortably dodge, let alone know what pickups are going to be spawning in the center, which by most cases, will be ground zero for the whole battle. Eventually, you’ll complete that, enter into a fight that really makes me wish this game had some sort of story to make sense of what was happening, and then a final boss that, honestly, I sat in one spot and used the new mechanic they gave me to beat him without losing a single pixel of life. Honestly, I had more trouble with most stage hazards as the camera zooms in significantly more when each battle has ended.
Despite my issues with parts of the game, the shooting is extremely reliable depending on certain traits given to certain guns. While slow guns can have powerful shots, the output of those blasts are just far too slow. The faster guns are weaker, but honestly, are so much better and gave this game a sense of pacing that compliments it so well. I was a bit disappointed that some guns share sound effects, but thankfully, the variety in what many guns can do more than makes up for it. Personally, the shooting is solid enough to make up for a lot of the problems this game has, but that praise only gets so far.
Defeating each boss grants you a special move that has you encased in some sort of flying mech suit and you'll exhaust a wild variety of lasers and various bullets in such a way that you'll do some serious damage all while being invulnerable in the process. This lasts for about ten seconds and then instantly stops. It's a shame there wasn't a meter or some indicator that it's about to end as you'll often spend some of that time getting to a safe zone for when it ends. You'll earn this ability as a meter builds up while you kill enemies and pressing X will kick it off.
I really love the art design this game has as everything is very clearly drawn and put together to make everything stand out in a sea of bullets of grotesque mutations. The bouncy nature of the chibi-like Wildcat moving about certainly reminds me of Cat Quest, even if the rest of the imagery this game throws at you most certainly does not. The game has smart use of color and tone to make each location pop and while there is a bit of repetition in its environments, it wasn’t enough for me to tire of it as the levels themselves are fairly short. The game has a pretty solid soundtrack that matches the velocity that most encounters bring with it and I don’t think a single track disappointed.
While I didn’t experience any crashes or glitches, there are a few little nitpicks I have in that I wish you could roll through enemies as it is very easy to get caught in a corner and die very quickly. I also found it very easy to get caught on the exterior doors as they slot themselves away from the level wall and I lost track of how many times I took a lot of damage being trapped for even a second. I also wish the game was more zoomed out at times as while it does pull back when combat starts, some levels could use a more pulled back camera to let you see more of your attackers as there isn’t really an indicator to know just exactly where some enemies are. Another issue with the zoomed-in camera, especially when not in battle, are the environmental hazards that litter each level as I’ve likely died more to them than anything else because you’ll assume you’re safe and accidentally skirt by some sort of flame, laser, or spike trap.
Wildcat Gun Machine starts off fairly interesting and its following two chapters had me sold on what it was trying to do, and if not for its very disappointing finale, I would be offering this as a solid recommendation. However; considering the title is budget-priced at around $15 USD, I still do recommend it solely because of its low-cost buy-in. While I did appreciate the fact it wasn't a rogue-lite with procedurally generated levels, I do feel it would have prolonged the adventure and made replays of the game feel a bit more unique. For the few hours it lasts, I still found it to be a fun experience, but one that I am not likely to jump back into any time soon
Developer - Chunkybox Games. Publisher - Daedalic Entertainment. Released - May 4th, 2022. Available On - Xbox One/Series X/S, PS4/PS5, Nintendo Switch, Windows. Rated - (E 10+) Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. (Through backwards compatibility.) Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.