HYPERGUN is, according to the developer, NVYVE Studios, a rogue-lite arena shooter. Marketed as an unpredictable, procedurally generated experience defined by its collectible 150 weapon modules, HYPERGUN should be a joyful game that’s easy to pick up and keeps you playing for hours on end. But is it really that?
You take the role of Dewey Owens, an intern working at DevTech Labs. DevTech is an advanced weapons corporation dedicated to putting a stop to an unseen alien menace and has crafted a simulation chamber to create the ultimate weapon, the so-called ‘Hypergun’. Crafted from a multitude of disparate parts and meant to be thoroughly tested in a kind of virtual reality deathtrap, your goal is to reach the end of the simulation by creating the ultimate Hypergun while killing hundreds of virtual enemies. The bulk of the game consists of running through this simulation, unlocking additional weapon add-ons, and spending earned ‘Hyper Coins’ on unlocks which alter the gameplay itself.
Before I dive deeper into the gameplay, I’d like to talk a little about the game’s story. I say “a little” because there’s not much story to be found in HYPERGUN. Most of the game’s ‘lore’ can be found in post-it notes, computers and tablets that are filled with small talk between DevTech Labs personnel. None of this ever amounts to much and it also doesn’t help that all these items look the same. There’s one template for each item and they don’t even change the color to make them a little unique. This makes it difficult to determine whether you’ve already interacted with an item since it looks the same as all the others. There’s certainly an attempt at making the background story charming, but it’s rarely clever or compelling, with weak jokes that include references to cryptocurrency, frequent pizza deliveries, and development hell.
The gameplay itself is, sadly, not that great either. Every arena you have to clear before continuing is devoid of any memorable design or unique features. Each room locks upon entry, invariably offering a series of ramps and ledges decked out in neon-lit colors and chrome textures, with enemy hordes consisting of simplistic polygons endlessly rushing towards your character. Your equipped gun gains and loses statistical boosts depending on the pickups you find, which usually add or subtract percentages to velocity, accuracy, damage, fire rate, and so on. Some also increase your character’s stats, like movement speed or health. Certain pickups add a swappable attachment to your gun to change things up, like a cluster bomb launcher, but these operate on individual cooldown timers and are basically a secondary mode of fire. This may sound like a neat feature, but the truth is that the attachments all put out the same amount of damage. Shooting a buzzsaw has the same effect in terms of damage as shooting a rocket has. What is the point then of all those different attachments? That’s like making a racing game that has 100+ vehicles, but they all drive the same. It also doesn’t help that pickups don’t say what they are before you pick them up and install, which means that grabbing them is a complete dice roll, removing any potential for strategic consideration of which components you have to look for. You simply walk over a spinning crate and hope the RNG mechanic works out in your favor.
Another issue I have with the gameplay is that the Hypergun itself never feels powerful. The sound it makes when firing is weak and its recoil is non-existent, so it always feels like you’re handling a BB gun instead of the supposed ‘most powerful weapon created’. You also can equip it with gag items like fake glasses or a tiny windmill, which is amusing at times, but it makes the gun look silly and thus makes it even less powerful than it’s supposed to be.
The enemy AI is also not that great. Every virtual hostile simply runs (or flies) towards you while doing their attack pattern over and over again. Some constantly put up a shield and fire a few shots in your direction, others run towards you with huge arms to punch you with. They also are riddled with bugs that make it easy to destroy them, like getting stuck on ledges or simply not seeing you even though you’re in their line of sight. Even the bosses are not that well-designed. One of them is a huge disco-ball that shoots several lasers in a straight line while spinning at a slow pace, making it very easy to dodge them. To destroy this boss, you simply have to keep shooting it until it explodes. There’s no strategy involved, which hurts the gameplay experience. The only way to make this game challenging is by deliberately running into an enemy’s line of fire to lower your health somewhat, otherwise, you’ll quickly breeze through the arenas.
Conclusion
HYPERGUN is a difficult game to enjoy. While on paper the concept may sound like an interesting idea, the execution of it has been handled poorly, resulting in an unchallenging and boring game to play. The Hypergun mechanic doesn’t actually do much in terms of making the gun more powerful and the enemy design is so lackluster that you’ll quickly quit the game out of sheer boredom. These issues may get fixed in the near future, but it looks like the developer is already working on its next project, so I doubt that’ll happen.
