Bunker Punks: THIS is how you do Early Access
We can all agree that Steam Early Access is not a place where you find quality content, it’s actually quite the opposite… mostly. If you take your time, you can find some great games, like Niffelheim, which I reviewed earlier (my first shameless plug, hooray!) or today’s specimen, Bunker Punks. This game was made by a formula of most Early Access trash: Retro FPS roguelike. But Bunker Punks had something that the others didn’t — effort put into it. But it’s still in Early Access, so is it worth purchasing in its current state? Let’s find out!
As mentioned before, Bunker Punks is a roguelike FPS with retro graphics. But instead of trying to be a procedurally generated DOOM (which nobody needs because there are mods for that), it tries to be something new, and succeeds. First of all, the gameplay is nothing like DOOM, at least to me. Bunker Punks involves a lot more looking up, and you’re mostly going to be fighting in corridors or small rooms, which is actually much more fun than it sounds. Now for the graphics. In case of games with pixel-art, this subject is very delicate. Because, you see, there’s a thin line between “retro” and “lazy”. And the graphics are anything but the latter. It looks retro enough to pander to DOOM fans, but still looks great.
Bunker Punks plays just like you’d expect it to — run around, shoot others, collect stuff, don’t die.
In the beginning, you have the choice of two characters: one has stronger pistols, the other has stronger shotguns. When you start the game, you will notice something — there’s no reloading! This always contributes to the amount of fun you’re going to have… I forgot the pros and cons again!
The pros
- Bunker Punks is plain fun, which is always nice.
- The game is very pick-up-and-play, but the put-down-and-be-productive aspect is another story.
- For the amount of stuff on screen, it’s surprisingly fast (as in 60fps on my laptop fast)
- I haven’t encountered any bugs in the game yet.
- Bunker Punks tricks you — on your first run, you’re only going to encounter a small range of items, but when you die, you get transported to a merchant, who will sell you a range of permanent upgrades
The cons
- Something that should be fixed in the full version — the level generator. It’s not buggy, but somewhat boring. All of the rooms per zone look very similar (and there’s no map), and the levels are flat.
