Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE — ‘GUNPIG: Firepower For Hire’ and ‘Bitcoin Miner: Remastered’
Unity showcase of shooting and mining.
GUNPIG: Firepower For Hire is a twin-stick shooter crafted by LaPointe Joints, a solo indie developer based out of Canada. Players will join forces with Bax, the ‘shortest’ exterminator in the galaxy, as he clears out the Stalwart Academy of their robot space monster infestation.
As Bax, players will attempt to clear each floor of its rogue robot hordes, aiming for the final boss to progress onwards. All the robots are identifiable by their pink/purple colouring, including the structures they have put in place to block movement. Shooting them down will leave behind their cores. Collecting the cores will give Bax a money boost — he is a mercenary after all, got to get paid. These kills are not mandatory, since the final boss is the key to success, but who wants to leave without getting some extra cash or missing out on the secrets that may be hidden?
To take out these enemies, players will need enough firepower to rip through them, and that is where the different gun pick-ups help. Stylized as fruits and other foods, players can pick up new guns that will alter how Bax fires. The default is a double shot ‘Cherry’ gun, but there are avacado circles, pistachio spread guns, carrot piercing shots and more to discover. Finding which one gels best with a player’s style is crucial to success in either total domination or speed. Trying them all out is important. Some shots may also alter the player’s secondary, tied to a gauge to limit the amount of uses. These can be landmines, carpet fire, and even nuking the visible enemies.
How you help Bax clear out these robots is up to you. Do you like going fast, cashing in on that speedy bonus money? Or do you want to take things slow, annihilate everything and discover the possibility of secret rooms for more cash? No matter which you choose, you’ll have Bax at your side to shoot through everything. There are only 8 levels, so if you are looking for a small twin-stick shooter to replay for extra money, this might be your game.
Bitcoin Miner: Remastered is an idle clicker simulation created by root studios, aka Ingrid Peñailillo and Jesús González. Players will become crypto enthusiasts, following a semi-realistic formula emulated by clicking to get all the riches.
How this works is that players will click on the core in order to ‘mine’ for bitcoin. Each click will gain a specific amount of bitcoin, starting in the decimal ranges and being upgradable with the bitcoin gained. Once some currency has been acquired, the automation can begin as players can buy CPUs and GPUs to increase their passive gains. The farther down the list, the more expensive as the model in which the bitcoin is mined is more complicated and requires more resources to work — but also has more possibility for profit.
Upgrading each one of these automation tools will increase their potency, but they can also be upgraded in two specific ways that are related to the mining model. For example, the CPU’s two upgrades are increasing the clock speed of each CPU and increasing the number of cores. All upgrades increase stats, which are then accumulated at the bottom for easy viewing, consisting of Hashing Rate, Power Rating and Efficiency. The Power Rating stat shows just how much electricity this would take if in the real world.
While the concept is definitely different, the gameplay is relatively the same; click to make numbers go up, and spend money to make the numbers keep going up. It’s cathartic and addicting to watch small numbers become big numbers. There is even a visual aid on the right to show you every upgrade and unit you add to your network. The bitcoin angle is an interesting twist, as it does showcase how the technology functions in an easy to understand capacity. If you were wanting to gain a bit of knowledge on bitcoin infrastructure this will give you a hand.
