Doppelganger Edition – Nihilism at Gun Point

Nongunz review: Doppelganger Edition for Xbox One.

In 2017, the Spanish developer Brainwashing gang presented for PC via Steam a curious roguelike called Nongunz. The title was originally slated to make the jump to PS4 and Nintendo Switch, but several differences with the publisher have led the game into an uncertain future. According to a hilo that the developer recently shared on his Twitter account, things haven’t improved over the next four years. Fortunately, there are always second chances. Now with Digerati, the Madrid study published Nongunz: Doppelganger edition, the final version of the work.

Among the novelties that we will find in this version remastered from scratch, there will be two new modes that will give more hours of action and debauchery to the game: arena and local cooperative mode. In addition, many adjustments have been made to enemy movements. Then I will comment on all the pros and cons of this adaptation.

Sweet War Inexpert

“War attracts those who have not suffered it“. This can be read on the altar of the gods, one of the main key elements of Nongunz: Doppelganger edition. And it is that phrases like this or messages distributed by the scenarios constitute the tradition of the game.

We will wake up like a corpse in his grave. We will no longer be a headless skeleton, but with a weapon in our bony fingers to defend ourselves. The landscape that we observe from our departure is desolate, a desert cemetery where there is a fresco full of animal skulls and weapons which await our victims in sacrifice.

If we go a little further, we will run into a huge c athedral

. Going through its doors is where the real challenge will begin. A hell in which, at first, it will seem impossible to survive, but to which we will gradually get used to.

In general, Brainwashing gang They bet on absolute confusion for the player. We will feel that amazement will accompany us for much of the adventure. There is nothing in the game that tells us what to do, how to do it, or what tools we should use, beyond a simple tutorial at the start.

Smell of gunpowder and blood in Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition

Mechanically, Nongunz meets most standards of the genre rogue-like (procedural dungeons, different monsters and zones, rooms with bosses, etc.). The good thing is that it improves aspects like variety and number of enemies, which adds more difficulty to the job.

The gameplay is very simple. There will be three main movement actions: jump, dodge and slide. With these three basic skills, we will have to move in a 2D space, where we will have to dodge and avoid any type of attack that the enemies pose to us. At the start of the level we will have a infinite ammo gun to defend ourselves, but as we advance we will find in the chests different more powerful weapons with melee or fire like pistols, shotguns, katanas, rifles, bazookas … can alternate them whenever you want.

In addition, we can also equip ourselves skulls or skulls which will grant us new movement abilities such as the ability to use double jump, teleportation, hyphen, attract enemies, use some kind of portals, etc. There will only be one chest per world, which will greatly limit upgrades. However, we will have a different type of chest, which in the vast majority of cases will be available at each level. With these chests we can get some cards that will download our statistics in many areas in exchange for life to open them.

Personally, there is one aspect of the shooting mechanics that has not convinced me: the lack of purpose. I understand this is one of the hallmarks of the game, but it can be a really big hurdle to overcome if we’re not too adept with the command.

the movement of our bone character can also be improved. The platform and the jump are not always very precise. In many times, the power to jump to a platform below another is missing.

A bullet for a soul

Even though Nongunz has a very steep slope at the start, as we unlock new weapons, the game experience will be more fun. Under our character we will see a counter that will increase as we shoot bullets (in fact, it’s like a clicker

). This number will indicate the number of souls in our power, which are nothing but the currency of the game.

Eliminating enemies will also increase a multiplier that will appear at the bottom left of the screen. If at some point we have 100 souls, but during that time we were able to kill 20 enemies, that will mean we can have 2000 souls to spend. But we also must not take too many risks, because if they kill us, we will lose all the accumulated souls and we will not be able to get them back under any circumstances.

Before that happens we’ll have the chance to leave the cathedral through one of the windows Let’s see the level to spend souls on the altar or get all life back. Of course, once we’re out, will change the whole level structure in exchange for keeping the material we have obtained. As for altar, will be used to increase the probability that certain weapons or skulls will appear in dungeon chests.

Later we can improve some kind of niche special in the cemetery (the link in the game where you always start when you die) to keep all the equipment so that it does not get lost. In addition, during our travels through the dungeons of the cathedral, we will meet certain beings. By freeing them, they will arrive at the nexus and give us perks, such as the ability to get more souls per second.

Arena mode and cooperative mode

The two main novelties of this Doppelganger edition are the Arena and Coop modes What Brainwashing included in this remaster from the original game.

First of all, Arena mode is nothing more than a kind of survival mode

old. Gradually, waves of more and more powerful enemies will appear that we will have to defeat to gain some souls.

On the other hand, the Cooperative will allow a second player to join the game by local multiplayer to increase the firepower against the dangers of the cathedral.

Nongunz is a Western Souls

the Visual style de Nongunz is out of the ordinary. Its color scheme is almost entirely black and white, with the exception of enemies and the projectiles they throw, which take on an orange-red tint, or certain visual effects. It even has a option that emulates the screen of a tube TV with slight interference, as if we were watching a VHS.

His mysterious world is somewhere between Dark Souls and an old western movie (Western Souls?). The two concepts form a seductive blend that exudes personality in abundance with its details Pixel art.

We should not underestimate its soundtrack, with a guitar and a female voice that maintains a terrible and false sense of calm, because in reality we slaughter enemies or die over and over again.

Finally

Brainwashing gang has managed to develop a remarkable roguelike that improves on many aspects of its original installment. Maybe mechanically Nongunz: Doppelganger edition may not be perfect (the movement and platform is sometimes not too precise), but he knows how to compensate for it by the way he wields the weapons. Each one feels unique in the gameplay and it has up to your own kick. It lacks, yes, more information about the resources we have at hand. Freck to be too cryptic.

This Definitive Edition also fixes that mistake that most games in the genre tend to fall into, namely the small variety of enemies. It’s a shame levels, even procedural ones, tend to repeat themselves in the structure. A detail which, in the long term, is a bit heavy.

To be fair, a lot of players can give in to the huge barrier of difficulty that Nongunz presents in his early days. But if we are consistent and do not risk too much, in a few hours we will be making the most of the shootings and the curious nightmarish universe that this demanding title offers us.