Gunpoint: An Overview

Recently I picked up an indie title called Gunpoint that I’ve been following for awhile. Gunpoint describes itself as a stealth puzzle game that centers on rewiring objects to accomplish your goals. What does this mean? I’ll break it down here.

Totalbiscuit recently said something that stood out to me; most good puzzle games are built around a single mechanic. That mechanic is how you engage with the world, and how you overcome the challenges you’re presented with. I’d actually take this a step further; most video games have a single primary mechanic, and if you’re lucky, some impressive subsystems.

For most games these days, that mechanic is called violence. In Portal, it was… um… portals. Duh. In a role-playing game like Mass Effect, the primary mechanic is dialogue. And so on.

The better and more engaging that primary mechanic is, the more enjoyable the game. This is a simplified view, maybe, but it’s a good starting point for discussion.

In Gunpoint, the primary mechanic is something called “crosslinking.” In essence, the idea is that you can quickly rewire objects to each other to make the environment serve your goals. Switches can be wired to doors, can be wired to elevators, can connect with wall sockets to knock a guard unconscious, and so forth. Put another way, the entire environment effectively becomes a Rube Goldberg machine. It’s up to you to decide how complex or simple a solution to pursue with the tools you have available.

Do you avoid detection entirely? Do you knock guards unconscious and leave them alive? Do you eliminate all witnesses of your actions? It’s largely up to you.

The campaign is relatively short (I think I powered through it in a few hours), but the game has more to offer. Specifically, the level editor is included. So with any luck, the community will be able to make and share new puzzles and challenges with each other. And the maps are, IIRC, stored as plain text; they’re tiny, and easy to share.

Gunpoint is ten bucks well-spent. I do recommend that you buy from the developer’s website. There, the game comes as both a DRM free version, and a Steam key. If you buy it directly from him, you receive both, and know that a bigger cut of your purchase goes to support an independent developer.