Our apologies to Dodge Roll Games as it took us far too long to get into this world-class indie gem. It’s a chaotic, but enthralling, mix of cutesy animation and on-screen bullet chaos.

Enter the Gungeon

Okay, what’s all this about? It’s a mighty bullet hell (弾幕 danmaku—”barrage” or “bullet curtain”) shoot ’em up with roguelike qualities.

That means the “gungeons” randomly generate, so each playthrough is different. And when you die, you start over from the start and head back in again.

It’s not our favourite indie genre, but titles like this and the excellent Dead Cells prove roguelike games can be brilliant.

You select from a bunch of dodgy misfit characters, each with special abilities, to dodge roll, shoot, and loot your way through procedurally generated rooms.

The goal is to reach the treasure of a gun that kills the past. But to get there you have to battle through very bloody difficult gungeons.

Along the way you go up against some insanely difficult challenges, namely in the form of super cute baddies and bosses.

But it’s super difficult. You need patience with this one, as initially you’ll get whooped. As in, struggling to get past the first level.

It’s a good idea to head into it with some knowledge of what to do. That’ll help you overcome the sky-high difficulty level.

That bloke is right. From our perspective, five or so hours into the chaos, and this is our guide for you potential gungeoneers:

• Display patience over the first stage.
• Don’t get hit—dodge roll as often as possible to help you there.
• Master dodge rolling. It’s your biggest friend in this game.
• Familiarise yourself with the battle system, as your brain will need time to adjust to what your field of vision often has to deal with.
• You’ll get a better weapon at the end of the first level. That’s your chance to shine.

If no one has hit you, and you’ve got that better gun, now’s the time to hope you can make it past the first boss.

Okay, so two things about Enter the Gungeon. It’s insanely difficult. But it’s supposed to be—resilient gamers will get lots of rewards for sticking with it and “gitting gud”.

There’s something incredibly compelling and addictive about playing the game.

As you get better, you begin to realise how to master advancing through the levels and understanding the subtle complexities.

Flipping tables to stop bullets, enhancing your weapons, and thinking strategically to defeat enemies. It’s a real (wait for it)… blast!

But, golly gosh, those weapons. There’s a lot of imagination on display with them—some are silly or playful (such as the one that fires fish across a room), others are destructive “Hell yeah!” type moments.

And they create a sense of glee, which is very much what Enter the Gungeon is fantastic at delivering.

Oh, there’s some nice music as well to keep you in the zone.

Well, we absolutely love it. We put off playing it for many months, but once we gave it a whirl it wasn’t long until its genius shone through.

The dev team, having released a few DLC packs, is now leaving the project to work on new titles.

Whilst that’s a shame, there’s more than enough here to keep you entertained anyway.

It’s an absolute cult classic gem we can highly recommend to anyone who likes roguelikes. And if you don’t, then this and Dead Cells are the ones to change your mind.

Heck, they both did it for us. We didn’t like the genre for ages, now we must doff our caps to these two mini-masterpieces.