Whenever we get a new game from Arnold Rauers, aka Tinytouchtales, it’s pretty much a given it’s going to be in the Game of the Week conversation. I mean, have they ever released a bad game? The correct answer is “no, they have not." Guncho is the latest title from Tinytouchtales, developed in partnership with Terri Vellmann on art and animation and Sam Webster on sound design, and it arrived on iOS and Android this past Monday. And, well, here we are again.
Right off the bat Guncho has a pretty different look from most other Tinytouchtales games. It’s an Old Western themed game, which is kind of a departure from their more medieval-ish fantasy stuff. It’s also a 3D game, which as far as I can tell is a first for Tinytouchtales. However, when you get down to the mechanical stuff, this is a Tinytouchtales game through and through. A hex-based tactical turn-based roguelike? Yeah that checks out.
The unique element in Guncho that sets it apart from similar games is its revolver mechanic. Being a Western game, your main weapon is a six-shooter. You can see the cylinder and bullets at the bottom of the screen. Those six bullets correspond to the six sides of each hexagon tile you’re standing on, meaning you can shoot at enemies that are facing any of those six sides and are within 3 spaces from you (at least for standard bullets).
The tricky part is that each time you move or perform an action, the cylinder rotates one position. You can change whether it rotates clockwise or counterclockwise on the fly, which has tactical uses. Also, once you’ve fired a bullet it’s gone from the cylinder, and so as enemies pop up around the board you need to make sure that you’re moving and using your bullets in such a way that you’re setting yourself up for future turns. You might be moving yourself into a spot that lines up with an enemy only for the cylinder to rotate to an empty bullet for that direction, which means you might be hosed.
You CAN reload your entire cylinder, but you need to either have fired off all your bullets or manually discharged the ones you haven’t used, which sort of acts like a “wait" command and essentially costs you a turn. There are also enviornmental hazards that need to be avoided to keep yourself out of harm, but can also be used to your advantage by luring enemies into them. After each round you can choose between an ammunition upgrade or a new special ability to help equip yourself for the rest of your run.
The goal is to play through six rounds and then fight a boss at the end, all without dying, and if you’re successful you have basically won the game. You can play on Normal or Expert difficulty and there’s also a Daily mode to play. I adore the revolver mechanic in Guncho and feel like the game has a ton of potential to be expanded upon should the developers choose to. As is it feels a little bare bones, but that also makes it a really easy game to just dive into for a quick round here and there. Guncho is free to try with a full game unlock IAP, so why not give it a “shot" for yourself? Get it? Shot like in shooting a gun? Wocka wocka.
