Same gore time, same gore channel.
Showgunners comes to us from developer Artificer, the team behind both Hard West and Phantom Doctrine, a studio that has shown time and time again that they understand what makes a solid tactical, turn-based experience, tick. From the game’s initial moments right through to its stunning finale, this XCOM meets Smash Tv mixture constantly kept me entertained and addicted with both its strategic elements and its visceral brutality.
Players take on the role of Scarlet, an ex-bounty hunter who joins this televised bloodsport to take revenge against the show’s current champ. You’ll come to understand more of her story through a few of the game’s cutscenes, showing us the road to her involvement in this sadistic game show. The show itself is called Homicidal All-Stars, and a short while before release, this was also the title of the game before it was changed. Apart from the game's menu, the Homicidal All-Stars logo is everywhere.
Homicidal All-Stars sees its contestants pulled from volunteers trying to make a name for themselves, to death-row inmates simply fighting for their freedom. Each nightly episode takes place over a series of events, watching a group of challengers make their way through deadly traps as they approach new battlegrounds to test their skills against its bizarre and deadly defenders. Scarlet is one of those challengers and alongside a fresh teammate in ex-champ Marty Manson, she’ll need every bit of luck and help to come out on top.
Showgunners allows you to take control of Scarlet in one of two different game scenarios. The matches where you fight for your life and exploration zones where you’ll take part in a few cleverly designed puzzles, avoid a series of deadly traps, provide autographs to fans who are there on location, and track down new weapons and rewards via hidden containers littered around the environment, often tied to traps or puzzles. These moments are pretty well-realized, especially the puzzles as they often hint just enough on how to tackle them but never feel like the answers are just given to you.
The moments you spend with fans are also pretty interesting as they have gameplay ramifications in regard to how you interact with them. As you pass by groups of fans behind many of the game’s fenced areas, they will shout out to you, either as a fan or someone who is indifferent to your survival. Most isolated locations have at least one fan and interacting with them offers you dialogue options with them. You can respond to them with either a positive remark, a slight jab, or just piss them off entirely, with each comment having a consequence to the types of sponsors you can choose for various perks, once you’ve reached certain sponsor milestones, that is. This is through fame points that are tied to what each sponsor is looking for. Each of these sponsors have perks such as a 50% change to reload without using AP, gain bonus melee damage, regenerate health while exploring, and several more depending on the sponsor, allowing you to find the path that works for you. Your progress in the events also gains you fame, so make sure to pay attention to what each sponsor is looking for.
If you explore off the beaten path these areas can also lead to secondary locations which aid in granting you more money and experience and are extremely worth doing, not just because of those rewards, but largely since the gameplay here is obsessively impressive. And, as you progress through these trap-filled locations, you can also be ambushed by a few lowlifes looking for a quick score. These battles are fairly light in difficulty but fit well within the idea of this psychotic game show. And to aid in the battles ahead, healing stations and shops are littered about, allowing you to refill your health and do a bit of shopping before the match ahead. Shopping often features new weapons for your teammates, grenades, healing items, and more.
The central arenas are where Showgunners shines. Each location is filled with a robust variety of enemy types as well as unique bosses, with some battles having special conditions to take part in. From pressing switches to prevent a bomb from going off to passing through a series of blast doors before the room is filled with poisonous gas, these objectives really cause the tension to increase as you also have to deal with a small army of criminals all gunning for you. While not every battle is peppered with these secondary objectives, they more than make up for it with new enemies and additional hazards, such as paths occupied by a speeding train every few rounds.
As you progress from episode to episode, you’ll be introduced to new foes, each with unique abilities and designs, making them stand out on the battlefield so that you can plan accordingly. These range from hulking bruisers with a flamethrower, to monks outfitted with drones, to support classes that can top up an ally's health from a distance. The variety here is pretty great and each chapter consistently offered up more, mixing this variety during most main events later on to keep me on my toes. The presentation with introducing these new additions could have leaned more on being a bigger and more elaborate spectacle, but their introductions here are more than serviceable.
Combat is the core appeal of Showgunners as it operates via a turn-based affair with success percentages to hit and a wild amount of abilities to choose from, such as Tybalt's skill to use holograms to trick his foes into thinking one of their allies is him in disguise, to using Scarlet's ability to prevent an enemy from moving, something that really came in handy during the level with the train. Most of these skills come from leveling up your team between rounds, as well as growing your team from additional challengers who know all about strength in numbers.
Combat relies on Action Points (AP) to provide both movement and action to each one of your characters during their turn. Your action points are consumed with attacking, using items, moving, reloading, and your assortment of skills. Each character has 2 AP per turn, with a yellow or blue range indicator applied to the map to show their movement range. You can increase this range by leveling up or applying an implant to their kit, which can also boost your health, melee damage, or apply regeneration or type resistances. Yellow is the maximum range they can move, but you'll give up any action by moving within that range. Blue takes up one AP and allows you to move, just make sure you've reloaded first or your move to your new location ends your turn instead, leaving you possibly defenseless.
The game recommends you take cover before you end your turn, and they are not kidding. This significantly reduces your chances of taking a hit, but some enemies such as the Freak, can find you behind cover regardless, electrocuting you and delaying your turn, that is unless you spend some AP from another teammate to interrupt the Freak with a few well-placed bullets. Still, taking cover is crucial to your survival, and the same can be said for your enemies.
During a few main events, the showrunner, Orion Ford, will introduce Plot-Twists. This is where some of the more involved objectives come from. He will release poisonous gas into the arena or reveal that the very walls have been littered with C4. He may even just drop explosive barrels into the mix, which can often come in handy for you, allowing for some explosive results if enemies use them for cover. These moments are rather fun and Ford's involvement in the story certainly goes to a few predictable places, but are nonetheless extremely satisfying and certainly sets up a very interesting sequel.
By completing objectives you'll live to see another round, and areas may expand out with additional rooms, hallways, and more. Additional enemies will be ready for you in these locations as well as doors that glow red with the remaining turns affixed to them to indicate when reinforcements will arrive, often at your flanks, giving you cause to set up proximity charges or place one or more of your teammates in an overwatch stance, causing them to automatically shoot anything that enters their view. This keeps you on your toes for sure and a few late-game arenas use these to great effect.
The combat options here certainly can make several matches to be nail-biting scenarios. The game thankfully saves between rounds, or you can manually save after a much-deserved kill to keep that progress intact. Still, missing on an 80% shot can be defeating, but so can pulling off a shot that should miss by all accounts and ends with a head-popped and a lowlife scum a bloody mess on the ground. When you combine this with each character's ability and many of the environmental hazards, Showgunners is nearly a 100% success chance in delivering some brutal and bloody fun.
To add to the show's aesthetic, an announcer will be narrating events. You can reduce his contributions to the game in the settings should you get tired of hearing "boomshakalaka" or "Ohhh, what a hit!!", Although I do love the wealth of variations on the latter. The show elements don't stop there as you can have Scarlet take part in post-episode discussions with a producer on the show, sitting down in a confessional-like interview to talk about how Scarlet feels that night went down, especially during the moment early on in the game that suddenly changes the dynamic of her time there.
Across the roughly 12-15 hour campaign, depending on what difficulty you are on and the number of times you've had to redo a whole session, Scarlet will gain a decent chunk of allies; seven in total. Marty joins right from the jump with Tybalt shortly behind him. Eventually, you gain the help of a sniper, grenadier, and weapons manufacturer who joined to drum up business for her company. You also gain the help of a lethal robot who I sort of wish had some sort of personality chip to make him a bit more of a presence here. Still, this cast is largely great and fills out certain personalities across the group. While a few missions allow the entire use of your team, most matches allow just two or three alongside Scarlet.
You can also talk with your teammates and listen to their personal diaries they have left in their accommodations. There are even additional testimonials from previous champions and challengers that have long since been killed off in the show. The game does a great job at letting you get to know your teammates either through elaborate backstories or some fairly impressive voicework during conversations or through their diaries. Honestly, I figured that the voice work here was just going to be some bare minimum effort but was pleasantly surprised at just how good it was.
While most of its gameplay is that of a pulled-back isometric camera, Showgunners often zooms in on some pretty gnarly kills. These moments can be turned off entirely, but it allows you to get in really close to the action. While you can zoom in at any time, having a wider view of the battlefield is crucial to plotting your next move. Visually, Showgunners does what it needs to do, even if its character models could be a tad better for any future sequels. When characters are conversing, the game uses some fantastic artwork of talking heads and for its contestants, artwork that is really great, and honestly, it makes me want a comic series asap.
Showgunners is also fully voiced across all of its story moments and everything in between. As mentioned earlier, I was rather impressed with the acting, especially by Sean Letourneau as Tybalt and Pippa Vos as Phantom. Robin Brooke as Scarlet was also a standout as well, bringing all the tone needed of a woman looking for revenge. Sound effects and kill shots all pack the punch needed here and the few moments of music really sell the reality show feel of what Showgunners is gunning for.
Showgunners also features a pretty decent list of features and accessibility options. There are various key bind changes, a slider for how frequently the announcer will pipe in, to even built-in Twitch support. Hell, it even has Twitter and Discord integration as well. What may interest many though is the ability to select a variety of difficulty settings with everything from super easy to hard, complete with a customizable "Iron Man" mode, which provides selectable settings to create a unique difficulty of your own.
My time with Showgunners was a mix of playing on PC and on that of my trusty Steam Deck. While the game isn't verified for Valve's miracle handheld, I found it ran damn well until about halfway in and then it would lock up and crash every few seconds into playing. Switching to my PC removed those issues apart from a single crash late into the game while accessing the items shop, which is where the game would oddly crash on the Steam Deck as well from time to time. Again, Showgunners is not verified for Valve's handheld and the fact it worked at all for as long as it did was still impressive. It is possible that something about that area in the game resulted in the crashes, but I cannot verify that.
Showgunners really came out of nowhere to truly impress me. The visual aesthetic of what is here really shines with all the glitz and glamour you'd expect out of a televised bloodsport. While some story elements slow down once certain events are revealed, the payoff is quite enjoyable and sets up a sequel in a very interesting light. Showgunners' gameplay and variety really offer up an addictive experience here with fun characters, interesting enemies, and all the extreme brutality you could ever want in such a concept.
Developer - Artificer. Publisher - Good Shepherd Entertainment. Released - May 2nd, 2023. Available On - PC. Rated - (M) Descriptors not available. Platform Reviewed - PC / Steam Deck (Not Verified). Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.