Salmon GUN is a hypothetical Unity game by Ironcommando. It's about Salmon migrating from their spawn point to the ocean before returning back to where it began, while encountering dangerous predators and hazards.
Except that this time, your salmon inexplicably has a machine gun.
The game is a Horizontal Scrolling Shooter inspired by In the Hunt: your salmon can only travel throughout the water while enemies can appear above the water or inside it. Thankfully, you can aim in any direction via the mouse and jump out briefly.
Salmon GUN contains the following tropes:
- Advancing Boss of Doom:
- The Great White Shark will chase the player salmon down and One-Hit Kill them if it catches them. Unfortunately, it's faster than the player, and the player needs to slow it down by shooting the fish that enter the area so that they bleed and distract it.
- The rematch against the eagle now has it chase the player as it drops bombs into the water in its first phase.
- There's also the cyborg Great White Shark, who fights like his earlier battle except with far more dangerous stuff thrown in — like Freeze Rays to make you stop moving and to freeze the fish mooks. He's quickly offed by a fishing trawler, however or not, if you're on a New Game Plus and let the fishermen survive.
- Airborne Mook: Several fish-eating birds appear in the game, such as eagles, ospreys, and seagulls.
- Alien Blood: The icefish enemies bleed a faint white color when shot, compared to the red of other enemies (or blue for crustaceans and cephalopods). This is Truth in Television as icefish do have white-to-colorless blood in real life.
- Animal Jingoism: All the bosses you face are predators of salmon, such as a bear, eagle, great white shark, orcas, and humans (in a trawler). Several of your enemies are also predators of salmon, like seabirds, ospreys, seals, tuna and dolphins.
- Animals Not to Scale: As part of the Rule of Funny and the Rule of Cool, the eagle is gigantic compared to a normal one.
- Background Boss: The cyborg bear final boss is capable of jumping into the background, lift a redwood tree from the forested background, and toss it at the player salmon, before jumping back into the fray.
- Bait-and-Switch Boss: Near the end of through the third-to-last stage, you encounter the cyborgified version of the Great White Shark you met in the third stage. He then gets harpooned by a fisherman on a fishing trawler, the real boss. If you're on a New Game Plus and let the fishermen survive the trawler's destruction, it turns out the shark's Not Quite Dead and fights you as an Optional Boss.
- Bears Are Bad News:
- One of your major antagonists is a bear. He's initially not very threatening as the Warm-Up Boss, but takes massive levels in badass and becomes the Final Boss of the game. And as the final boss, he's definitely not one to be trifled with thanks to his insanely huge arsenal.
- The Mini-Boss of the Arctic ocean level is a polar bear that bashes the ice, causing chunks of it to drop, and needs to be goaded into sticking its head into the water for you to damage it.
- Bee-Bee Gun: One of the Bear boss' attacks is a "Beezooka", which fires a hive into the air that temporarily covers the air in bees. To avoid getting stung to death, the salmon just has to stay in the water without jumping out until it clears, since bees can't go underwater.
- Boss Battle: Seven actually, nine of them.
- A bear with a fishing rod that tries to reel you in while he tosses explosives into the water.
- An eagle with homing missile launchers that tries to grab you from the sky.
- A great white shark that's faster, tougher, and stronger that advances on you, but is easily distracted by blood in the water.
- A pod of orcas that attack in a group and fire off sonic attacks.
- A fishing trawler with a giant net, harpoons and explosives.
- The eagle, now rebuilt as a cyborg and with far more dangerous weaponry and also an Interesting Situation Duel.
- The bear, now rebuilt as a cyborg with far more dangerous weaponry.
- The Optional Boss appears if you beat the fishing trawler with certain requirements. It's the shark, rebuilt as a cyborg and with far more dangerous weaponry.
- The True Final Boss is your previous run's salmon, with similar weaponry to you except jacked up to eleven.
- Cool Boat: The fifth boss is a fishing trawler with a gigantic net that must be shot to pieces before it captures your salmon for a One-Hit Kill. Once that's down, it'll fire harpoons at you, and once the harpoons are down, the humans on it will toss dynamite into the water.
- Delicious Distraction: The Great White Shark and its rematch is distracted by the smell of blood from the fish enemies that you spawn. Attacking them will cause them to bleed, and give you breathing room from the shark as it goes after them. It's a good thing too, as the shark is actually faster than the player.
- Destructible Projectiles: Most projectiles in the game can be destroyed. A good thing too since your hitbox is rather large, and certain parts can become Bullet Hell.
- Devious Dolphins: Dolphins are one of the enemy types faced in the fifth level, and are aggressive enemies that view you as a prey item. Not only do they have around the same health as seals, they're also fast and appear in numbers.
- Fiendish Fish:
- Several of your opponents are weaponized predatory fish, such as Tuna, Pike, and Barracuda.
- The most dangerous opponent in the game is another Salmon as the True Final Boss.
- Freeze Ray: The cyborg Great White Shark Optional Boss has these. Not only does it pretty much make you into fishfood for it if it hits you, but it will also freeze the fish mooks, making them harder to bleed out since you now need to break the ice before you can hurt them.
- Glass Cannon: The player salmon is capable of taking very few hits before going down, and several enemies and especially bosses will one-shot them. Thankfully, they can eliminate most threats via the machine gun.
- The Hero Dies: Just like many real salmon, your salmon dies at the end of the game after mating or not, if you manage to buy every single upgrade in the game for that run. Of course, your next generation starts the cycle again.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: When the cyborg eagle is defeated, it falls into the water below — that it covered in napalm not long ago. It promptly cooks to death via the flames it set up.
- Interesting Situation Duel: The battle against the cybernetically rebuilt eagle. The area consists of a level area with a waterfall you can Wall Jump up at one end, and when the boss Turns Red it drops napalm bombs into the river, setting it on fire and making the only safe zone on the waterfall which you must keep jumping up.
- Justified Extra Lives: When your Salmon is killed, another one that was part of the school will replace them. This is a pretty huge number but isn't infinite, however, and you do get a Game Over if you lose all your lives.
- Kidnapping Bird of Prey: The Eagle. It's able to grab your salmon, and if you don't mash the buttons enough in time, it eats that salmon for a One-Hit Kill.
- Level in Reverse: The penultimate and final level are the second and first level in reverse, respectively. Justified as your salmon is journeying back to its spawning grounds.
- Mirror Boss: The True Final Boss is your previous run's salmon with all the weapon upgrades taken to ridiculous levels, is massively buff and can take several hits compared to your current player.
- Misplaced Wildlife: You can invoke this by buying the Poor Directional Sense upgrade, which will allow your Salmon to access the Amazon Rainforest or the Antarctic, places where Atlantic Salmon have no reason to be found in.
- Monstrous Seal: One of the enemy types, found mostly in the Arctic ocean areas. They're aggressive enemies since your salmon is a prey item to them.
- New Game Plus: Every time you complete a run, you'll be able to play again with tougher enemies/enemy attack patterns, and all enemies/bosses will drop 3x as much currency (stacking multiplicatively per run). You'll eventually be able to buy all the upgrades, and if you manage to do so, you'll be able to fight the True Final Boss at the end of your next run.
- No Sense of Direction: One of the buyable upgrades is "Poor Directional Sense", which will allow you to access places like the Amazon Rainforest and Antarctica as secret levels, areas where Altantic Salmon usually don't go to.
- Pike Peril: Pikes are an early-game Giant Mook enemy with a dangerous ramming attack.
- Punny Name: It's a pun on Salmon Run
, and gun. - Puzzle Boss:
- The Great White Shark needs to be lured away to prevent it from instantly killing you. To do this, you have to shoot at the fish enemies that enter the area so they bleed, distracting the shark.
- The polar bear miniboss in the Arctic ocean. To beat it, you need to stay at the surface of the water under the ice to draw its attention, the quickly move away after it bashes a hole in the ice and sticks its vulnerable head in for you to shoot.
- The Fishing Trawler is extremely resistant to damage, but the final phase has the fishermen attempt to drop dynamite into the water. Shooting the dynamite back at the boat explodes it for massive damage.
- Recurring Boss: The Eagle is the second and the second-to-last boss, while the bear is the first and final boss. Both of them were rebuilt after getting badly injured by your salmon. Also, on a New Game Plus, the great white shark can be encountered again, rebuilt as a cyborg. You need to "spare" all the humans from the fishing trawler instead of killing any of them in order for him to appear.
- Rule of Cool: A lot of Artistic License – Biology animal behaviour is done on purpose to enforce this. The eagle is far bigger than a real life one, the polar bear's ice-breaking is normally used for seals and not salmon, and there's of course the sheer awesomeness of animals holding weaponry. Similarly, a lot of Artistic License – Physics is also done on purpose for this, such as napalm not being washed away by the flowing rapid current.
- Superboss: On a New Game Plus, not killing any of the fishermen that the trawler drops will draw the attention of the Not Quite Dead cyborgified Great White Shark, who's a much tougher fight than the first time.
- Tennis Boss: The fishing boat's final phase has the fishermen start throwing dynamite into the water in an attempt to blast-fish you. Shoot the dynamite sticks back towards the boat to damage it greatly when they explode, as the boat otherwise has a gigantic amount of health.
- Threatening Shark: The great white shark boss. It's faster than you, can turn on a dime, has a good bit of health and it will One-Hit Kill you if it bites you, but thankfully, it's distracted by blood in the water — which appears when you shoot the fish mooks that enter the area. Partway through the third-to-last level, you'll encounter a cyborgified version of him who's taken out by the real boss but is revealed to be Not Quite Dead and an Optional Boss if you let the fishermen survive the trawler's destruction. As an Optional Boss, it's far tougher and now comes with Freeze Rays to make it harder for you to bleed the fishes — and easier for you to get eaten.
- True Final Boss: There's an extra boss on a New Game Plus if your previous salmon survived the mating season, which only happens if you fulfill certain requirements. Naturally, your current salmon will have to fight them over a mate.
- Wall Jump: This is how you jump up waterfalls. You'll need to do this against the boss of the sixth stage after he covers the "floor" in napalm.
- Weaponized Animal: A good number of the animals are inexplicably holding weapons. Your salmon wields a machine gun (and can get upgraded with other weapons), and the eagle and bear also hold weaponry like missile launchers and explosives.
- We Can Rebuild Him: The shark, eagle and bear come back as tougher cyborgs with more weaponry in later levels following their defeat. Don't ask how they managed to get this done.
- Where It All Began: The final two levels has the player character return back to the river they spawned from, while they encounter the eagle and bear, now rebuilt with cybernetics.
- Wily Walrus: Walruses are tougher-than-normal enemies in the Arctic Ocean level. Like the seals, they're aggressive since your salmon is a prey item to them.
- Wolfpack Boss: The Orca pod boss is a group of stronger-than-normal enemies that attack you all at once.
- Zero-Effort Boss: After the fishing trawler is destroyed, the fishermen that were on it will drop into the water. They lack weaponry, can't swim, take very few shots to die and will automatically die after a bit of time. But if you're on a New Game Plus, not killing the humans will get the attention of the Not Quite Dead cyborgified Great White Shark.
