Video Game / Guncaster

As the dimensional mess caused by Serpent Riders started to take its toll, the universes began to crumble under the pressure of the Chaos Sphere. Anomalies were a common occurance, and things started to get really ugly. From one of the worlds which received such treatment comes the mod's protagonist - Cygnatius "Cygnis" Flaynithere. A slightly crazed hero-wannabe, who's also far from being a human. A skillful gunslinger who actually hates magic, as it's the cause of all of the mess he was thrown into. Still, he doesn't mind using it to get the job done. What kind of job, you may ask? That'd be kicking D'Sparil's ass, of course!

A Doom/Hexen mod by PillowBlaster (creator of Russian Overkill and Trailblazer), Guncaster puts players in the role of the gun-toting, spell casting badass dragon with an attitude, Cygnis Flayinthere, as he fights his way across multiple dimensions.

Note: This mod intentionally makes your character overpowered.

The latest version of the mod can be downloaded here: [1]

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HERE BE TROPES:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: The EXTREMESPHERE. Pretty much every single powerup bundled into a single item. Oh, and Through the Fire and Flames plays for its duration.
• Absurdly Sharp Claws: There are few things that Cygnis' draconic talons can't cleave through.
• Action Bomb: Dying with a Tiberium Canister in your inventory causes it to explode, often taking everything around you with it.
• Abhorrent Admirer: Sabbatha the succubus AKA the "Thotkeeper." Cygnis inadvertently saved her life during a rampage through Hell and chose to spare her. She's been trying to get into his pants "as a means of thanking him" ever since. Cygnis, exhausted with fending off her advances, eventually landed her a cushy job as a shopkeeper just so he could catch a break.
• Alien Blood: Cygnis has purple blood. It's rarely seen unless he (somehow) dies.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Most things that are randomly spawned (armor tiers, spells, Stratocasters, etc.) can be bought from Nithor instead.
  • The asbestos suit primarily exists to make hazardous floors more convenient. Once obtained, it lasts for longer than the radiation suit does, and can be removed or re-equipped at will to preserve its duration for later.
• Armored Dragons: Cygnis can wear all manner of protective gear. Everything from an asbestos suit for environmental protection to a suit of heavily armed powered armor.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: When Cygnis dons the Deadmaker's Mask, he undergoes an explosive transformation - he grows to enormous size, his physical and magical power increase radically, and his voice deepens to a terrifying rumble. At this point, he can even damage his foes by simply walking over them, flattening them under his thundering, scaly tread.
• Baa-Bomb: The Sheep Shield spell creates a swirling vortex of sheep that circle Cyg (not unlike this video which it references). Once the cast button is released, the sheep travel in every direction and explode on contact with walls.
• Badass Family: Nithor, the shopkeeper, repeatedly suggests that Cygnis is his descendant through some of his voice lines. Some of his quips like the one where he gets nostalgia for seeing Cyg's rampage or the fact that the forum post states that the EXTREMESPHERE can be referred to as "Going full Nithor" imply that he went on a similar spree to Cyg in the past.
• Baritone of Strength: Cygnis's standard voice is a few octaves lower than Nithor's and he's a true-to-form name-taking, asskicking, dimension-hopping half-dragon. When he's empowered by wearing the Deadmaker's Mask, his voice drops another octave.
• BFG: "Old Dreadful." A massive Plasma Cannon that fires a gargantuan ball of glowing, green (or blue if empowered with the Tiberium Canister) death. Out of an entire arsenal of big, fancy guns, it is unquestionably the biggest and fanciest of them all. Can be upgraded and dual wielded for added devastation.
  • The addon adds the Golden Emperor, a powerful rocket launcher whose explosions can ignore walls with the right item, and is apparently alive or at least somewhat self-aware as scoring a particularly impressive bodycount with a single attack will "please" it, generating a rocket (up to full ammo capacity).
• BFS: Brimstone, Cygnis's sword. A big, two-handed blade "made of incredibly dense alloy" and powered by a nuclear reactor rod - "a still blazing piece of the star that watched over [Cygnis's] world's demise." Can be upgraded to shoot waves of fire when it swings.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Nithor the shopkeeper often directly addresses the player.
• Breath Weapon: Naturally. Cygnis' default spell is his fire breath, and he always has it with him.
• Call A Hitpoint A Smeerp: The alt-fire toggle upgrades for all of your guns are referred to as "Stratocasters".
• Content Warning: Played for Laughs: the title screen has an RSAC advisory label, but instead of listing the level of violence the mod goes to and why it has that level, it instead simply warns the player that its "lettuce" rating is at level 4 because of "spice and sauce".
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • If an enemy is killed by a barrel explosion, you get to watch it slowly inflate like a balloon before it pops into Ludicrous Gibs. The same thing will happen if an enemy is damaged by a barrel explosion but is killed by other means.
  • The "Gumpop" and "Prism Laser" spells achieve the same result.
• Damage Over Time: The Stratocaster for the Strucker loads it with slugs that cause any enemy they hit to slowly lose health.
• Deadpan Snarker: Especially in Strife, where Cygnis will respond dismissively to pretty much every NPC interaction. Given how somewhat janky the game's mechanics and questlines are, you can hardly blame the Guncaster team for throwing them in.
• Developer's Foresight: They couldn't bring Korax's voice actor on to rerecord his Hexen voice lines that refer to the protagonist as a human, so they instead have Cygnis react with confusion when called such.
• Draconic Humanoid: The game's hero is Cygnis Flaynithere, a red, gun-toting, magic-casting, anthropomorphic dragon who's also ridiculously overpowered. While he has scales, horns, and wings, he lacks a tail for some reason. There's also Sabbatha, who's basically an anthro dragon and a succubus.
• Early Game Hell: Even Dragon skill level^note The mod's equivalent to Ultraviolence is a cakewalk in the late game of most slaughter WADs once you've gotten all the upgrades you need. Playing on that difficulty, however, makes the early game balls-to-the-wall difficult, since that's when Cygnis needs to build up the momentum for his late-game powertrip gameplay.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Playing on Hatchling difficulty^note The mod's equivalent to I'm Too Young To Die prompts the menu to ask, "You're kidding me... right? Right?"
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The protagonist of Guncaster uses guns and casts magic spells.
• Eyepatch of Power: Demoman's makes a cameo, "soaked with some dark magic" (and alcohol, assumedly) that allows the player to turn their TNT bundles into sticky proximity bombs.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: There's a spell for every type of damage and more.
  • Firespit, Skullfire, and Flamewave to burn the enemy to cinders. Scourgebreath doesn't really count as instead of actual fire, Cygnis exhales "pure hatred" that effectively obliterates anything it touches from existence.
  • Frostbite and Chillgrasp stop foes cold, freezing them and leaving them ripe for shattering. Frostbite releases a heat-seeking projectile while Chillgrasp puts a chilling squeeze on its victims.
  • Thunderstruck is shockingly effective at ending lives, summoning a bolt of electric death from above. Sigil of the Gods launches ball lightning when upgraded, though that's a secondary effect.
  • Gumpop is a delightfully toxic influence on others, melting through armor and weakening enemies. Anything under its effects for too long suffers an explosive demise as their chemical make-up is rendered lethally unstable.
  • Threadcutter cuts straight to the razor-sharp point. Magically summoned blades of various kinds slice, dice, and impale anything unfortunate - or stupid - enough to get caught in their path.
  • Skypunch reduces its victims to ugly punching bags, trapping them in mid-air as it pummels them with spiritual fists. As a bonus, it can be empowered by both the berserk power-up and Midas Tome. Simultaneously.
  • Corpseblast makes Cygnis the life of the party! Or is that death? Either way, the spell causes corpses to explode like meaty landmines, showering anything in the vicinity with gory shrapnel and deadly magic.
  • Hitchcock's Birds and Sheepshield make full use of Cygnis's animal magnetism, summoning beasts to fight alongside him. Choose between a murder of ravenous, flesh-hungry crows or a protective flock of explosive sheep.
• Fun with Acronyms: Battle Armored Dragon Assault Strike System, or B.A.D.A.S.S.
• Furry Reminder: Dragon Hoards are mentioned infrequently by Cyg, which is natural since he probably has one himself, somewhere. One of the mod's unique screens even has Cygnis reclining on a pile of treasure, power-ups, and weaponry, all assumedly collected by him.
• Gatling Good: The Pulverizer, a rapid-fire portable machine gun that rapidly shreds anything its pointed at - it's crazy to the point of the Spent Shells Shower that it ejects being able to damage enemies. It can be upgraded to shoot projectiles out of the air and turn the aforementioned spent shells shower into a singular, strong projectile.
  • The Sandman. Aside from insane rate-of-fire and firepower, it sports explosive rounds and can be upgraded with its stratocaster to grant it an automatic targeting system. Simply point, click, and watch everything in Cygnis's field of vision die.
• Gold Fever: Cygnis and Nithor are both dragons with all the love of treasure that implies. They also have an affinity for precious gemstones.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Cygnis can set his firearms and magic aside to rip and tear with the best of them. Being a dragon, he also employs some wickedly sharp claws.
• Goomba Stomp: Comes in two flavors.
  • By pressing the zoom key, Cygnis can deliver a powerful kick reminiscent of Duke Nukem 3D's "Mighty Foot."
  • While flying, pressing the crouch key will make Cygnis dive toward the ground feet first, damaging any enemies beneath him.
• Hand Cannon: The Longhorn revolver. Fires giant rifle rounds and can be used to reliably snipe enemies in place of the Augur.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Cyg's preferred melee option outside of his bare hands is the enormous "Brimstone," a two-handed sword infused with nuclear fire that can cut through whole hordes of foes and fell even the mightiest challenger.
• Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball: The Stratocaster for the Pulverizer allows you to create one of these by holding down the fire button.
• Hypocrite: Cygnis doesn't hold a particular fondness for "Wazards", but he himself isn't above using magic to get the job done.
• Innate Night Vision: Derg-O-Vision provides this, in addition to highlighting enemies and items.
• Kill It with Fire: Cygnis is a dragon and can breathe fire from the start. Enemies hit by Cygnis' fiery breath may catch fire, taking damage over time.
  • The "Skullfire" spell lets Cygnis throw classic fireballs.
  • "Flamewave" creates a wall of fire that's perfect for crowd control.
• Kill It with Ice: A couple of spells allow for this.
  • The "Frostbite" spell is essentially an icy grenade that bounces and throws off shards of ice. It gets stronger when it bounces off icy surfaces and explodes when it hits lava.
  • The "Chillgrasp" spell allows you to catch enemies, holding them in place as they freeze. You can toss them around and they'll freeze other enemies they get close to.
• Knuckle Cracking: Pressing the reload button with Cygnis's fists equipped will prompt him to do this.
• Large Ham: Finding a secret in Doom elicits the following line:
  Cygnis, as rave beats pump in the background: "PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY!!"
  • He'll also do a Metal Scream whenever he picks up an EXTREMESPHERE.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The homing shots upgrade for the Matriarch can be charged to load multiple rounds at once - release the fire button, and they all shoot simultaneously.
• Mage Marksman: Cygnis uses powerful magic spells in combination with an equally powerful arsenal of firearms.
• Megaton Punch:
  • Cygnis' uppercut move launches anything it hits. It'll usually trigger as a Coup de Grâce on stronger enemies, but you can force it by holding crouch as you punch.
  • The Rachmaninov's Punch spell sends Cyg forward, fist-first. If it connects with anything, it creates a massive explosion of fire in all directions.
• Midas Touch: The Philosopher's Tome gives Cygnis the ability to turn smaller enemies into gold statues if he kills them with his bare hands. Combined with Deadmaker's Mask, its power is massively enhanced, allowing any enemy to be transmuted into gold and extending the effect to Cygnis' fireballs and Rachmaninov's Fists. Croesus' Blessing can spawn Midas Spheres upon a golden statue's shattering. The spheres extend the Midas effect's duration for 15 extra seconds each and also give over a thousand dosh.
• Ms. Fanservice: Sabbatha, the alternate shopkeeper, befitting of a (dragonoid) succubus is this in spades. A sultry voice, curvaceous body, slinky dress, and dialogue riddled with innuendo and outright propositioning towards Cygnis. However, some of her dialogue suggests that Cygnis isn't particularly interested in Sabbatha's advances. Not like this discourages her, in fact his lack of interest excites her.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Our dragons are uber-powerful, gun-toting wizards with one Hell of an attitude. This mod is basically Doom: Dragon Edition.
• Pinball Projectile:
  • The aforementioned Frostbite spell, but also, the Longhorn gets an upgrade to shoot electrically charged bullets that bounce off surfaces.
  • The stratocaster for the Pulverizer chaingun weaponizes the Spent Shells Shower by turning them and the actual bullets fired into a ball of chaotic metal destruction, which pinballs around the map when fired, flattening and splattering any unfortunate monsters they collide with.
• Powered Armor: The "Bishop" B.A.D.A.S.S. Provides massive damage resistance, immunity to environmental hazards, huge speed and strength upgrades, deflect projectiles, and comes equipped with arm cannons.
• Purposely Overpowered: Everything in the game is designed to dial every single aspect of the player's abilities up to eleven a handful of times, and throw some extra things in as well.
  • Special mention goes to the aforementioned B.A.D.A.S.S., which PillowBlaster himself notes is "stupidly overpowered" and "my guilty pleasure". A metric crapton of upgrades, all with no drawbacks and lasting infinitely long (or, until you remove the suit).
  • And then the dial gets turned up to eleven and then rips the damn nob off with the Deadmaker's Mask in the official addon, an optional file made by Pillowblaster to house the things he played around with during making the mod that either didn't fit with the mod thematically or were so unbalanced even he couldn't excuse putting it in the main file proper. When picking it up, it merely says "A Curious Looking Mask... wonder what it does?" Putting it on results in... Cygnis turning into a towering monstrosity of a dragon man, giving him a massive health boost, a massive melee damage boost, and what makes it truly even more ridiculous than the B.A.D.A.S.S. is it also boosts your magic; like turning your wimpy Flamebreath spell into a Godzilla-esque torrent of fire that melts an entire room full of demons in seconds. Oh, and your flight is boosted and hazardous floors don't hurt you. And did we mention like the B.A.D.A.S.S. it's infinite until you turn it off too? Really the only weakness it has is that many Doom maps, obviously, aren't built with the player being a giant dragon in mind.
    • As of the 3.777 version, both power-ups can be used at once, turning Cygnis into a draconic Icon of Sin, who can fire Old Dreadful bolts from his hands at incredible speeds. He also has two gigantic Revenant-like missile launchers, which are able to fire a demon army-destroying barrage of explosive projectiles. Certain spells are powered up even further; that Flamebreath spell? Now it's a torrent of green-plasma flame that's somehow even more damaging than the previous. And this all stacks with his usual powerups by the way.
• Red Is Heroic: Cygnis isn't just a big, badass dragon - he's a big, badass, red dragon. The same goes for Nithor.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: The Longhorn revolver has excellent stopping power and accuracy for a starting weapon. It can also be zoomed in to pick off distant enemies.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: And how!
  • The "Strucker" is an efficient, accurate double-barreled fully-automatic death-dealer.
  • The "Ironblast" is an enormous, eight-barreled(!) monster of a pump-action shotgun that fires with such recoil that even a big, burly dragon like Cygnis is sent careening with every shot.
• Shoulder Cannon: An upgrade for the B.A.D.A.S.S.
• Shout-Out:
  • Many of the spells are directly patterned off of Bioshock Infinite's vigors - the Murder of Crows spell, for example, is a near 1:1.
  • The Battle Armored Dragon Assault Strike System, or B.A.D.A.S.S., is clearly a reference to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.
  • One spell is called Rachmaninov's Punch after Sergei Rachmaninoff, a Russian pianist known for his large hands.
  • The description for the Chillgrasp advertises that you can "become the coldest of Vaders".
  • The tomed version of the Prism Laser is "Extend Floyd", referencing the band's most famous album art.
  • The name of the Dynamite's altfire is "Exorcism in Blue".
  • On the forum post for the mod, the Threadcutter's name is followed by "ZA WARUDO!" Similarly, the Potion of Iron Lizard is followed by "lol Metal Slug".
  • The Demoman's eyepatch is an obtainable item that turns dynamite into proximity bombs.
  • The Ironblast upgrade that gives it multiple shots before reloading is dubbed the Supermag Johnson.
  • The Deadmaker's Mask is pretty transparently the Mask of Basilissa, sharing the same sudden change in size and enhanced magical capabilities.
  • Cygnis' taunts:
    • "You are all already bread... er, dead."
    • "You dare to bring the blight into my air? You must die!"
    • "Don't come with me if you want to live."
  • Nithor's lines:
    • "Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal."
    • "We don't need no -- agitation -- dahh dah da daaa daa!"
    • "Oh! Mama mia, mama mia! Mama mia, let me go. Beelzebub has put a devil aside for me! For me! For MEEEE!"
    • "That's what I waaaant! Big, fat money! Reekee-teekee reekee-teekee! Reekee-teekee reekee-teekee!"
    • (after buying an EXTREMESPHERE) "I see them burn, for me and you. And I think to myself; what a wonderful burn!"
    • "Carry on, my wayward son."
    • "Always pick on someone of your power level, like!.. uh... I know, Raditz!"
    • "Hey, you forgot about your second breakfast!"
    • "Greetings, mortal. Are you ready to buy?"
    • (after buying an EXTREMESPHERE) "Burninating the countryside! And the sides of the countrysides!"
    • "Hoy, small fry! Whaddaya need on ye olde quest?"
• Sickly Green Glow: An enemy that is damaged by an exploding barrel but doesn't die will glow bright green. Killing them while they're in this state will result in the same swelling and exploding animation as a direct kill from a barrel blast.
• Stuff Blowing Up: It's a PillowBlaster mod. This is to be expected.
• Succubi and Incubi: Sabbatha the succubus. Cygnis made the debatably poor decision to spare her life, and she's been hot for him ever since. Cygnis doesn't care for her attention.
• Taunt Button: Press it, and Cygnis will mock his enemies with a randomly-picked Badass Boast.
  • Press the "Taunt Unusually" button, and the opening bit of It's Not Unusual plays on loop as Cyg sings along and does The Carlton.
• The Unpronouncable: Played for Laughs, in that Cygnis is unable to pronounce the word "wizard" correctly. He usually substitutes it with "wazard", but he also uses "weyzard" and "wrizard" in one of his taunts.
• Tele-Frag: This is how the spell "Darkpath" is used offensively: allowing Cygnis to "telefrag monsters up to some point, depending on their health and whether they're a boss monster or not."
• Wave-Motion Gun:
  • The Augur, which is a wave motion Sniper Rifle. Can reliably three-shot some of the bulkiest enemies, as well as see through and penetrate walls after an upgrade.
  • The Prism Laser. Eight multicolored rays that steadily converge into one, single beam.
• You Nuke 'Em: What the altfire for Old Dreadful is described as. If used properly, its radius can span the entirety of some of the largest levels in Doom.