Giant mechs, giant guns, and cute kittens.
"Strap yourself in for brutal Bullet Hell combat, as you face bigger, badder, more revolting enemies with each step!"
Pretty much the entire plot available around the game, as summed up by the trailer
Wildcat Gun Machine is an indie Bullet Hell / Run-and-Gun dungeon crawler developed by Australian studio Chunkybox Games and published by Daedalic Entertainment. It serves as a loving homage to old-school action games where the plot takes a backseat - so you simply spend the entire game running around shooting stuff.
Cat, an eye-patched mercenary armed to the teeth with an assortment of firearms - up to 40 different types - is stranded on a space station filled with rampaging alien monsters. Naturally, she has to blast the hell away through increasingly huge numbers of bloodthirsty enemies and bosses.
The game was released in 2022 for the PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
This cat is on fire!
- Arm Cannon: Several of the humanoid enemies have blasters grafted to their arms, as does the boss Votolato.
- Asteroids Monster: The slug-creatures with Lamprey Mouths are initially larger than Cat, but split into six smaller copies of themselves when killed. The smaller versions die instantly, but are alarmingly fast when swarming all over Cat.
- Attack of the Monster Appendage: Sluggoth is a giant slug-like head coming from a hole in the ground, from which it attacks Cat. It appears to have a lower body resembling an octopus, since it sends out tentacles periodically to attack Cat.
- Bullet Hell:
- The onscreen bullet density is off the charts, even outside of boss battles, where enemies will keep spamming projectile moves into every inch available.
- On the flipside, Cat's "Gun Machine" ability allows her to unleash this on legions of enemies.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: There's a radar on the upper-left corner that highlights onscreen enemies around Cat.
- Exploding Barrels: Oil-drums, helpfully marked with a red skull symbol, explode in a few seconds when shot at. Unlike other similar games, though, this one helpfully marks the blast radius with a transparent red circle before it blows so Cat can get out of the way.
- Eyepatch of Power: Cat has an eyepatch over her left eye, marked with an "X". And she's an alien-killing badass who takes names in large quantities.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: Cat's futuristic-looking flamethrower, one of the better weapons when enemies tries attempting a Zerg Rush on Cat.
- Flash Step: Cat can perform a dashing move that slides her in any direction, meant to help her avoid projectile attacks or save her from falling into pits. Getting hit by enemies mid-dashing still hurts her, though.
- Giant Mook: Many enemies, like the drone-like robots, oversized hornets, and slug creatures, have giant-sized versions of themselves appearing occasionally, towering absolutely over Cat. These take far more damage than their mook versions.
- Homing Projectile:
- Cat can collect and use missile launchers that home into the nearest targets, and even release them in massive streams.
- More than one boss, unfortunately, can release projectiles that chase after Cat. The last boss, Nosreap the "True Form", can notably release a floating Ring of Fire that tries to incinerate Cat.
- King Mook:
- Sluggoth is a King version of the regular slug enemies, having a similar head design, a Lamprey Mouth (large enough to swallow Cat whole!) and compared to the regular slugs, is instead fought as a giant head sticking out of a hole. It appropriately sends several smaller slugs as backup.
- There are small, floating monsters resembling oversized brains with tentacles, and there's the Unthinkable Horror who's a boss version of said monster type.
- Laser Hallway: Several corridors and empty rooms contains hidden laser projectors which can't be destroyed, and Cat's best hope is to run past them. The Flash Step helps.
- Lightning Gun: One of the first weapons Cat collects at the beginning of the third stage. Its lightning can even home in on enemies by holding the fire button.
- Marathon Boss: All the bosses, basically. They only have one or two variant of the same projectile attacks, but their health bars extend horizontally across the screen from one side to another and can absorb hundreds of shots before going down.
- Meat Moss: The interiors of the space station are often overgrown with a flesh-like alien substance, many of them even holding doors shut. Cat can only advance to the next area by killing enough enemies or a boss, leading to a brief cutscene of the moss holding a door closed dissolving.
- Mercy Invincibility: The titular "Gun Machine" ability, when activated, grants Cat a weaponized Jetpack, multiple turrets, and an impenetrable forcefield allowing her to rampage across areas full of enemies. Unfortunately, the "Gun Machine" only lasts for less than ten seconds.
- More Dakka: Cat can obtain an ever-increasing amount of firearms to rain havoc on enemies, which expectedly comes in insanely large amounts as the level goes on. And then there's "Gun Machine" which lives up to its name.
- My Brain Is Big: One of the bosses, the Unthinkable Horror, is an alien monster whose oversized brain takes up most of its body's upper half. This seems to grant it some degree of Psychic Powers allowing the Horror to float all over the place, besides releasing a powerful energy field from the brain that hurts Cat on contact.
- Organic Technology: There are a lot of enemies who appear to be organic growth fused with mechanical parts in the station, controlling them into attacking Cat. And a few of the bosses, including Votolato and Serbian, are giant mecha covered in alien growth that controls them. On the plus side, depleting the boss' health turns the machines back to normal - Cat can hijack them for clearing the next area of enemies.
- Spider Tank: Serbian, the "Mind of the Beast", a gigantic mech on robotic spider-legs infected by alien growth, appears as a boss. If Cat defeats it, the growth dissolves and she can take over Serbian to destroy enemies.
- Spikes of Doom: The later stages will have spikes shooting out from holes on the ground to impale Cat. Some of them take up an entire corridor, and precise timing combined with the Flash Step is necessary to avoid getting skewered.
- Spread Shot: The first firearm upgrade Cat obtains allows her to fire spreads between three to five to even ten at a time.
- Stationary Boss: Sluggoth, the Unspeakable Horror, Zinnerbille and Nosreap the "True Form" are bosses either growing from the floors, or fought inside a hole, where they can't move around and rely on spamming projectiles from a fixed position.
- Wolfpack Boss: The Remnants, instead of a single boss, are a group of Cat's clones, all of them taking a fraction of the health bar.
