Being someone who considers themselves a twin-stick shooting connoisseur I’m always down to check out new indie games that give me an excuse to shoot up everything in sight. While my preference had classically been straight-up old-school arcade-style action, I’ve quickly become a massive fan of the roguelike variety in this generation. One thing that’s at least somewhat exciting about Uragun though is that it sort of does its own thing, and simply feels a bit different because of that. While perhaps it comes up a bit short in terms of excitement and intensity, it still plays well and it may be well-suited to people who’d like to dial the normal craziness of the subgenre down a bit.

Playing out with a more mission-based approach, but with a pinch of roguelike flair, you’ll advance through a series of areas where your goal will mostly involve blowing your enemies to pieces. To do that, you’ll be working with a primary and a secondary weapon, starting out with a decent chain gun and a rocket launcher, but over time gaining some more options in subsequent runs. Depending on the course you plot, you’ll have the opportunity to pick up a variety of enhancements that can make you more lethal, heal yourself up, or gain more currency for later use. The fact that you may face off with some sub-bosses and then ultimately a main boss for the area, helps lend to that general roguelike structure in feel.

The problem, and this becomes more clear in subsequent runs, is that for the most part there just isn’t all that much in terms of variety to how things will play out. You may get some different gear, but most of the perks are stat-based in some form and not radical game-changers. The fact that your mech isn’t terribly nimble also somewhat puts a damper on the excitement level as, compared to much of the game’s competition, the pacing is more plodding than perky. This leaves you with a shooter that at least doesn’t have a lot of direct competition on the system in terms of how it plays, but that also fails to make a thoroughly compelling case for itself regardless. It is by no means a bad game, it’s just trying to gain traction in an eShop full of more exciting competitors, which makes it a harder sell.