Indie Game of the Week 484: BioGun
by mento
The only true way to escape the dog days of summer is to shrink yourself down and enter a dog, where it's probably a perfectly reasonable temperature. BioGun is a shooter style exploraction game where your enemies are viruses and pathogens and your power-ups are enzymes and antibiotics. Just try not to think too much about where you're walking around.
Whomever first had the bright idea to map an exploraction game to the inside of a living organism, Fantastic Voyage style, really hit paydirt. After all, Metroid's planet Zebes had a certain gooeyness to its subterranean caverns that occasionally invoked the feeling of crawling through the interior of a massive creature, and the vast number of passageways and bacteria-sized threats within an organic entity's digestive, pulmonary, and circulatory systems would make for some daunting exploration. As far as I'm aware I've only played two games that do this: Moonlight Pulse (IGotW #438) and this week's game, BioGun by Dapper Dog Digital. A "pet-demic" has spread across all dog breeds and one maverick biochemist's last ditch effort to save man's best friend involves creating a sapient vaccine to enter his own pet dog, which the player names before the game begins, to root out this deadly virus as well as any other ailments that reside within. This vaccine, known as Bek (and given pig-like qualities for unexplained reasons), uses a gun powered by atomic energy and enzymes to remove any traces of dangerous pathogens throughout each successive part of the dog's body, moving from one end to the other.
The anime style character portraits feel like a deliberate comedic choice. There's definitely something about the premise to this game that feels right out of a particularly unhinged Trauma Center plotline.
For as gross as BioGun occasionally threatens to be, especially when passing through the colon region, the vibrancy of its colorful aesthetic and its cute assortment of microscopic critters—some hostile, some friendly, some artificial visitors like yourself—not only gives the game a more approachable style but also makes it feels like another convert at the church of Hollow Knight: two genre-defining games that have since become the new model to emulate in this field, rather than the old guard of Metroid and Castlevania. However, BioGun does retain one aspect from Metroid: the use of a gun that can point in any direction the player aims at, applying pressure to enemies and bosses once they're in range and vulnerable while being careful to dodge out of the way of any retaliatory projectiles. Most fights become these fast-paced bullet-dodging affairs, with multiple variations of your main gun to find (they'll typically redistribute stats in some equitable manner; say, by increasing damage by decreasing the range) and the usual progress-enabling traversal skills that often give you an edge in battle as well.
The game makes great use of its premise and setting too; for instance, fast travel points are simply where you're close enough to the skin that the scientist following your adventures can pluck you out with a syringe and re-inject you where needed. Synapses can be spent to increase the accuracy of your map at certain nodes, first filling in nearby rooms you've yet to explore and eventually pointing out where upgrades and bosses can be found. Bosses represent dangerous pathogens—I've defeated e. coli and chlamydia so far—and each region has its own rules and hazards distinct to that part of the body and related to its function. Also, I lied before, there's another feature on loan from Metroid: the scanner, which lets you understand more of what you're dealing with as well as unlocking perks like displaying the current boss's health bar as you continue to fill up a bestiary of microbial creatures and other miscellaneous discoveries.
Finally, a Metroid type game with shower scenes for save points. Careful what you wish for, I guess.
I fear I've let my love of achievements perhaps color this playthrough as there's a few related to a certain chip—modifiers that change the behavior of your weapons and how temporary upgrades work—which vastly increases attack output at the cost of being stuck with one hit point. Boss fights have become grueling contests of endurance where a single blow is enough to finish me off, forcing me to carefully account for boss patterns while hoping the extra DPS will be enough to finish the fight quickly before I slip up. Of course, this is an entirely optional choice and perhaps one the developers intended as a NG+ thing once you'd become familiar enough with the game's flow, but some of us dumbasses are out here chasing imaginary clout with a one-and-done. More damningly, the set highlighted how many missables the game has, which traditionally isn't something you want to find in an exploraction game where 100% completion is often the goal (or at least a goal). Beyond that, though, it controls fluidly even if it can be awkward to jump, hover, aim the gun, and shoot all in one motion and you occasionally have hazards that lack the harder outlines that most of the sprites have, which makes them blend more into the background instead. But really, everything outside the missables are either nitpicks or self-imposed stupidity; I've little truly negative to say against the game.
BioGun has the fundamentals down and a surfeit of ideas for a biological exploraction game where you can control the host creature to some degree when opening up pathways and reaching your objectives. The visual style is easy to look at and it's certainly not a small game at some 12-15+ hours on HowLongtoBeat, putting it closer to its more RPG-like kin in size. You know me, I play an awful lot of these things and I'm always more receptive to those that not only handle the core mechanics of the genre well but figure out new directions for it to investigate. BioGun's the kind of twofer I'm always on the lookout for, even if it might mean spelunking through a dog's ass on this occasion.
Petting the dog? Pfft, that's bush league. Now, forcing the dog to piss so you can access more areas inside its bladder, that's some next level pet interaction.
Rating: 4 out of 5. (So far.)