Guncraft

Using voxels, which are 3D space pixels, to make a game with craft elements will most likely tie it to the massive success of Minecraft, certainly if all terrain is made up of cubes. First person shooter Guncraft is neither that nor its little brother Ace of Spades, which follows a simpler model, but it will have many people fooled. It does offer an incredible amount of customization as the prior reference, but keeps all the glaring combat issues of the latter, which makes its gameplay bland and completely unbalanced in exciting, new ways.

Grass-covered dirt squares will welcome people coming from other voxel games, but blocks in this title go a lot further. Just about any color can be seen with a smooth, gradient shine in wildly different maps, from a simple countryside to massive cityscapes to even more outlandish space stations. However, lighting or lack thereof obscures a lot of the environment, with characters falling away in darkness. More so, with monochrome tiles stacked atop each other, it gets tough to see contrast in large sections of the same materials. This game doesn’t run on visuals, but even so, it does create some annoyances when trying to scope out the green player amidst the mountain of green squares, for instance. Just having an impressive array of options available as a map isn’t enough to actually see it come to fruition.

Much of this wasted potential is true for the rest of the entire game. All points of this shooter run on customizing any aspect possible. Maps can be built from scratch, guns can be modeled and assigned stats, skins can be tailored and loadouts can be adjusted. Another unique element to the game is that characters can put down prefabricated structures on the fly, from simple walls to guard towers. This can also be designed to the player’s liking, in theory. However, in practice, little of this will be used efficiently. For starters, gun crafting can have an inherent flaw that doesn’t let players even finish a gun or apply it to their class. This leaves some gamers stiffed out of reassigned weaponry, which gives a large upper hand to those fortunate enough to have that system work for them. In any server, the player with the custom gun wins. It’s not so much a “pay to win” model like in micro-transactions, but rather a “pray it works” design. Don’t expect any facilitating tutorials on the subject either.

Going further on this, some skins that are approved through a community vote, take advantage of the maps’ most recurring colors and lighting issues, which obscure them most of the time. It’s not uncommon to find mostly blackened players on maps, since they’re less likely to be seen at all, certainly from a distance.

As a major point of aggravation, maps in themselves are lacking in many aspects. In theory, again, it should be impressive that Guncraft lets its community easily whip up a few stages of their own. However, when put in effect without any knowledge of how to create an entertaining map, the result of most creations is highly unbalanced locations that are anything but enjoyable. If anything, most custom creations are a chore to tolerate, amidst maps with their own faults. They are fun to look at, but when bogged down in the same hallways or spaces, because control points are easily dominated, it becomes tedious to even see a map pop up.

Still in the best case scenario, terrain is subject to massive destruction from explosive ammo, which results in any rounds eventually devolving into chaos. Since floors can be destroyed to a state of void, those without a hook shot sidearm will need to play “avoid the abyss” more than actively participating in the game. If not that, then gameplay takes a similar cue from Ace of Spades, where action takes place in such a huge open space that any combat not revolving around large distance guns is a futile effort at best. Take into account that for some reason Guncraft doesn’t follow up its customization to their user options and a lack of zoom toggle makes aiming diligently a pain as well. It’s a pretty limited scope to own all this freedom, but only have an engaging round in closed quarters, where no one has an unfair advantage and no one is exploiting the system in many ways.

Community issues go further in the lack of interaction, such as reporting cheating players, where only admin prompts are available, with a command to request a kick or ban from that server. Watching a player not die consecutively for seventeen times, after they wait for the spawn shield to take off, is a little irritating, to say the least. Guncraft only has 2 or 3 properly running servers at any time, so it’s not like there is a lot to choose from as an alternative.

It should be noted that the game tries though; it tries so hard to be something different. Aside from aforementioned liberties, blocks can be built during gameplay and run on a currency scheme derived from getting kills. Shoddier blocks are cheap and plentiful, while building a steel wall will require quite a few resources.  Perks are also tied to this currency model, though they’re not equally balanced. For instance, a bomber destroying the map from overhead pretty much consolidates that round to whoever activated it. Then again, some mode specific perks are pretty clever, such as a bike that can carry a flag bearer in Capture the Flag matches.

Game modes, aside from the standard shoot to kill ones, attempt to alter the design a little, such as lava or meteor survival. These rounds can best be described as “the floor is lava” paired with gun tag, where players kill each other to freeze their opponent in place, while fiery death slowly creeps up on them. Those that are taken out can still mess with living players as annoying ghosts and the person who dodges obliteration the most wins.

Despite its good intentions and thoughtful ideas, Guncraft pits together the worst possible combination of community driven content and gameplay. With gross unbalances in its gunplay, level design and community freedom, this shooter will only be rewarding to those that game the system and ruin it for everyone else. If trolling ever became a skillfully designed game, this would be its origin.

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed. (@Daavpuke)