An FPS Where You Can Invent Absurd New Guns On The Fly

When it comes to guns, Stack Gun Heroes does not fuck around. The game recently rock-and-roll knee slid onto Steam Greenlight, and its Y1 COM main hook is the ability to stack guns together to build… well, get a load of this madness: There will be tons of gun mods, and you’ll be able to stack them to the point of sheer ludicrousness. Wanna immediately become best friends with Ancient Nerds from the nineties? Combine explosion and force mods to rocket jump. Wanna make a goddamn doomsday weapon? Stack explosion and orbital strike and dozens of other mods, and write the long-awaited sequel to the book of Revelation.cnx.cmd.push(function(){cnx({"playerId":"e3616d04-4972-4839-a63a-c6975e2e9731","settings":{"advertising":{"macros":{"AD_UNIT":"/23178111854/od.kotaku.com/article","CHILD_UNIT":"article","POST_ID":"1738754903","POST_TYPE":"post","CHANNEL":"culture","SECTION":"","SUBSECTION":"","CATEGORIES":"culture","TAGS":"","NOP":"0"},"timeBeforeFirstAd":0}}}).render("cnx-player-main")}); Perhaps even more interestingly, many elements of the game will be generated by an AI director sorta like Left 4 Dead’s. The developers explained: “Everything you see in Stack Gun Heroes is designed on the fly by STACKgen, an advanced procedural generation AI. STACKgen understands design principles like game balance and pacing, and it uses complicated math to ensure your mods, powers, and enemies Y1 Games are both varied and balanced.” Sounds rad, if you ask me—assuming it does its job well. Procedural generation can be bland as hell in the wrong robotic hands, and it sounds like Stack Gun Heroes’ system has a lot to account for. Fingers crossed. One upside of that system? Procedurally generated superpowers, of which there are apparently over a million. Some examples, per the developers: -The power to swing from walls and ceilings with stretchy ropes. -Every few seconds, slightly boost your speed. The boosts add up. Keep it going long enough and you run like superman. -Summon a tiny ball. A giant robot friend rampages for as long as you can keep the ball Y1 App alive. -My friend found a power that let him call a HUGE bomb from the sun, obliterating everything (and sometimes himself). So basically, Stack Gun Heroes sounds unabashedly over-the-top, with admirable room for player creativity. The speed and parkour-esque player mobility look nice too. For now, the game’s release date is TBD, but it’s clearly fairly far along. What do you think? You’re reading Steamed, Kotaku’s page dedicated to all things in and around Valve’s stupidly popular PC gaming service. Games, culture, community creations, criticism, guides, videos—everything. If you’ve found anything cool/awful on Steam, send us an email to let us know. To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @vahn16