Lose Your Head In Gonner With October Release

Gonner [official site] - a side-scrolly playform shooter - took Adam's fancy at GDC. I don't say that lightly either. He proclaimed it "the best pure action game I saw at the show". In case it had tickled your fancy too, it now has a release date of 12 October

As per Adam's preview assessment for the version he played earlier in the year:

"That's the key to the joys of Gonner – movement and momentum. Visually, its rough lines and smudges are a world away from Bayonetta and Devil May Cry, but the combat has more similarities to those acrobatic third-person beauties than it does to any 2d platformer I've ever played."

One of the big things about the game is that you pick a head to wear on your body which offers you a particular skill. Getting hit can make you lose your head (and gun) so part of the skill is in retrieving them without getting killed. Well, I mean it'll only be a matter of time before someone is crowing about their "headless" run over on Reddit but I'm talking about for NORMAL playfolk here!

As per Adam's experience:

"In case it's not clear, this is a brilliant mechanic. Gonner essentially puts you in control of a character who can only take a single hit but then makes sure the fun and the challenge both continue when you’ve taken that hit. There's a limit to how many times you can lose your head – though you can collect hearts to gain new chances – but being able to run around like Mike the Headless Chicken makes even the cruelest blow a prelude to some last ditch farce."

I am not good at this kind of game but I can imagine it being the sort of thing where Alice and Adam get very competitive in the RPS treehouse about it all.

It's a sort of sequel to a game called Hets which is available as a pay-what-you-want offering on Itch.io if you'd like to get a feel for the idea.

Anyway, yes, it'll be out on Steam (£9.99) and GOG (£10.09) on 12 October. It's also on Humble (£9.99) but dated 13 October on that. There's a 25%/23% discount on the pre-order edition in the respective platforms but you know how we feel about pre-ordering.