Guncho: Tactical Pistolero Slinging

In the Into the Aether 2024 Game of the Year Spectacular podcast episode, Brendon mentioned a small game in his top 10 that piqued my interested as soon as the words tactical and turn-based were uttered, but I initially had trouble finding it: I thought Brendon kept saying Gun Show instead of Tiny Touch Tales’ Guncho. The game is essentially a three-man job lead by Arnold Rauers who blogs about the progress from prototype (e.g. see this early 2022 video on X) to last year’s sales revenue.

So what is Guncho, besides tactical? In the game, you’re a bad-ass gunslinger moving a step a turn in a small-scale hexagonal grid, progressing in randomly generated levels until you defeat the boss at level 7. Getting rid of bandits—or are you the bandit?—is easiest with a gunshot in one of the six directions, but take care: with every move, the barrel of your gun turns along with it. That means you might just be out of luck shooting in certain critical directions. Besides, why shoot enemies when you an evade them, push them, swap with them, … to make them kill each other?

For some reason, Guncho reminds me of Into the Breach, only in a(n even) smaller scale. The game can also be called a roguelike as the levels are randomly generated and you can select skills and upgrades along the way that will be lost once you die—which will happen a lot: one tiny miscalculation inevitably will lead to death. In a “normal” game, as you make your way to the boss, you gain a few retries that are absent in the “expert” game. There is no undo move option, however.

As you take aim, so do the bandits. You can either move or shoot, and so can they. If you’re cornered by a sharpshooter that can shoot across the entire playfield and a woodcutter wielding his axe, it’s best not to shoot either, as once your turn ends one of the two enemies will still be alive and kill you. Instead, a smart move would be to simply swap with the axe wielder and let the sharpshooter kill him. Whoops. This doesn’t always work, though: if the axeman decided to move instead of swing, you won’t know the order in which the enemies move unless they play out their actions, meaning he could move out of range. In “puzzle” mode, a number appears above each enemy determining the turn order, giving you a huge advantage. Yet you’ll have to work with the skills you were assigned in each puzzle.

Guncho can be a bit of a frustrating experience if your favourite skill pick doesn’t turn up at the end of a stage. For instance, my favourites are movement-based ones such as swap (positions with an enemy next to you), kick (push an enemy for a certain amount of tiles), or jump (over a wall). These allow you to let the enemies do your work. Swap with someone if a ranged enemy has you in their sight and boom they’re gone. Kick a dynamite stick thrown your way back and boom they’re gone. Jump over a wall to safely get out of a hairy situation and stun a nearby enemy as a bonus. To me, these are the most satisfying moments of the game.

A bit of randomness can add to the fun, but also break it. Combine a ricochet upgrade with explosive ammo or a pull/push mechanic and let the chaos begin. Don’t forget your bullet aiming at the north-east now suddenly has a chance to also go south-west towards that dangerously close explosive barrel. Whoops, did you just pull that dynamite stick into that burning patch of oil? Touch luck. Better luck next time. Some of the most unexpected moments of death still teach you something: that slipping on oil and banging your head against a wall resulting in a stun gives your enemies a free turn resulting in a quick death, or that you can lure angry goats into the fire or let a trapper’s snare snap off that cactus.

Yet sometimes, Lady Luck doesn’t deal in your favour. You know where enemies will spawn, but don’t know which type, and depending on your position and that of oil slicks, cacti, and stone walls, their arrival will always result in death. In a tactics-based game where thinking, insight, and then making your move is more important than winging it, this very much stings.

After you take down the boss, there’s a daily challenge to tackle, the puzzle mode, or the aforementioned expert mode (which only differs in that it has zero retries). Being a Steam/mobile game, there’s an online leader board and of course achievements to unlock, but other than that, the package isn’t enough to keep you going for very long. There are ten enemy types you’ll get to know and there is no variety in scenery (not that I felt the need to have that).

Granted, the game is perhaps at its finest as a daily run on your smartphone. The developer promised more content for 2025 so we’ll see. If you take the game for what it is—made by three people, targeted mostly for mobile phones, costing just 4,99 EUR—there’s little to complain about. More content would be welcome and I’d be happy to pay much more for it. The soundtrack with its appropriately Western-themed tunes is available on Steam as well.

In the end, Guncho offers a small but fun turn-based package with a unique barrel turning mechanism that, with the added choice of random skills per stage, provides a lovely twist on the conventional tactical gameplay we have come to expect. I played it on Steam, but perhaps you should do so on your phone, again and again, like Brendon does.