This is especially true during boss battles, where all the lucky jumps in the world are still a poor substitution for memorizing attack patterns. Still, Jump around with no strategy and you’re still bound to get hit, no matter how good your timing. There were times where it looked like I landed directly on an incoming bullet, but by jumping immediately, was left unscathed. This can feel a bit unfair, like reality is flubbing in your favor – which it probably is. But if you time your next jump just as you hit the ground, it begins to feel like you’re totally invulnerable. With a combination of jump and dodge, you can quickly traverse the level safely – provided you don’t land squarely on a bullet. As long as you’re airborne, you’re invulnerable. That’s because Exit the Gungeon pairs your dodge roll with an enormous jump. In Exit the Gungeon, it’s more like a frequent back-up plan. In Enter the Gungeon, your dodge was your last resort. And, of course, if you can avoid getting hit, you’ll survive no matter what gun you have. When things get hairy – and they do often – you’ve got to focus exclusively on your character, shoot in the general direction of the enemy, and dodge like a bandit. There’s a harmony to the design, like Exit the Gungeon is telling you, “Hey, if you can’t survive with a nail gun, you shouldn’t be here at all.” And that’s enough of a challenge to become hyper-focused on mastering positioning and dodges, or resisting the little power-ups that traipse around the screen trying to seduce you out of cover. Sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you aren’t. Hey, if you can't survive with a nail gun, you shouldn't be here at all.But despite the intrinsic unfairness of random gun swapping, the chaos can be kind of fun.

And waiting for a new gun is pointless because it could leave you stuck with something even worse. With a delay like that the final boss can literally kill you before you get more than a couple of shots off, ending a 35-minute run in disappointment. These guns require you to hold the trigger for around a second before shooting - and that’s a lifetime in Exit the Gungeon (sometimes literally). The charged shot weapons, like the blunderbuss, really don’t gel with the fast-paced combat. The problem is that there’s a number of guns that aren’t just bad, they’re nearly unusable. And the next, you’ve got a nail gun that exists just to make sure you know how good you had it with the frog. One second you’re wreaking havoc with a frog blowing bubbles the next, it’s a tentacle that squeezes enemies to death.

Thanks to a “blessing” you receive at the beginning of a run, your gun transforms several times every minute while fighting your way out of the now collapsing Gungeon.

Exit the gungeon igg