Gunpowder

Play as Incendio, armed with your wits and a keg of gunpowder to liberate the town’s gold from the evil Boss Grimshaw in this explosive new puzzle game! 150 levels of mind-bending mayhem await as you blaze a gunpowder trail across the Wild West using mine carts, cannons, chandeliers, and more!

trailer:

After receiving a tidal wave of praise from fans and supporters, Gunpowder blasted onto Valve’s Top 50 Greenlit games category and was approved for sale within just one week on the service. Following that success, all signs pointed toward the iPad hit translating nicely to PC which is something that it’s just done with panache.

The events take place in a wonderfully slapstick rendition of the Wild West. The setting is rich with iconic objects, characters and locales that players will recognize from decades of cowboy tales and alternative histories. All will know that the West was a dangerous place, and Gunpowder uses this to its advantage in order to help you achieve your goal of robbing the rich to help the poor.

The game’s premise is simple and, as is the case with many such indie puzzlers, its simplicity is one of its biggest strengths. Players take a bird’s eye view over sets of rich, cartoony locations as they attempt to crack open Grimshaw’s safes and piggy banks. Trailing powder between kegs and flames in early stages, you’ll lead a path of destruction between as many of the treasure caches as you can to nab Grimshaw’s gold and progress to the next stage. Points are then awarded at the end of each level, with players being able to challenge for leaderboard high scores if they solve the puzzles quickly and thoroughly enough.

Gunpowder is a lot like playing a cartoon, which is a great starting point for any game. It’s a physics based puzzle game, but thanks to such delightful visuals it feels like more of a breath of fresh air than usual.

Early levels are incredibly easy, probably too easy in fact, but it soon becomes a trickier affair. Chain reactions are key here, enabling you to traverse water or other major obstacles. As always for the genre, there’s a certain amount of trial and error too, but it’s pretty fun to experiment.

Much of this success is thanks to how great Gunpowder looks. Unleash the explosion and things pop out of the screen, looking really quite impressive and stylish. It’s all in keeping with the cartoon style aesthetic and means you don’t begrudge multiple attempts. Things such as flaming wagons and cannons add to the variety of what you can tackle, and it’s great to see how things play out.

To add to the challenge, you can work towards collecting piggybanks that are also scattered through each stage, extending the longevity of Gunpowder and giving you a sense of further accomplishment. Really though, there’s sufficient content to keep you entertained for a long time. While Gunpowdermight seem more pricey than most puzzle games, it’s easily worth that, even with the in-app purchases for extra chapters included.