Raygun Gadabout

Final update: finished the game and got all the achievements. Was quite enjoyable throughout. Can't stress enough how much I like the art style, especially for Quinn and all the interesting badge designs for her. Update: I'm 4.5 hours into the game and it's still a lot of fun. Completed several planets and got all the upgrades you start with but then lose. The music is quite enjoyable to bop along to. Nothing has been very challenging but frankly there's plenty of highly difficult games out there. I'm happy for this to be one that can kill you on occasion (or if you get lazy) but not stonewall you for an hour while you learn all the patterns necessary to win. The art is still wonderful. Love finding new badges just to see new art of Quinn. Works perfectly on Steam Deck. ----- I wasn't entirely sold with the demo's gameplay but decided to give the full game a shot because the art and animation are absolutely stellar. My demo progress did not carry over but it's only 15 to 20 minutes of gameplay tops. However, another user on the forum said theirs did so. I played the demo a couple days before release so maybe something was changed. The demo is the beginning stage and up to the first boss. Despite having all (or at least a selection of) your abilities for the opening section you don't really get much to do with them and then up to the first boss you only have your basic blaster and shield. After getting the phase (dodge) again after the first boss, it gets more fun to navigate the world and shoot your way through enemies. I only have half an hour playtime but wanted to leave a positive review since it seems this game might, sadly, fly under the radar.

I hate to give such a niche game a negative review but I truly cannot recommend Raygun Gadabout. As an alpha it would be lacking in promise but as a finished product it's completely unacceptable. Combat and platforming are a glitchy mess with animations that snap into position, inconsistent hitboxes, checkpoints that trigger on the wrong side of gaps, stiff movement, and a tacked-on parry mechanic that fills the screen with visual clutter. Level design is below par with the singular standout being a consistent habit of punishing the player for holding the direction of travel through a room transition by moving the player forward during the load directly into a hazard or pit. The segmented level design with multiple planets is a neat idea, but the open-world nature of that progression means that it's rarely clear how to progress and it's extremely common to be 10 minutes into a planet before hitting a wall and realizing you need to backtrack several rooms to get to a location where you can teleport out. When most rooms are generic hallways of damage sponge enemies or worse, platforming challenges that only support one-way traversal, this becomes a slog very quickly. Progression is also fairly rote with bog-standard abilities, pieces of heart you can only cash in on the far end of the central hub (with the teleporter off the central hub being on the other side of it), and of course a suite of equippable badges that either do nothing or are overpowered staples. The only updates to your blaster that I found are sidegrades you can only carry one of, with pitifully low amounts of consumable ammo. I get what the devs are going for with the spunky aesthetic and playful tone, but much like the dated references to The Fifth Element this is too far behind the times to be worth playing now. There's not enough precision to call itself "old-school" but not enough respect for the player's time or QoL to go down smoothly. At least they got in under the wire before Silksong.

Best metroidvania I've played in a while. Fun varied levels, nice combat, some light puzzles here and there (so far, I've beaten 2 bosses). The game starts fun but really starts to shine after a couple of hours. It has the right amount of check points (right before bosses too), and so far no frustrating back tracking or lack of direction, it's just fun with some rewarding exploring but somewhat guided main goals/location. This game makes you happy, it’s fun, beautiful and charming. The pacing is right, the music is mostly great and the sound effects are nice as well. And to my surprise, even the spaceship flying/combat part you use to travel to different planets/station is super fun and well made. This game was clearly made with passion. I highly recommend it!

Admittedly I was on the fence at first on this one. I didn't really think much of it after the first 20-30 mins. I gave it some more time, and the more I play the more it grows on me. The graphics are beautiful, fun, and just plain enjoyable. A+ job with that. I really enjoy this game's general vibe. That was never an issue. I think what struck me originally when I played was a bit of a lack of oomph in the audio design. The game has pretty good music, but it felt like a lot of the sound effects that should feel more potent are just barely whiffs in the background. I still feel that's the case to some degree, but I've learned to accept it a bit. The other thing that originally struck me was that the game was... very easy. And that isn't something I say lightly... I enjoy games that value my time and don't make me repeat something 10 times. But the first bit of this game is borderline boring because it's just so easy. Thankfully, I can say that on point #2 the game gets much more complex as time goes on, and does present a decent challenge. I have beaten a couple bosses, and they are pretty decent for Metroidvania boss fights. At the end of the day I've actually grown to enjoy this and I plan to keep playing it. I think it's worth a try for sure. Some areas I think could use focus: - Bosses are a bit spongy. - Hit boxes are a bit off... especially when jumping over bosses, it seems like you take damage even when your avatar is clearly clear of the body of the boss. Another time I saw this was actually in the space area with the pirate ships... sometimes you are clear of their aggro circle but it still draws you into a fight. I think some of that could use a bit of brushing up. - Sound effects. I'd really like some more sound design to this game... squishy sounds for enemies dying, big sounds for things that go thump... the game just sounds a bit like a musical score right now with a repeated ray gun blasting away. - Better controls remapping. Right now it uses steam remapping which is... not ideal. Also some of the abilities overlap and create issues... for example by default B is both swap weapon and speak to a character, so you'll often be trying to talk to someone and it will just keep swapping your weapon. I think most of the issues this game has can be dealt with over time. Best of luck to this developer and I look forward to seeing where this game goes!

There are some good ideas here, but ultimately I felt like the enemies and combat were not particularly interesting. I was also disappointed after having played the demo to find that Winny doesn't talk to you at all during the game. I figured it would be a space adventure with your ole pal and the lack of that interaction makes the experience feel a bit hollow, like you are on your own. The structure of the game with flying between planets (levels) is a fun idea, but in execution I found myself locating items without having encountered the part of the story that would have given context to why I just fought someone for them. Finally, video games can be frustrating during platforming sections and this game is no different. However, without engaging combat or a compelling story and character interactions holding it together, I am putting this one down. As a side note, I felt the main character's dialogue didn't match the charm of her design. Otherwise, movement just didn't feel tight with you snapping into place quite a bit. Seems like the developer cares about the game and is releasing regular patches.

We've got Super Metroid at home.

Raygun Gadabout is a rather enjoyable 2D metroidvania. The presentation is absolutely beautiful. Have always been a sucker for retro-futurism and the hand art style is so absolutely charming. I am early on in the game (20ish% and 2 bosses down) but I can tell already that I will enjoy it. Wanted to leave this review here for visibility for the game and will update this as I progress further in the game. UPDATE 8/25/25- I have 100%ed the game at current state and want to offer a few thoughts. This is still an overall positive review but wanted to bring up some good/bad/questionable stuff. Good: -Art style and overall presentation is just phenomenal. Really cannot emphasize this enough. -The writing is very charming and does make me feel like I am playing a Saturday morning cartoon -Movement feels very fluid and natural -The bosses are fun and varied. They are on the easier side but I am a bit oversaturated with soulslikes at presnt, so it's a welcome addition -Combat in general is a TON of fun -There is a great amount of non-linearity in terms of bosses -There is a badge system that allows for passive buffs that makes you feel incredibly strong by the end of your file. Love it. -The puzzles were fun and challenging without being frustrating. Questionable: -If ever I felt stuck, the solution was often fly around the galaxy and come across a new planet that had an item I needed. I actually enjoyed this but would probably be a turn off to others -The NPCs relationships in the hub seem underdeveloped. There is an NPC that is established in the opening scene to be the protagonists best friend but you never really interact. Next to said best friend, there is an NPC that theoretically drops hints to the next location/critical path, but they only provided a single hint once early on in my file and there were a few instances late game where I could have imagined he could have hinted. -The alt weapons in place of your standard blaster felt underwhelming for the need to build up ammo and I ignored them. I am sure a lot of effort went into their development but I would have liked to have forced encouraged to engage with that system. -If you aren't going for weapons, I found no use for money. Other than the one aforementioned hint, I did not really buy anything across my file and ended my 10 hour play time with 1000$. Another use for it would have been fantastic. Bad -Save points do not spawn you at that location when quitting the game, rather the game throws you into the overworld orbit each time. The levels are not that big, but this still seems unnecessary -There is no way to view the planet's map or item completion from orbit, this seems like an oversight -There is one badge critical to progression that destroys walls. However, the game does not make it clear that this badge is significant and the one that *can* actually open up paths. I picked up this badge, not knowing the significance of it, completed all but about 10% of the game and felt stuck. Thankfully Steam forums held this answer, but an in game hint would have been nice. Overall, my opinion of this game is still very much a recommend.

I normally do not play Metriodvanias or write reviews, but from the first few hours I started playing Raygun, I got hooked. I absolutely love the the art direction, very cartoonish with a bit of sci fi to go with it. The controls feel tight and responsive and Quinn feels good to play as. The only 2 things I can think of as suggestions are to make the enemies have a hit animation (or a hit sprite) when they get shot fro more impact and the bosses may have a bit too much health(I think I might have to get some upgrades before i face the junkyard boss again(that might change my mind). I cant believe this was all made in 8 years by one person. Marcel, you did a fantastic job. I cant wait to see what your next game is going to be. But first, I need to beat this(its the other game aside from DK Bananza I got addicted too XDDD).

Raygun Gadabout, from Quantum Duck Studio, is a very fun game. With movement that feels fantastic, good combat and a great art style. I completed the game 100% and even with a few glitches, I have very few complaints. The art style is what originally drew me to the game. With very good artwork and a fun, well designed main character in Quinn. From the worlds you explore to the characters you meet, and fight, it's all well done and I adore it. It's all well animated and I didn't notice anything amiss during my play through of the game. The bosses were fun to fight, with a decent amount of enemy variety. I like the options you were given for combat, with your basic blaster always a solid option and a much more robust melee than I was expecting. On the ground, it's a basic combo but you have a decent amount of air moves you can do with the melee attack, with a down stab that pops you back up into the air and helps keep the combos going. While you can find or buy other blasters, the ammo is limited and I only really used it as a, "Why not?" option. The badge system can feel a bit just like stat upgrades at times, it's varied enough to customize to your playstyle. Also, the game is somewhat built around reflecting enemies projectile attacks back on them through an energy shield. This was easy to use with a nice bar by Quinn when you used it to help remind the player how much energy they had left before it was depleted, something that helped keep my eyes on the action and not my life/energy bar. There's also an overdrive feature that lets you either heal yourself or boost your damage based on how high your combo gauge is. I honestly mostly used it for healing and barely used the damage boost. It also kind of bothers me that it seems like you should be able to find two other overdrives, the screen shows room for four and you start with two, you never do. At least, I never did. Movement was fantastic and probably my favorite part of the game. Quinn is easy to control and feels like she's moving at a really good speed. She feels fast but never overly so. You have a lot of options, getting a standard double jump, wall jump and, what's my favorite, the roll. It had some invincibility frames, which is great for avoiding enemies but, it just felt good to use. I had a few issues with the gravity segment but that felt more like it was on me than anything else. Level design can feel more or less OK. I liked how varied the environments were, along with enemies that made sense with the areas. Exploring felt good but some of the areas can feel kind of empty at times with rooms that don't seem to do much. There were a few specific areas I got frustrated with but, nothing I couldn't get through eventually. There were a few times I couldn't progress because I didn't realize I didn't have an upgrade I needed but it wasn't a dealbreaker. Most of my play time was on the 1.05-1.08 patches and the dev does seem to have taken steps to help this issue. I also realize it's a fine line between letting the player explore and explicitly telling them what to do. I'm going to admit, I'm not entirely sure what's going on with the story. You don't find out much about Quinn, or most of what's going on. A lot of it was kind of, she's a Raygunner (Or is it Raygun?), and she's out to stop some pirate and then a mad scientist. I probably need to go back and pay more attention because I like what's there, I just wish there was more of it. I did get stuck a few times on the level geometry, and had a few glitches here and there. Also, during my time with the game, the sound mixing was just off the rails with certain things being way to loud. The sound seems to be fixed with the latest patch, so it's not really a concern now. It took me about 7 hours to do everything I could find. All in all, if they make a sequel to Raygun Gadabout, I'd gladly pick it up after playing this one.

Overall a really fun game with tons of things to explore and upgrades. Just an hour in but i can feel like I've barely scratch the surface of the game. Great art and animations without saying, but surprisingly well thought out/tested level designs that are well balanced. Cool interactions with NPC throughout the different locations. Patamo is love, Patamo is live <3