About Run and Gun
A top-down run-and-gun through a facility that has stopped answering. Every room locks behind you until the monsters in it are dead, and some of the doors out are welded shut — so the way forward is whatever you are holding. Guns are found, not bought, and they run dry: a scattergun that moves the whole room, a ripper that never stops, a railspike that goes through the crowd and then through the door. When it goes wrong there is an air strike, a dash and the partner at your side. Scrap you carry out is permanent, and it buys the guns that start appearing in the next run.
How to play
- Walk into a room and the doors lock. Kill every wave, or survive the timer in a hold room, to open them again.
- Some doors stay welded shut and have their own health bar. Shoot them open to move on.
- Grab guns from crates. They have limited ammo, while your sidearm never runs dry.
- Find the hatch in the exit room to go down a sector, and pick one perk from three on the way.
- When your integrity hits zero the run ends. The scrap you collected is banked for the Armory.
Tips
- Bring the right gun to a door. Welded doors take extra damage from heavy weapons. The Railspike hits doors 3.2 times as hard and the Thumper 2.4 times, while the Ripper does less than normal.
- Save the air strike for bosses. You start with one strike and get another for every sector cleared. The Warden guards the hatch on sector 3, and the Rootwarden on sector 6.
- Pick your partner up quickly. When your partner goes down, stand in the ring for 2.6 seconds to revive it at half health. Stepping away drains the progress slowly, and clearing the sector revives it anyway.
- Watch the floor, not the monster. Lunges, rolls, swoops and slams paint the ground they will hit first. Dash out of the marked lane or ring, and step away from a Volatile elite's corpse.
- Unlocks change what crates hold. Crates only drop guns you have unlocked, so a new Armory gun shows up in your next run. The first room you clear always drops one.
Read the full Run and Gun guide (5 min read)
From the developer
Run and Gun was the first game I wrote for this site, on 9 September. It is plain JavaScript on one canvas, with no engine.
The loop is simple: walk into a room, the doors lock, clear it, then shoot open whichever door out was welded shut. Guns are found rather than bought and they run dry, so your power inside a run is a series of temporary highs. Scrap you carry out of a run is permanent and buys the weapons that start appearing in later runs. On a phone, one-thumb mode aims and fires at the nearest monster, so you never have to do two things at once.
At first every sprite was drawn with canvas shapes. On 14 September I rendered cover, guns and pickups top-down in Blender from Synty Studios' POLYGON Prototype and Battle Royale packs, cropped to each model's footprint so they match their collision boxes. The soldier and partner are from the KayKit Adventurers Character Pack by Kay Lousberg and the monsters from Monsters Ultimate Pack 09 Cute Series by Meshtint Studio, with smoke from Polygonal's Low-Poly Particle Pack. The same day I made rooms dark outside the player's light, with shadows cast by roughly 70 rays; monsters keep glowing eyes so the dark stays fair.
Son Hoang, who made Run and Gun
Update history
- The title's capital letters are no longer cut off at the top.
- Removed the 'Watch a video' buttons, which could never pay out here; prices, scrap and air strikes are unchanged.
- Real loading bar, and the armory is split into Weapons and Upgrades tabs so every screen fits without scrolling.
- You play a KayKit soldier with a partner who takes cover and can be revived, against Meshtint monsters, elites and a boss, in new garden and warehouse rooms.
- Rooms are dark outside your light: each gun has its own light cone, walls and cover cast shadows, and monsters' eyes glow.
- Cover, pickups and guns rendered from Synty models.
- Text now scales with the screen; on a laptop the smallest labels had been 8 pixels.
- First version: clear a locked room, shoot open a welded door, and carry scrap out of the run to unlock new weapons.
Questions
Does Run and Gun save my progress?
Yes, in this browser: banked scrap, unlocked guns, upgrade levels, your best run, total runs and kills, and the sound setting. A run in progress is not saved, but quitting from pause banks its scrap.
Can I play it on a phone?
Yes. Your left thumb moves and your right thumb aims and fires, with AIR and DASH buttons on screen. If you only use the left stick, the game aims at the nearest monster and fires for you.
Is there an ending?
No. Sectors go on and get harder: monsters gain health, speed and damage each sector, and new types join as you go deeper. The goal is to beat your best sector and score.
What does scrap buy during a run?
Between sectors you can spend 60 of the run's scrap on an extra air strike. Scrap spent there is not banked, so it trades against your next Armory purchase.
