Thank you Gambitious for sending us this game to review!

RunGunJumpGun was released on PC and mobile platforms in 2016 and has very positive reviews on Steam. It’s a perfect addition to the Switch’s library for those interested in raising their blood pressure on the go. This game prides itself on being brutally hard, yet it’s still fun and appealing at the same time.

The story behind the game is that the sun is dying due to warlords collecting all of the Atomiks and replacing them with hysteria. Your job is to reclaim them and avenge the fallen race of aliens. Of course, the warlords won’t go down without a fight and have secured the Atomiks in rooms full of traps and weaponry to avoid.

As the title suggests, your character can do three things: run, jump, and shoot a gun. However, you can only do one at a time. If you shoot your gun after a jump you will slowly fall due to gravity. Timing is key as you have to keep moving and avoid each and every obstacle in your path. While you can take a couple of hits, there are more opportunities to die than health points.

The tutorial levels will teach you the basic controls. Your character automatically runs; pressing the left button will make them jump and the right button will fire the gun. The +/- buttons will bring up the menu and allow you to skip a level if desired. While tempting, future areas require a set amount of levels to be completed and a designated number of Atomiks to be collected.

At the end of each run, you’ll be shown how many Atomiks you have collected and how many were available to reclaim. You can go back and redo any levels which have room for improvement. The tutorial levels have checkpoints, but many of the other levels don’t and it doesn’t take long for this game’s devious nature to reveal itself.

Like many platformer games, you’ll have to avoid spikes. There are also turrets, saw blades, force fields, and flame throwers along with moving variations of these to contend with. Many of these obstacles can be destroyed with your gun if you time it right though avoidance is usually the better option.

Patience is required to enjoy this game, as you will die many, many times. Thankfully, the deaths are bloodless. Aside from the given violence, there is some toilet humor as one of the aliens taunting you is dealing with stomach pains that turn out to be gas. Last but not least, prepare to be called maggot a lot.

The 2D art style is pretty neat and I’m impressed with what this three person development team did. The pounding electronic soundtrack is good too and available for $1.99 on Steam if desired.

The $7.99 asking price is the same as the PC version though the mobile editions are only $2.99. Since this game prides itself on its difficulty, only consider buying it if you enjoy crazy hard games. With that said I cannot deny its appeal or claims of being ridiculously hard.