Have you been playing vanilla Minecraft and thought, “Oh! I’d love to be able to craft a gun and just shoot up everything!”. No? Well it seems a lot of people have as there are literal Minecraft mods to do such things but also that is the inspiration for Guncrafter, an interesting Minecraft-esque action shooter game by Naquatic. Guncrafter is all about making the biggest baddest gun and causing the most damage in picturesque blocky landscapes. So grab some blocks, make a Glock and shoot some blocks!
The Workbench
The first and perhaps most important step in Guncrafter is actually crafting your weapon so you can destroy all the blocks your heart desires. When you first start out you will only have the smallest workbench size of 4×4 and can only use wood crafting materials. You can purchase bigger workspaces and better materials with coins that you gain from winning matches and other things. Now for a gun to be functional there are really only four things you need; the barrel of the gun where the bullets will come out, a sight to help with accuracy, a trigger and then at least one normal block for it all to attach to. Of course there is no fun in just doing the bare minimal, the fun is making guns that are shaped realistically or craft something that is just crazy looking. Of course as you unlock a bigger workspace you can create very elaborate guns and can even make them multi-layered. In addition as you unlock more materials the statistics of your gun (damage, accuracy, reload speed, etc.) improve and you can mix and match materials such as wood, glass, gold, iron and more into elaborate and “decorative” weapons. I do wish more freedom was in the crafting part of Guncrafter though. As of now you only get the one barrel for instance where I think it would be cool to be able to unlock multiple barrels so you could shoot two streams of bullets and such.
The Shooting Range
Next on the list of important step in Guncrafter is the actual shooting aspect! This is where you get to test how well your crafted gun compares to other peoples. To do this you are put up in various shooting galleries which have set ups such as a large Minecraft block, a car made of blocks or a pyramid set up (just to name a few). The goal is to shoot the blocks and rack up the most points. Each Minecraft block material has a point value which corresponds to how easy or how many shots it takes to destroy it. For instance dirt blocks are worth one point and are very easy to destroy whereas a diamond block is worth a lot and takes a lot more time to destroy. Here within lies a slight strategy of whether you should go for quick easy blocks or target high point blocks only. Note you are competing either against a computer player or on online multiplayer. In addition to the Minecraft blocks you can destroy, each level has a certain number of present blocks which you can destroy for bonus coins. At the end of each thirty second shooting gallery round you get coins for the present blocks you destroyed and coins if you were the winner. These coins then go on to purchase more gun files, larger workspaces and better gun crafting materials. Actual aiming is another interesting aspect. Default controls is using the gyroscope in your device so you physically move your device to aim and the other control scheme is to swipe around to move. Both configures take some getting used to but after a while you get used to it and it works quite well.
Lucky Trees
What do trees and chance games have in common? Not much aside from the fact that they are the other parts that make Guncrafter whole. Basically coins are very tedious to get for how much upgrades cost, so to offset the tediousness of it all Guncrafter implemented a slot like chance mechanic where you can bet either 2, 4 or 30 coins to get various rewards such as more coins to help expedite the coin gathering process as well as trees. The tree aspect of Guncrafter is weird and seemingly out of place but it helps in the coin process. Basically, though, you can get seeds through the slot chance games and then you plant them in a separate farming screen. These seeds will then grow eventually into a coin tree which you can harvest for a lot of coins. Really these two features of Guncrafter are very random and could easily be skipped altogether but if you’re desperate for some coins you may resort to them.
A Better Armory
In general I think the idea behind Guncrafter is pretty unique and a great start…but a start is what I would call it. Right now it is essentially one huge grind fest. You start out with a small wooden gun and grind and grind and grind until you have a huge golden gun. Did I mention you grind? Honestly the gameplay as it is now just doesn’t hold up to the grindfest for most people. The levels are all unique and fun but still just typical shooting gallery styles and like I mentioned earlier the guns all shoot the same…just have the potential for better statistics and can be made bigger. I would like to kindly suggest some features to Naquatic that, in my opinion, would catapult Guncrafter from the already seemingly popular game it is now to one that is even more so. Basically I think allowing for better gun variability would be nice. For instance being able to build distinguishable pistols compared to machine guns. This also means being able to have single shot, semi and fully automatic weapons. Another idea that would break the monotony of the grindfest is to perhaps have a mixture of the shooting gallery type levels with levels such as on the rails type games.
Build and Blast
SInce Guncrafter is a free app you can just download it and can jump right in building the gun of your dreams. If you enjoy arcade shooting games but also the creativity of Minecraft then Guncrafter is the perfect mixture for you. However, in its current state the experience lacks some depth and ends up just being one shooting match after another with no real change.
