Dating is certainly an ordeal nowadays. I can’t say I have much experience with it myself, but I’ve heard all sorts of anecdotes about how relationships start and end in a day due to one small infraction, or how budding opportunities are shot down for the most bizarre of reasons. But what if your potential date brought a loaded shotgun into the equation? This right here is the premise of Girl With Gun, a deadly horror game developed and self-published by dkotl.
A deliberately limited game at a glance, Girl With Gun places its emphasis on building as strange and oppressive and atmosphere as possible, with its cartoony antagonist sticking out like a sore thumb against a world of unease and uncertainty. The game popped into my feed during the Steam Next Fest, and I couldn’t help but feel intrigued enough to give it a shot. Is it worth trying for yourself? We’ll find out together.
Double-Barreled Dating Sim
Girl With Gun is about as blunt and straight to the point as its title suggests. On what seems to be an ordinary date with an aloof, but seemingly friendly stranger, you’re suddenly brought into the confines of a dark, dingy cave. After sitting down at a table set for two, she makes two things readily known: one, she has a loaded shotgun; two, she’s going to ask you some questions. If she likes your answers, you’ll live. If she doesn’t, you’ll do the opposite of living.
What seems to be an ordinary visual novel at a glance is quickly revealed to be a terrifying survival horror game. The questionnaire the titular armed girl presents is a binary choice — press the red button or blue button for their respective response. After committing to a choice, you’ll see how that answer effects the girl in a handful of different ways. Your main goal is to maximize the girl’s fun, while avoiding anything that’ll add to her madness. That’s not all you’ll have to worry about though. Rationality and sadness reduce her madness and fun, respectively, and many answers affect multiple values at once, often raising one and lowering another.
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You’d think this would be pretty simple — find out what the girl likes, say things she agrees with, and you’re all peachy, right? Well, sort of. A lot of the challenge in Girl With Gun comes from actually figuring out what makes this menace tick. And there’s a bit more going on with her than you may think. This is especially evident in the questions she asks.
There aren’t any softballs here. On the regular, you’re going to be given some heavy hitters in terms of scatterbrained philosophy and sadistic hypotheticals. Some gems I found in my brief playthrough included:
- “Did Ryan Gosling die at the End of Drive?”
- “Assuming an omnipotent God exists: Can such an entity create a stone too heavy for it to lift?”
- “Is it ethical to grow fully formed brainless clones for organ harvesting?”
- “Which is heavier: 1kg of down (feathers) or 1kg of iron?”
That last one is a direct reference to a fairly popular skit from Limmy’s Show, and I can’t help but wonder what other bizarre pop culture pulls the full game will have. Either way, you won’t ever really have a straight conversation here. It’s a lot closer to gonzo extremes than anything else.
Are these questions impossible? Sort of. The answers you’re given are similarly offbeat and off-color. While I couldn’t find a consistent strategy during my time with the demo, there is some sort of internal logic going on with the girl. You can check a menu during your date at any point, allowing you to see the girl’s current status along with the occasional text message and a handful of photos you gradually unlock as you play. These photos, in the full release at least, are meant to give you clues as to what to say and when. In theory. The ones I got were either indecipherable, references to other things, or just strange memes. Still, it’s an interesting system to have.
The cave itself even messes with you as you play. The stress of the situation only amplifies the longer you’re with the girl, with strange hallucinations, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it findings, and other bizarre occurrences going on in the background. Or the foreground, if you’re especially unlucky. At one point, a pair of hands clasped themselves over my eyes with the phrase, “SAY SOMETHING INTO THE MICROPHONE,” written in ink across their palms. I can’t say much else other than it genuinely scared the hell out of me.
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Should You Play Girl With Gun?
I’m a little on the fence about Girl With Gun. On paper, I do genuinely like it. It’s a bizarre game of deduction where your ability to analyze what answers your captor is looking for is your only means of survival. It certainly helps that some of their questions are genuinely hilarious at points. But at the same time, I did find myself feeling a little lost as to what I ought to be doing. Maybe it’s just the nature of the beast for demos like this.
I would say that I enjoyed playing Girl With Gun overall, though. The presentation is pretty charming, the actual gameplay itself is simple but semi-addicting, and the allure of a lot more depth is definitely keeping me hooked. Just don’t go into this demo expecting a frictionless experience, and you ought to have a nice time.
If you’re interested, you can check out Girl With Gun for yourself on Steam.
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