A staple of any good action movie is “the chase.” A car driving down the road at crazy-fast speeds, sometimes while bullets fly back and forth. Think the expressway scene in The Matrix movie (or probably any of the Fast and Furious movies, I assume).
Today we are going to be looking at Gun It. It’s an indie game designed by Randy O’Connor. This cooperative game puts you and your fellow players inside a car trying to escape their persuers, and you might also cause some vehicular mayhem in the process.
Gameplay Overview:
To set up Gun It, your crew car is placed in the middle of the table, and 8 other cars/hazards are placed around it to form a 3×3 grid. In a 4-player game, each player controls one quarter of the card (IE: Front Right, or Back Left). Each player is dealt an order card (1-4), a Directional card (left, right, forward, back), and a weapon (or the steering wheel for the driver).
Each round is handled over 4 phases:
1. Lookout Phase: Refill the grid and draw a Moment and/or Setting card. These will alter the rules of the round in various ways.
2. Planning Phase: A timer is set for 2 minutes and players must discuss their actions for the round. The goal is to use your weapons and actions to take out the pursuing cars. Cards can be swapped at a 1:1 ratio with other players, as long as each player has exactly 1 order, direction, and item card. Once players are happy with their cards, or the time on the timer has expired, the phase ends.
3. Action Phase: The cards you picked in the planning phase are executed. Starting with Order card 1, the player will either shoot in the matching direction or move the car in that direction. Any vehicle that takes damage equal to its health is destroyed. Most cars have arrows that indicate collateral damage. So if you destroy a truck with an arrow pointing left and right, it will also do 1 damage to the cars on both sides. This can cause pileups, which earn you XP (excitement points).
4. Aftermath Phase: The grid condenses with you removing spaces between your crew car and the other cars.
Then the next round begins. Players win if they achieve the scenarios goals (for example, earning so many points from destroying cars) and lose if their crew car takes 4 damage.
Game Experience:
If you looked at the cover and theme for Gun It, you might think this is an action-packed game of racing and carnage. Something like Thunder Road: Vendetta or Gaslands, where you are driving at high speeds with lots of dice rolling and explosions. Basically a Michael Bay movie.
So I was actually surprised to find, after giving Gun It a try, that it is a very thinky game. You need to plan out all your moves during the planning step, and you’ve only got 2 minutes to do it (or 3 if you are on easy mode). As there can be a lot going on (which way you are shooting?, will cars do collateral damage?, how do the event cards affect this?), it’s possible to miss something, which will cause some chaos during the action step.
But as long as you are careful with your planning, you can execute some cool moves. We’ve fired our shotgun out the left window, blowing up a car and thus causing it to chain into a motorcycle, blowing that one up, causing the motorcyle in turn to chain into the car next to it, finishing off its last damage point. It’s moments like this where Gun It really shines. You get a fun, cinematic feel of a high-action car chase.
Gun It can be played with up to 4 players, but I think solo is probably my least favorite way to play it. You need to control all 4 crew members as separate people, and you lose the fun dynamic of the discussion during the planning step. But anything from 2-4 works excellently as you have others to bounce off ideas and cheer when things go right.
I also enjoyed how the designer gives us a lot of levers to pull to make the game as easy or challenging as you want. You can add in or take out either of the constraint cards, change the planning timer limit, give yourself extra weapons, or even hinderances. I always love when cooperative games do this because you can tailor to the difficulty to what your group prefers.
My biggest complaint with the game is probably about the rulebook. It’s not as easy to learn the game from as it could be, despite Gun It being a relatively straightforward game. The game makes things easier by including an “on ramp” manual that’s supposed to get you playing quickly, but it’s really more of a quick setup guide; eventually it just tells you to switch to the rulebook and learn to how play from there. I would have liked for the designer to take players all the way through, doing sample turns and such.
Finally, while I like the sheer amount of variety in the game with all the options and cards, it can be a bit overwhelming at times, making rule adjustments from cards easy to forget. In any given round, you have the Monents Card, Setting Card, Scenario Card, and even some of the enemy vehicles all changing rules up on you. When you only have 2 minutes to play it can be easy to miss stuff. I prefer playing with only the Moments or Settings cards and minimal extra equipment. Otherwise, it’s just too easy to forget to do stuff.
Final Thoughts:
Gun It is a great game that drove in out of nowhere. We really enjoyed the thinky, action planning nature of the game and the cinematic moments that came from a well-executed strategy. My only hangup really was the somewhat messy rulebook, and less-than-stellar solo mode. But other than that, it’s a great game with some really unique gameplay. Definitely worth checking out for fans of the genre.
Final Score: 4 Stars – A puzzly game with some fun cinematic action moments.
Hits:
• Unique gameplay
• Plays great with 2-4
• Lots of ways to customize your game for your preferences
Misses:
• Rulebook could be better
• Solo mode is the worst way to play
