There aren't enough undead cowboy puppet games. Seriously, if you trawled through the archives of digital entertainment history you'd be lucky to find more than 10. It's a wasteland out there. Fortunately, however, US indie developer Twisted Pixel has noticed this glaring niche in the market. Previously responsible for offbeat Xbox Live gems like 'Splosion Man and Comic Jumper, the studio is now set to release The Gunstringer, the tale of a Wild West gunman, betrayed and murdered by his old posse and now out for zombified revenge.
The Gunstringer will be the first independently produced Xbox Live Arcade title to feature Kinect support – and, as you'd expect from Twisted Pixel, it's a brilliantly skewed implementation. It turns out that everything that happens here is actually being performed as a stage play. Right at the beginning of the game, we see video footage of audience members filing into a theatre – they're here to watch your production of The Gunstringer and throughout the action you'll hear them cheering as you progress, or booing when you're doing badly. It's a stylish and whimsical conceit that will no doubt remind Tim Schafer fans of Stacking, which also takes place in a proscenium arch setting.
Oh yes, this is also a puppet theatre. You take control of the lead character by lifting his strings with your left hand and then swiping left and right to direct him past obstacles; you can also jerk your arm in the air to make him jump.
"We've had the idea of doing a marionette game for years," says Twisted Pixel CEO, Michael Wilford. "Our co-founder Josh Bear and art director Dave Leung go way back, and I think when the DS first came out, they were thinking of new stuff you could do with motion controls, and one of their ideas was a puppet-based game. But it didn't really work with the DS or with the Wii, and finally Microsoft started talking to us about the Kinect, they shared the tech with us early on, and we thought this is finally the perfect time!"
On each stage, Gunstringer runs into the screen, swerving from side to side to avoid boulders and leaping over gates. You have no direct control over his speed – although he accelerates if you shoot stuff – so it's all about timing those evasive manoeuvres. And shooting stuff.
Controlling the character's six-shooters is like playing cowboys and indians as a kid: you shape your right hand into a gun, then move it around to direct the onscreen reticule, flicking your wrist upwards to fire. Naturally, as you charge along the dusty track, you run into various bandits – these can be dispatched one at a time by targeting them individually and then immediately shooting. For better combo scores, however, you can run your reticule over a group of enemies and then fire, taking them all out in a flurry of bullet fire. You'll also occasionally run into tasty taco icons – these open up bonus stages allowing you to collect masses of points during a timed shooting frenzy.
In the sections I saw, there were several mid-level set-piece encounters. At one point, Gunstringer runs into a wagon circle and must hide behind rocks as evil cowboys blast back at you. You can fire from behind the cover by wafting your left hand in the relevant direction to peek out, and then flicking that right wrist. It's a really engaging and natural interface – multi-tasking with arm movements rather than button presses takes some practice, but gradually it all clicks into place, and you're taking down bad guys like a super-speed Clint Eastwood. When enough enemies have been dispatched to Boot Hill, one of the wagons rolls away, prompting a chase scene, with Gunstringer legging it behind, taking pot shots at cowboys firing from the carriage windows.
The action is split into five acts, each culminating in a boss battle. We only got to see one of these – a hilarious skirmish against a giant inflatable wavy-hand man (the sort you tend to find outside second-hand car showrooms), who you have to shoot in multiple body areas to finally deflate. In the next act, the bandits are able to throw dynamite sticks, which have to be shot mid-air or they'll cause massive damage to your character. It also looks as though there will be 2D platforming sections – a hark back to Twisted Pixel's previous titles.
There are lots of other neat little touches. Occasionally, birds fly past, and shooting those provides extra points. There are also Pythonesque mixed-media moments where stop-go animated arms reach into the scene, sometimes rolling boulders down the hill at you, sometimes creating impassable barriers. After each boss encounter, the player unlocks new abilities, one of which makes a giant hand come down and crush your onscreen enemy – a sort of Terry Gilliam smart bomb.
I also love the way that, as in Stacking, most of the scenery is designed to resemble theatrical props: trees for example, are made from interlocking pieces of wood, and boulders look like paper-mache. This goes for the animals too. "It adds an extra layer of visual depth," says Wilford. "The first time you see a steer running past, you just blow it away without thinking. Then, on the second or third time, you notice it's a steer made out of a beer can – and when you shoot it in the butt beer comes spraying out of its ass. It adds humour and the artists have a lot more fun trying to build everything out of common objects."
Gunstringer is the perfect start-point for XBLA and Kinect. It makes a fine implementation of the technology (both gun and puppet controls are slick and intuitive), but it's also idiosyncratic and core gamer-friendly; both key elements in the Arcade marketplace. "As a smaller studio we can focus entirely on design," says Wilford. "We can think about how to make a new type of game, without having to worry about pouring $20m into the art budget... Our art looks awesome, though."
Microsoft is now making Kinect support a key element of its SDKs so we should see plenty more original and amusing takes on motion control gaming in the wake of Twisted Pixel's promising title. For now though, start honing your shooting and puppetry skills – there is zombie cowboy revenge to be had.
The Gunstringer will be released on Xbox Live Arcade in the spring. There's an official trailer here.
