Gunman Clive and Gunman Clive 2 are 2D action platformer indie titles made and published by Horberg Productions. They’re two low-budget and low-cost games that are worth their low asking price just for their art style. That they’re also pretty fun to play almost seems like a bonus.
The strongest aspect of both Gunman Clive games is their art direction. They look like animated, interactive pencil drawings, or something out of that A-ha Take On Me music video from the ’80s. The visuals work incredibly well and the game is always fun and interesting to look at as a result.
Many will compare Gunman Clive to the old NES platformers like Mega Man. However, the duck and shoot mechanic that you’re constantly using is also reminiscent of the old Elevator Action arcade and NES game. There are also parts that are directly lifted from Nintendo platformers. If you’ve played Super Mario Galaxy or the Donkey Kong Country games, you’ll know immediately what I’m talking about.
The controls feel nice. There is a lot of platforming to be had, and although your character doesn’t move particularly fast, he doesn’t need to, as Gunman Clive is not a particularly fast game.
Clive is armed with a gun, and as you take out enemies, he’ll get better guns with more firepower. If he takes any damage, he’ll be demoted to the default single-shot gun. He can shoot horizontally only, no shooting vertically or diagonally. That seemed a little archaic at first, but the jump ‘n shoot mechanic to take out enemies is well-done and fun. My only minor gripe with how the guns are handled was that it’s hard to tell the difference between the gun upgrades that the enemies drop. If you already have a decent gun, but get a gun upgrade, you may or may not like what you get. As opposed to something like Contra in which it’s always very clear what the different gun upgrades are before you grab them.
The biggest flaw with Gunman Clive is that it ends. It’s not a long game at all, as it can pretty easily be beaten in one sitting. Definitely in two. However, it has different difficulty modes and other unlockables for extra replay value.
Gunman Clive 2 seems to suffer from a bit of an identity crisis. Although still fun, Gunman Clive 2 loses a lot of the charm of the first game because it veers away from the Old West motif the first game did so well. It’s supposed to be a 2D side-scrolling action-platformer with a cowboy-Western aesthetic. At least, that’s how it presents itself on the main menu. However, thematically and musically, it’s all over the place. The locales you’re moving through don’t feel western at all. There’s one level in the game where you appear to be in Japan or some Asian country moving through a bamboo forest, and another level where you’re fighting ninjas on the roof of an Asian structure. The theme music in the main menu has a definite Old West flair to it, but the music in the actual game doesn’t sound anything like that, which was disappointing.
It also gets carried away with gravity platforming. The second half of Gunman Clive 2 relies a lot on suspect Super Mario Galaxy gravity platforming whose mechanics don’t seem to work consistently. It quickly stops being fun when doing basic jumps start sending you falling to your death over and over. Both the Gunman Clive games are best when they’re simple and charming. When they start trying to do complex platforming, they get frustrating quickly.
There’s not a lot of games set in the Old West, and no games that I know of that use Gunman Clive’s animated pencil drawing visual style. If you like NES-era platformers and fantastic art direction, the Gunman Clive games are worth checking out, especially for the low $4 asking price.
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