Ever wanted to know how a gun works? All the various bits and bobs that make up the deadly weapon. Well Gunsmith Simulator has the answers for you! Unlike other gunsmithing games, there is a bit of a story related to this and does a bit more than make you complete various challenges to progress.
The games premise is basic and plays out very similar to other (insert whatever) Simulator games where you run your own business and carry out various jobs while learning all the mechanics that the game has to offer. The various jobs normally include fixing up weapons by either replacing broken parts or fixing worn out parts by cleaning and polishing them before putting it back together again. These also include adding in modifications to the weapons like adding a laser sight to a pistol or changing the appearance and functionality. The story is progressed as you earn money, and your grandfather teaches you more advanced techniques.
By completing the jobs, you earn experience points, money, and a better mastery with repairing the same weapon. You can use the experience points to unlock skills that normally speed up the aspects of the game like faster un/screwing, faster sandblasting and bigger discounts from the stores when buying parts. The money can be used to purchase your own weapons and modifications that you can either keep or auction off for more money. The mastery just speeds up the disassembly at level 2 and assembly once you are level 3.
The gameplay is basically broken up into disassembly of the gun, cleaning, fixing, or purchasing of the parts and then assembling it again. The first and last parts are self-explanatory, but the in-between is broken down into other mini games to get the parts back into working shape. Some just requiring a cleaning where you basically just rub the dirt of the part that you can control and rotate, sandblasting rust off the parts and then dunking it into an oxidation bath or even polishing up the wooden parts of the guns to restore them.
The disassembly and assembly parts are really where a lot of attention was put into the game as you can strip the weapons down to the very minuscule components that make up the gun. By rotating the gun, you can get a full view of it and allows you to fully remove all the components. This is made a lot easier by including a highlight button that shows you the next part that can be either be removed or added. This makes it so that any newcomers to the experience and easily find their way around the guns and does not become a frustrating trail and error until you get lucky by clicking the correct part. The parts are all placed on a blueprint of the weapon with each part having its own section also allowing you to see what is missing or what can be added.
Once the gun is back together again, you can then give a new coat of paint to add some patterns or add stickers to it to make it uniquely yours or if the customer’s request it. This is per individual parts so you can make a truly horrid or wonderful looking gun but does become a bit of a chore if you go for a singular colour scheme. As mentioned before, there is also mods that can be added to the guns like laser sights, torches, and suppressors so you can make a unique piece of equipment.
Once you are happy with the gun, you can take it to an outdoor shooting range where you can do clay pigeon shooting or trying to hit targets at certain distances. Each activity has a small mini game as well like hitting all the targets with a single magazine or randomly popping targets. If you get bored with the outdoor, there is also the CQB (Close Quarter Battle) area that features an indoor shooting range with moving targets hanging from the roof, a destruction range where you can test the destructive power of the guns on things like watermelons and cinder blocks, and a kill house where you can run through trying to get the best time with your weapons. This can be done with the customers guns so you can do it with whatever you currently have and is not dependent on just having your own. I would of like to have a board that listed your times per equipped weapon or something just to keep track of the times that you have completed. Just remember, switching to your pistol is always faster than reloading!
There are some issues unfortunately and few bugs that would crop every so often although some have been fixed closer to release and will hopefully going forward. The biggest and annoy one that I got was during the disassembly and assembly portion, once you attached a part, the camera would default back to the frame of the gun. While not an issue if you are busy with it, it is annoying when you are working on other parts away from the frame but having to constantly move back to what you were working on.
Some of the gameplay issues are the handling of the guns can also be a bit awkward, but this can be forgiven as the game was not designed to be an FPS. Some of the tutorials could also be a bit more fleshed out but some aspects of the game are hidden unless you go exploring and inspecting each partition of the workshop. If there was no experience bar and level indicator, you would never know there were skills in the game that could be unlocked. But where do you assign the skills? If you have points available, follow the star icon that pops up and you can see a cabinet with certificates in it. Very unsuspecting until you interact with it and the skills and mastery window pops up. The same goes with the inventory as this is never mentioned but it’s not like the parts just disappear once you remove them. Looking in a yellow cabinet next to the wood working station allows you to see all the spare parts of the various jobs you have completed that you can use for you guns or sell to make some further money.
While the number of weapons is limited on release, there is thankfully plans to add further guns to the game and other options to further expand the number options to customise or expand the experience with other tasks. Below is a quick roadmap that is planned to be rolled out after release.
The game has a lot of fun points and is a very good way to see how the guns work with minimal issues right at launch. There is a lot of room for growth but what you have is still enough to keep you entertained for a while. Hopefully as more is added to the game, the variety of jobs also increases, and they add in more customization options. It is still in early access so hoping that they can add a lot more to it to really break out from its competition.
