Gunheart

Gunheart is a sci-fi co-operative first-person shooter RPG set at the edge of the galaxy, where players become customizable robotic bounty hunters. The game features fast-paced movement options including strafing, teleporting, and boost jumping across vast battlefields. Players can choose from 10 unique weapons with over 40 modification options, battle through 9 campaign and 11 challenge missions against the Anthromite menace, and engage in PVP battles. The game supports drop-in/drop-out co-op with dynamic difficulty and offers extensive cosmetic customization for characters.

Gunheart: A Forgotten Vanguard of VR’s Co-op Shooter Ambition

In the annals of virtual reality’s awkward adolescence, a period defined by tech demos and unfulfilled potential, a few titles dared to be more. Among them was Gunheart, a co-operative first-person shooter from a studio of industry veterans that aimed to deliver a complete, feature-rich package. It was a game that understood the limitations of its medium not as shackles, but as a design framework, building a frantic, loot-driven playground around them. This is the story of a technically impressive, deeply ambitious VR shooter that arrived just a moment too soon, a vanguard whose legacy is more nuanced than its commercial footprint suggests.

Development History & Context

Drifter Entertainment was founded by veterans from Epic Games, Oculus, and Microsoft, with credits on titanic franchises like Gears of War and Halo. This pedigree was immediately apparent; Gunheart was not the work of wide-eyed newcomers, but of seasoned developers applying AAA production sensibilities to the nascent VR space. Released into Steam Early Access on July 31, 2017, before its full launch on June 4, 2018, the game was developed using Unreal Engine 4, a choice that empowered its stunning visual fidelity but also contributed to its demanding hardware requirements.

The gaming landscape of 2017-2018 was VR’s first hopeful peak. High-end PCVR headsets (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift) were establishing themselves, but the market was starved for “full” games—experiences that offered more than just a brief tech showcase. Titles like Fallout 4 VR and DOOM VFR were adapting existing flat-screen behemoths, while native VR projects like Epic’s Robo Recall showed what dedicated design could achieve. Gunheart positioned itself squarely in the latter camp, aiming to be a definitive, ground-up VR co-op experience.

The developers’ vision was clear: create a fast-paced, cooperative looter-shooter that leveraged VR’s unique physicality while mitigating its traditional weaknesses, namely locomotion and control clumsiness. Their solution to movement—elevating teleportation to a core gameplay mechanic—was a masterstroke that defined the experience. Furthermore, their commitment to cross-play between all VR platforms and even non-VR desktop players was a radical and forward-thinking inclusion designed to combat the low player counts that doomed so many multiplayer VR titles.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

Gunheart’s narrative is pure pulp sci-fi, serving as a functional, often humorous backdrop for its action. Players are a recently deceased individual whose consciousness has been uploaded into a robotic body by the PalCo Corporation, a ruthlessly capitalistic entity that now holds you in its debt. To work off your “reincarnation payment,” you become a bounty hunter on Planet Fortune, a desert world overrun by the insectoid Anthromite menace.

The story is delivered through environmental cues, mission briefings, and the hub world’s atmosphere. The central social space, The Bent Horizon, is a PalCo-sponsored mercenary bar that perfectly encapsulates the game’s tone: irreverent, corporate, and brimming with personality. Dialogue is laced with cynical, corporate humor, painting a picture of a galaxy where life is cheap and profit is everything. Characters are not deep but are effectively archetypal—you are a faceless cog in a vast machine, and the game winks at you about it.

Thematically, Gunheart explores a light satire of corporate feudalism and transhumanism. Your existence is literally owned by a company, and your only path to “freedom” is to perpetually work for them. It’s a premise that cleverly justifies the game’s loot-driven grind loop. The underlying themes aren’t explored with any great depth, but they provide a coherent and amusing context that elevates the experience above a mere shooting gallery.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

Gunheart’s core gameplay is a frenetic loop of accepting missions from the Job Goblin, deploying to Planet Fortune, obliterating hordes of Anthromites, collecting cash and loot, and returning to the Bent Horizon to upgrade and customize.

Combat & Movement: The combat system is the game’s crown jewel. Players have access to six standard weapons (pistols, SMGs, shotguns, crossbows, buzzsaws) and four powerful “combo weapons” (minigun, rocket launcher, bow, sniper rifle) summoned by connecting both controllers. The ability to dual-wield any combination of standard weapons allows for immense loadout diversity. However, critics noted a significant flaw: several weapons, notably the SMGs and shotguns, often felt underpowered and “peashooter-like” without specific upgrades, undermining the visceral satisfaction crucial to an FPS.

Movement is where Gunheart truly innovated. It offered both free locomotion (often criticized for being overly fast) and a teleportation system that was ingeniously woven into gameplay. Teleporting wasn’t just a comfort option; it was a strategic tool for gaining high ground, escaping ambushes, and traversing the game’s vast, vertical arenas. This fusion of teleportation and free movement created a dynamic, almost arena-shooter pace reminiscent of Quake or Sairento VR.

Progression & Customization: The relics system was a deep, if sometimes flawed, RPG layer. Over 40 weapon mods could drastically alter a weapon’s function—adding guided missiles to a rocket launcher or a smart-scope to a minigun. While this allowed for “millions of combinations,” the system was bloated with mundane stat-boosting modifiers, making the hunt for truly transformative relics a grind. Progression was also tied to spending in-game currency on permanent upgrades to base damage, shields, and armor.

The Bent Horizon hub was a brilliantly designed meta-game space. Here, players could smash open loot crates (earned, not bought) with baseball bats, test weapons in an inventive holographic firing range, and customize their rig with over 80 cosmetic items. This attention to a social, tactile hub world gave the grind purpose and personality.

Co-op & PVP: Designed from the ground up for 3-player co-op, the game featured dynamic difficulty scaling and drop-in/drop-out matchmaking. The integration was seamless, with open solo missions easily becoming co-op sessions via a server browser. This, combined with cross-play, created a surprisingly resilient community. The PVP “Brawl” mode, offering free-for-all and team deathmatch, was a fun diversion but struggled to maintain a consistent player base.

World-Building, Art & Sound

Gunheart’s world-building is achieved through environmental storytelling and impeccable art direction. Planet Fortune is a sprawling, awe-inspiring desert planet littered with the wreckage of failed mining operations and towering alien architecture. The sense of scale is immense, with “kilometer-long battlefields” and vertigo-inducing cliffs. The visual fidelity was, at the time, considered among the best in VR, with high-quality textures, impressive lighting, and detailed enemy models that crumbled satisfyingly under fire.

The art style leans into a bright, comic-book aesthetic that recalls Borderlands, but with a unique identity. The Anthromite designs are a highlight, ranging from small skittering drones to towering, screen-filling bosses, all with a distinct B-movie monster charm.

The sound design is functional but not groundbreaking. Weapons have distinct reports, and the hit marker feedback is crucial, though it couldn’t always compensate for the weaker-feeling guns. The soundtrack is appropriately action-oriented, and the dialogue is well-acted with a snarky, corporate cynicism that fits the tone perfectly. The atmosphere is one of a pulpy, chaotic, and often beautiful sci-fi frontier.

Reception & Legacy

Upon release, Gunheart garnered a Metascore of 83 and a “Mostly Positive” user rating on Steam (72% positive from 311 reviews). Critics from outlets like CGMagazine and COGconnected praised its tight controls, extensive content, and successful cross-play implementation, with scores hovering around 8.5/10. The primary criticisms focused on the underwhelming feel of some weapons, the over-reliance on the relics system, occasional movement glitches, and somewhat basic enemy AI.

Commercially, it faced the same hurdle as nearly all premium PCVR titles: a limited audience. Despite its quality and ambition, it faded from the mainstream conversation. Its legacy, however, is significant. Gunheart stands as a textbook example of how to design a movement system for VR, transforming a technical limitation into a celebrated feature. Its commitment to full cross-play between VR and non-VR platforms was years ahead of its time, a feature now considered essential for the health of any VR multiplayer title.

It influenced a wave of co-operative VR shooters that followed, demonstrating that a “live service” model with weekly missions and deep customization could work without predatory monetization. Every loot box was earned in-game, a design philosophy that feels increasingly noble in retrospect.

Conclusion

Gunheart is a fascinating artifact from a specific moment in VR history. It is a game of immense ambition and considerable achievement, hamstrung not by a lack of vision or quality, but by the market realities of its time. It delivered a robust, content-rich co-op shooter with a revolutionary movement system, best-in-class cross-play, and a rewarding loot loop, all wrapped in a gorgeous, pulpy sci-fi package.

While its flaws—particularly the inconsistent weapon feedback and occasionally simplistic AI—prevent it from achieving timeless masterpiece status, its contributions to VR design language are undeniable. Gunheart deserves to be remembered not as a forgotten gem, but as a vanguard. It was a proof-of-concept that co-operative VR shooters could be vast, customizable, and socially connected. It was a glimpse of a future for VR that is only now becoming standard, securing its place in history as a bold, influential, and ultimately foundational pillar of the genre.