Guts & Blackpowder: The Greatest Roblox Game (Ever)

like anyone in my generation, i've played a fair bit of Roblox in my lifetime, and there's a fair chance that given you're reading this, you have too. thousands of shitty ESCAPE THE EVIL SPONGEBOB obbys you never completed, undeservedly popular garbage like Jailbreak you'd pretend to have fun in, having your life be consumed by any of the weirdly good first person shooters like Arsenal or Phantom Forces, etc etc. some good games, some bad games (okay mostly bad games), but for what it is, i think Roblox as a platform for games is pretty fun.

Roblox is to some extent by kids and for kids; i.e just a bunch of young devs trying to appeal to/exploit the youth. aggressive monetisation, low standards, dev teams that strike out with even the best roblox games just being Source game rip-offs half the time, but beyond that, it'd be dishonest of me to dismiss the entirety of what Roblox has to offer. bashful as i am to admit, beneath the sea of dogshit that is the frontpage and like 90% of what I've played, there is a good 10% of games out there that alone I'd say make the wading through all the toxic sewage kind of worth it.

i've had enumarable gooning sessions with friends or even just by myself goofing off in games like mogging simulator, phantom forces, kaiju paradise, doors, spelling bees, arsenal, and other countless experiences that could range from light fun for a few minutes to mind meltingly addictive, but for however fun some of these games can be, even at their very peak, i could never say roblox as a whole ever managed to ascend above simple mindless fun.

arsenal is great but its mindless fun. phantom forces is great but its mindless fun. obbys are great but not something i'd ever rawdog without a youtube video or music to keep me company. no matter how much i searched i could never find THE roblox game. one to stand out amongst the rest. the zenith, the aperture, the ivory tower to stand tall amongst the heaps of wretched filth that piled sky high, but this all changed when i, for the first time, courtesy of being invited by the nigger faggot himself adam daniel, played guts & blackpowder.

guts & blackpowder is amazing, fin. full stop. it has great gameplay that is both easy to understand and deep enough to really get into tactically. the gameplay works both when playing by yourself in public lobbies or with friends. the lore is interesting and adds a nice bit of context to everything you're doing. the atmosphere is rich and goes a great way to enhance the experience, and fucking god, the music has some of the best placement i've ever experienced in a videogame. let's go over these.

in guts & blackpowder you and 19 other players form teams comprised of privates, officers, seaman, sappers, musicians, surgeons, and chaplains, banding together to fight back against a constant zombie threat, all this taking place smack dab in the midst of the napoleonic war.

matches are split into one of several different gamemodes, either being based around pushing through present maps and completing unique objectives a la L4D2, or holding singular areas fending against hordes of zombies that get increasingly larger and stronger a la Call Of Duty: Zombies, most matches being the former.

gameplay is relatively simple; each class has their own unique way to contribute in terms of offense, defense, and support. privates, officers, and seamen wield righteous flintlock firearms and cut through hordes with their own versatile sets of melee weapons. sappers provide immense value through defense, setting up barricades, stakes, and whatever other structures to heavily impede zombie progress. Musicians sit in the back and provide valuable buffs to their teammates by raising morale with fifes, drums, and bugels. surgeons and chaplains provide support, healing wounds and curing infections, the chaplain also being capable of whipping out a crucifix to to completely stun every zombie just shy of bombers near him, completely trivialising entire difficult sections of a map.

i've always been more keen on the support classes myself but lately i've also been getting into playing seaman or occasionally private, but there is kind of something for everyone here. whether you like being an offensive powerhouse or holding your team together through supportive buildings and heals, within my own circle nearly everyone i play with has a different class that they consider their favourite. there's a very nifty balance here too, aside from classes like surgeon kind of ascending to the top of the priority list or musicians being mostly kind of unnecessary meta-wise there's a great variety of classes to choose from, and you can be mostly confident that so long as you're good, you can have fun and be a valuable asset to your team. it's good, gold star.

moving past the classes, i wanted to speak a bit on the raw gameplay in terms of mechanics and whatnot. The Napoleonic era this game takes place gives way to one of its most unique aspects combat wise, the guns. The flintlock firearms soldiers wielded in this era (for those not in the know), come with the unique property of being completely useless(!), mostly being only able to hold one bullet, as well as taking as long as 20 literal fucking seconds to reload.

Because of this, there's a much heavier focus placed on melee combat. Sabers, axes, pikes, bayonets, it's a way that I feel like the game really manages to immerse you in the time period, and evoke a sense of grittiness that makes it feel kind of unique amongst its peers. guns are a sidearm, almost a supportive tool, primary reason for existing being lining up nifty collateral kills, gunning the occasional big threat like sappers or igniters, and most importantly, shooting bombers. melee weapons are your true primary, and most of your skill is based on your ability to time left clicks, aim your mouse cursor to land headshots, and throttle the movement controls to succesfully kite around zombie attacks and avoid getting hit.

i really like this, for several reasons really. guns being so almost impractical for general use adds a certain grime to the game. there's a visceral sense of satisfaction in landing that one precious shot and getting a key pick, and the gameplay here feels somewhat unique as i can't name very many pve zombie games that have gameplay styles like this, and i can name even less that actually pull it off with as much grace as Guts & Blackpowder. but beyond all of that, something about it just makes the game feel so much more raw. you have to really get your hands dirty and roll around in the shit as a soldier, putting yourself at risk in the close range and dealing with zombies head on. it feels kind of scary having your guns be such nerfed-into-the-ground useless tools with very hyper specific niches and use cases, it adds this feeling of being constrained and almost kind of trapped in the era this game takes place in, especially if you've been spoiled by modern shooters with magazines and fast reloads and all that other bullshit but hey that's just me.

but the mechanics themselves are still relatively simple. melee is just built around WASD and well timed left clicks, shooting is just making damned well fucking sure that you don't miss and waste precious seconds on reloading, as any individual class all you have to do is make sure you stay on top of your game and make sure you're filling your niche, and i like that the truly important aspects of a good player is how well you function as a team player. there are countless more obvious examples of ways that each class kind of contributes to that overarching goal of holding off the zombie threat, but there are also more minute mechanical details i find really cool.

most weapons take 2 shots to fully kill making group effort melees very ideal, teammates can get grabbed by zombies nearly requiring a friend to save them lest they get mauled, highly powerful cannons are much more efficiently operated with two people manning them, class weaknesses such as a musician's vulnerability to sprinters make sticking close to teammates ideal and near required for some classes, and that's all i can name off the top of my head but there's a general "work with your fucking team" game design that blankets the whole experience.

as previously mentioned, games take place in one of two types of gamemodes, majority of which being pseudo-campaign esque Objective maps, and the idea is simple, start at point A, move to Point B, dealing with all the difficulties and obstacles that may entail. There's a pretty great variety to the maps here, not one feels similar to another in terms of design or layout apart from the obligatory last stand in the final section, which we will get to.

San Sebastian was one of the first Objective maps I remember playing and is in my opinion the perfect introduction to Guts & Blackpowder. A microcosm of everything that makes this game so good. During the Siege of San Sebastian, British and Portuguese soldiers are captured by the french and promptly imprisoned in a fortress atop the highest peak of the island. French forces fight a lengthy battle following their encounter with the undead, and inevitably, one kind officer decides to release the British/Portuguese prisoners and arm them against the threat. It's from here where the game picks up, depicting this group making their way through San Sebastian, starting at the highest peak of the island, before fighting their way through the town in an attempt to reach sea level.

You start atop the highest peak of the island, tight paths leading to the town that funnel you through zombie horde after zombie horde. You start the journey with this descent down the rolling hills of San Sebastian, overcast view of the town below you, then you get lower, pushing through the streets of the town. you travel through interiors and across rooftops, before you reach this fortress like area with high rise walls that box you in and reinvoke that sense of claustrophobia, and as the grand finale, you defend against one final massive wave of the undead as you wait to be hoisted down to a beach and rescued by a dinghy, constant threat of death from all the basic zombies swarming you to the runners charging ahead and tackling you to the bombers destroying any semblance of order or defense you try to establish.

it's fucking awesome. enviroments are constantly switching up keeping the run feeling fresh through each and every playthrough, and throughout each section i feel there's a really strong effort to throw in unique micro-sections that mix up the gameplay. In just the first third of the map breaks include having to push through a really tight claustrophobic death room usually filled with bombers, blowing up a shack and using planks from the rubble to bridge across a pit of spikes, fending against a door of infinitely spawning zombies as a few teammates run off to hoist up barrel bombs and hay bales to blow open a pathway into the town section, and this design philosophy of CONSTANTLY forcing the players through everchanging enviroments and difficult tasks coupled with the already very solid gameplay is a part what makes this game such an unironic masterpiece in my eyes.

and San Sebastian is just one map, a flash in the pan, not even my favourite map or what I'd consider to be the best. There are tropes repeated yeah; holdout in this area while waiting for a thing to slowly open, defend against hordes of zombies being funneled through one or several doors while other players do a task to blast the path forward open, simply proceed through the map and fight off pre-placed hordes of zombies littering the yellow brick road forward, but it's through really diversifying the maps aesthetically in a way where none of them feel the same, designing the enviroments to vary in geometry and the danger they pose, as well as mixing up the order of tasks in each match that makes each and every single map feel different. in a way, each map kind of highlights a different strength of the game, be it the very strong level design of San Sebastian, the endless tight paths and corridors of Kaub, the dark oppresive atmosphere of Vardohus, or the sheer unending brutality of maps like Roscoff and Copenhagen, and all the other maps I won't mention for the sake of brevity. chief of all these, god i just really wanna talk about Vardohus.

Vardohus is comparatively short when put up against the other maps. Contrasting the treks through constantly changing cityscapes or sewer systems or rooftop runs, Vardohus is a more quaint run through a small deserted town, taking place in a snowy setting, and of course overrun by zombies.

Vardøhus Fortress is the second map chronologically, taking place several months following the events of Berezina. It takes place shortly following the loss of a tow-ship by the HMS Undaunted, which contained several infected individuals, and caused an outbreak on the Island of Vardøya.

Vardohus is somewhat unique amongst the maps, not just for its relatively short length, but the harsh cold atmosphere that envelops the whole island. Vardohus feels oppresive. A thick mist clouds your vision, each surface is coated in snow and painted a moody blue feeling drab and lethargic. Players constantly seek refuge indoors or huddle around sources of warmth at constant threat of being claimed by hypothermia from the freezing temperatures of the outside, all the while, still having to contend with pushing through the map and fighting the undead.

You start in a humble settlement of a few cottages. It is FREEZING cold outside, and the first objective sees you blasting open a metal cage to grab shovels, which for this map are crucial to progressing. The map overall is admittedly short and slightly repetitive at first. You progress past the first settlement first by digging through the snow burying the door with those trusty shovels you grabbed. Following that, another holdout against zombies in a church after ringing a bell. Then, one more door buried beneath snow later, the final stop.

You come to this shoreline hugging the beach. Infront of you, a port stretching a few meters out into sea, leading to a dead end, precariously hanging above the freezing cold ocean, but the best place to hold out. To your left, a pathway leading to two cannons, which will be crucial for this section. To your right, the lighthouse you need to call in a ship, and another bell likely to alert an even bigger horde than the church.

There's a gentleman's agreement within the larger Guts & Blackpowder community; before you call the horde to progress, let the sappers set up. With everyone in position, cannoneers in place, and barricades along the port set up, you ring the bell, and you can hear the imminent groan of the massive horde of zombies as they're closing in.

Zombies jump from the path to the church and slide down the slopes of the cliff that hugs the shoreline. As zombies approach the port this harsh ASMR of the slashing of sabres, the whipcrack of muskets, and the booms of the cannons as they tear through the undead grows while the size of the horde only builds. The situation feels desperate, that hopeless oppressive atmosphere makes itself known and shines through harder than any section of the map before this. But beneath it all, in spite of how hopeless the situation feels, knowing that a rescue ship is coming, that you're in the home stretch, this prevailing sense of hope almost bleeds through, as you go from terrified and cowering in fear to grimly determined and valiantly fighting for your survival.

The music here is just, beyond words. Vivaldi, Four Seasons, Winter. The track starts simple yet menacing, fast moving violins, ominious staccato strings that just keep building, and in the chorus, the PERFECT exemplification of what the player is feeling, the climax of shooting at the gathering hordes of the undead, the grim determination of you and your comrades fighting for your lives, the oppressive freezing cold surroundings, and that sense of hope and optimism bleeding through the otherwise hopeless setting; ABSOLUTE. CINEMA. Not to MENTION, the harsh ASMR, the way it combines with the track and only serves to enhance the atmosphere, ABSOLUTECINEMA.

Beyond the gameplay, beyond the incredibly well designed maps, beyond the fun varied classes and playstyles, what truly ties the whole experience together and makes me love this game to pieces is the aesthetic. The cityscapes, the setting, the soldier outfits, the grime of fighting a zombie horde with old outdated weaponry, and not to mention the sound design, the sharp slashes of the sabre, the meaty cleaves of the axe, the whipcrack of each gunshot, the mechanical reloading, the genuinely amazing voice acting in the overlapping militaristic war crys and shouting in foreign dialects, coupled with the groans of the horde and the diagetic soundtrack of fifes and drums incongruently punctuating the gloominess of the maps. The atmosphere of this game is genuinely incredible. Every element of the soundscape almost combines and layers atop one another forming this wall of noise that makes the battlefield feel so alive and bloody authentic to the era.

Guts & Blackpowder isn't just great for a roblox game. It's just a genuinely great game period. It hooks you in with a distinctive setting, it keeps you coming back with a fun gameplay loop, it bedazzles you with some genuinely amazing set pieces in the form of these last stand sections that always hit in each and every map, and because of that, I truly believe that Guts & Blackpowder is the greatest Roblox game to ever be made.

looping back to my starting point, even if i've had to wade through heaps of shit in my search for a good game, in spite of all the years i spent, Guts & Blackpowder made it worth it. I love this game, and I hope my circle can stay playing this game in the years to come.