I played an hour or so of this in offline mode which was enough to decide that it wasn't my type of game.

Typically I'm not that fond of platformers, however I'm always prepared to give it a go as there's a specific few that (despite me not being a fan of the genre), I have enjoyed in the past, Hollow Knight comes to mind as one. I wanted to give Gonner a try as it looked cool and I prefer the more 'action' based platformers.

Despite this, I still wasn't very keen. While it looks very fancy in the screenshots, I found the art style a bit frustrating and confusing often to work out what was going on, especially amongst all the explosive death effects. I kept dying and then would spend 5 seconds trying to actually find my character again on the screen, during which I'd then die again as you die instantly if any enemy touches you. I think I lost nearly all of my lives while just trying to find my character amongst all the explosions.

I also found it controls to be very 'nit-picky', you can jump on an enemy to kill it (same as other platformers), but if you don't jump EXACTLY on the enemy's head, slightly to the side - then it just kills you instantly... and then you get back to the same death-loop of trying to find yourself again before you loose all your lives.

The game felt very unforgiving, and while I can understand a game being tricky, that being combined with the over-the-top and confusing art style don't really mesh very well. If a game is designed to be difficult, I think it needs to be accessible; controls need be precise and it needs to be extremely clear to the player what's happening on screen, why they died and what the player could have done to prevent it etc. Binding of Isaac (as a roguelike) and Hollow Knight (as an action platformer) both do this very well, both are very difficult at times but have tight controls and make it easy to see where you went wrong.

Maybe it becomes clearer with more practice, but Gonner certainly doesn't do much to 'ease you in' and very quickly gets difficult and confusing to play, enough to put me off.

I played an hour or so of this in offline mode which was enough to decide that it wasn't my type of game. Typically I'm not that fond of platformers, however I'm always prepared to give it a go as there's a specific few that (despite me not being a fan of the genre), I have enjoyed in the past, Hollow Knight comes to mind as one. I wanted to give Gonner a try as it looked cool and I prefer the more 'action' based platformers. Despite this, I still wasn't very keen. While it looks very fancy in the screenshots, I found the art style a bit frustrating and confusing often to work out what was going on, especially amongst all the explosive death effects. I kept dying and then would spend 5 seconds trying to actually find my character again on the screen, during which I'd then die again as you die instantly if any enemy touches you. I think I lost nearly all of my lives while just trying to find my character amongst all the explosions. I also found it controls to be very 'nit-picky', you can jump on an enemy to kill it (same as other platformers), but if you don't jump EXACTLY on the enemy's head, slightly to the side - then it just kills you instantly... and then you get back to the same death-loop of trying to find yourself again before you loose all your lives. The game felt very unforgiving, and while I can understand a game being tricky, that being combined with the over-the-top and confusing art style don't really mesh very well. If a game is designed to be difficult, I think it needs to be accessible; controls need be precise and it needs to be extremely clear to the player what's happening on screen, why they died and what the player could have done to prevent it etc. Binding of Isaac (as a roguelike) and Hollow Knight (as an action platformer) both do this very well, both are very difficult at times but have tight controls and make it easy to see where you went wrong. Maybe it becomes clearer with more practice, but Gonner certainly doesn't do much to 'ease you in' and very quickly gets difficult and confusing to play, enough to put me off.