We’ve been following the discussions around the 1.0.6 update - especially on balance changes - and we want to address some of the concerns we’ve seen. Some of you feel disappointed in how we prioritize updates. Some are unsure about our approach to balancing. Some feel we’re not listening. Some don’t understand why we’d retire certain content.
It’s clear we need to do a better job communicating our perspective so you at least understand the reasoning behind our decisions. This post is a step in that direction.
Right now, our top priority is finishing the Bunker Update, which we promised for September. This will replace the static menu lobbies with a new playable underground bunker - a hub that better integrates current and future features. It will give you a space to relax between expeditions, and cool new opportunities to show off your seniority in the game.
Once the bunker is released, you can expect a bigger balancing pass. This will significantly boost the firepower and usability of several underperforming weapons, while also addressing enemies, scaling, and talents. Our goal is to make as many weapons as possible feel fun, viable, and rewarding - while keeping their unique identities. Balancing won’t be a one-time fix and you should expect ongoing tuning as the game evolves.
To bridge the gap between our vision and your expectations, we’ll start explaining our design decisions more clearly. We also plan to release the balance update on a dedicated test branch, giving you a chance to try changes early and provide feedback before they go live.
Guntouchables is made by Game Swing, a five-person team: two programmers (Simon and Anton), one artist (Lars), one designer (Miki), and one producer (Martin). With such a small team, we usually need to focus on one big thing at a time. If Simon is fixing a bug, he’s not coding new features. If Lars is making UI, he’s not designing enemies. Every decision to work on something means delaying something else.
We keep a long list of ideas like elite enemies, new weapons, perks, missions, secrets, and more, but we have to make careful choices about where to spend our time.
On the surface, it may look like “just changing some values.” In practice, balancing requires multiple iterations of tweaking numbers, playtesting, and analyzing how those changes ripple through interconnected systems. A proper internal playtest ties up four out of our five team members, which means almost no one is available to work on new content during that time.
Until now, we’ve prioritized other critical features and the Bunker Update. Balancing is important and also a high priority for us... but so is doing our our best to deliver on the things we promise.
The Quicksilver was simply too powerful, and that hurt the overall vision of the game. With its high magazine capacity, large ammo pool, perfect accuracy, and tap-fire advantage, it was both over-performing and uninteresting to upgrade. It became the weapon choice, which warped the sense of challenge and reduced build variety.
In update 1.0.6 we removed two perks:
Improved Armor (increased the effects of body armor). We felt the mechanics were too opaque, and it wasn’t an engaging pick.
Good Cardio (reduced dash costs). Raising your max stamina achieves the same outcome in a more effective and versatile way. We expect to redesign the perk in order to make it a more interesting pick and reintroduce it later.
Hopefully, this post helps clear up some of the concerns some of you may be having. Please note, that our aim is always to make Guntouchables better and better over time - not to cause frustration. However, in order to improve the game, we need to make changes... and sometimes these changes can cause frustration in the short term.
Here's a sneak peek of the bunker
Thanks for sticking with us, and for continuing to share your thoughts.
Bullets & Beans!
-Game Swing