Hi everyone! As mentioned in our previous posts here, we’ve listened and tried to address as many issues and comments possible regarding the maps, gameplay changes and beatmaps. We've tried to action the feedback and test as quick as possible to bring you the new updates and requests which hopefully improves your overall experience with the game! Please let us know how you get on.
A huge thank you to everyone who jumped into the Open Beta, joined our Discord and gave frequent and detailed feedback for each build version and new features. Your help and support has been so useful and you've helped immensely during this period.
V1.2.5 Summary and Update Notes
The highlights of this release are the two new checkpoint levels and manually curated beatmaps, which drastically change the feel of the game.
This returns much of the original appeal of the demo version while still maintaining the ability to use custom music (with either auto-generated or custom beatmaps).
Two New Stages
City Streets Checkpoint stage has been added.
Sonic Prison Checkpoint stage has been added.
Beatmap Editing Tools
Adaptive training and manual in-game beat mapping tools for custom tracks.
Currently, all beatmap editing tools need to be activated by modifying the beatmap JSON file manually. This process will gradually become more user-friendly. In the meantime, please check our Discord server for guidance!
Curated Beatmaps
All OST tracks have been manually updated using the new assisted editing tools.
Gameplay Updates
Energy gates are now immediately unlocked.
During locked gate and boss shield sections, enemies keep respawning until enough enemies have been defeated.
These changes make it easier to quickly move through a level and also avoid the frustrating situations when you can't find the remaining enemies.
Primary notes now always need to be activated individually (previously only for scoring purposes).
Spaced railgun notes are now always primary notes.
Railgun notes can now be chained on successive notes (as combo notes).
Updated scoring and multiplier logic.
Aero health increased to four hearts.
Ballard now heals from overdrive melee attacks.
Various balance tweaks.
Quality of Life
Custom music screens now contain buttons to open the respective music/beatmaps folder.
Newly added custom songs are now added to the top of the list.
Thanks again to everyone for playing, and for your continued support and feedback during this time. We hope you enjoy the updates and we'll continue to bring more content and fixes as and when we can soon.
First Major Update Available in Open Beta
As mentioned in our previous post here, we’ve seen a lot of the concerns or comments regarding the demo maps, or beatmaps and content. We want you to know that we’re listening and have been trying to action some of the feedback as fast as possible to bring you new updates and requests which aim to improve the overall experience.
These new features listed below, amongst other updates will be released very, very soon here but an early version of it is available in an open Beta NOW.
If you’d like to try these updates already, please join our Discord server for the full details and we’d love to hear your feedback soon:
Two new checkpoint maps - Sonic Prison and City Streets. More to come.
Major beatmapper upgrades including an adaptive beatmapper mode which learns and adjusts with different music and the way you play.
An in-game editor to manually adjust the beatmaps
Thanks to everyone for playing, and for your continued support and feedback during this time. We hope you enjoy the updates which will move to Steam shortly and we're also working hard to bring other content soon.
Day One Patch
Issue with the door in Sonic Prison not letting player’s pass
Balance improvements for Gun Jam Arena and minor gameplay fixes
In-game note UI tweaks, so it makes notes appear a bit slower and you can see further ahead
Initial door can be breached by pressing attack button, not only kick.
Thanks for your support and for playing, some upcoming updates!
Thanks to everyone for picking up the game, playing, spreading the word and especially giving us feedback. It’s been quite a crazy ramp up to launch so a huge thanks for your support, kind words and patience during this launch period as we continue to update the game and iron out any bugs.
In fact, we’re pushing out a fix shortly that addresses some issues we’ve seen players experience:
Issue with the door in Sonic Prison not letting player’s pass
Balance improvements for Gun Jam Arena and minor fixes
In-game note UI tweaks, so it makes notes appear a bit slower and you can see further ahead
Initial door can be breached by pressing attack button, not only kick.
If you’re still encountering these or other issues, or anything with Custom Music Importer, please reach out to us in the Steam forums, in Discord or in support and we’ll try and assist.
Also to note, we’ve seen some of the comments and concerns on the demo maps or gameplay and we want to acknowledge that we hear you, and we understand the frustrations but are working hard on solutions and content that we hope you’ll like. Our aim is to definitely bring back more of the linear and checkpoint levels (including the demo levels) that we would like to refurbish and release shortly. We’ll let you know when key dates are on the horizon.
The new maps will most likely be the linear levels, vs the arenas which occupy most of the current map selection. The arenas provide a strong base line because they're easier to balance and work with, and with any piece of music, not just our original soundtrack - this is really important for custom music, which can vary wildly in duration, tempo and complexity.
We've had to accommodate that which offers a lot to players but then had to make some compromises along the way to ensure custom music works well - we hope you find it's worth it when playing! We're going to continue to tailor and balance the experience and your feedback is invaluable to this. It can be complex to balance the linear levels making them perfect for a longer, 5-8 min track (such as our OST) but then also ensuring they work well with a shorter, 3 minute track (custom music) for example.
Rest assured, we are reading all of the feedback and working hard to remedy things. We hope you are still enjoying the experience and looking forward to upcoming updates!
GUN JAM is Out Now!
The day has come - GUN JAM is now available here on Steam!
Check out our official launch trailer here:
We're beyond excited to bring you the game and see how everyone grooves to our own soundtrack and what kind of music you all gravitate to with our custom music importer!
Remember, the game has a limited launch discount (10%) so it's a great time to try it out if you like the look of it.
We really hope you enjoy this experience, thank you for sticking with us on this journey and we're excited to hear what you think very soon!
If GUN JAM resonates with you, please leave a review on Steam and share on socials or with friends. We really appreciate the support and it means a lot. We'll be rolling out updates soon and especially looking towards the community and your feedback to see what to address as priorities. You can bet that we're listening to you all (when we're not listening to the soundtrack ;) ).
Thanks again and talk very soon, - Jaw Drop Games
GUN JAM is officially launching TOMORROW
It's finally here! Get ready for the fast-paced and rhythmic action fun hitting your screens and speakers TOMORROW!
GUN JAM will be available from 3pm CEST / 2pm BST / 9am EDT / 6am PDT. It will be $19.99 and is also launching with a 10% discount for a limited time, making this the perfect time to blast to the beat!
As a reminder, you may want to prep your own custom music, in order to upload and get into the groove when we go live on Steam. But if you prefer, here's another glimpse into Blood Sugar, an original song of our soundtrack by Composer, Wrigley. The album will be available for purchase on Steam and in our bundles, as well as on other platforms.
Get ready to takedown hordes to these juicy riffs tomorrow:
This is your last chance to Wishlist GUN JAM to get up to the second news when we launch tomorrow!
Now Featuring Custom Music
We're really excited to reveal that Gun Jam will feature the ability to load Custom Music upon launch!
Shoot to the beat of your own soundtrack and craft your own experience with our Custom Music Importer. Simply upload your music files to generate a custom and automated beatmap and play along to your own music in any of our maps.
Custom Music has been the most requested feature and always something we've wanted to try and include despite the technical difficulties so we're proud to be able to offer it at launch on April 19th.
Musical tastes are as varied as they come and now you'll be able to tailor GUN JAM to suit your musical whims after checking out our original soundtrack.
Gun Jam supports the usual file formats, MP3s, WAVs, FLACs, and OGGs - so grab your library, upload your favourite jams and get ready to rock and shoot up some bad guys!
Wishlist GUN JAM on Steam to get the latest news on our upcoming launch
- Jaw Drop Games -
Defeat to the beat on April 19th
It's time to crank it up to 11 and let rhythmic chaos commence on April 19th! 🔫🎧 Gun Jam will be hitting Steam soon and in anticipation for this, we wanted to share a few sneak peeks into the latest gameplay!
Check this Heavy Shooter takedown. You gotta throw up those horns after you take down a big boy!
Witness the absolute carnage in the Noise Maze as you take on an array of enemies like the Flame Troopers whilst battling against time, in this map.
Have a peek into the Fuel Cell lyrics from our OST and some of the Sonic Prison!
Until the next beat… Come and hang out with us on Discord! You can also follow us on social channels such as Twitter, Facebook, TikTok etc!
And if you haven’t done so already, please wishlist the game on our Steam store page. We’d really appreciate it!
- Jaw Drop Games -
GUN JAM is coming to Steam on April 19th!
Turn your bass up to 11 and get ready for GUN JAM to arrive on Steam on April 19th!
We just announced our launch on social media and couldn't be more excited to bring our rhythm-driven game to Steam! Be sure to slap GUN JAM onto your wishlist to get informed the minute we go live in a few weeks!
Sync with the sounds of the city
Did you know that GUN JAM’s official soundtrack was written specifically for the game? It played a huge part during development! There was a lot of experimentation when it came to writing and recording the music. As we get closer to releasing both game and soundtrack, we thought we’d shine the dev spotlight on how the OST was created.
GUN JAM’s composer, James Wrigley.
How did you get started?
Wrigley on unconventional methods: Working on GJ was the opposite of how developers traditionally approach scoring a game. We started with the soundtrack first and worked backwards. As we wanted to push the boundaries of what could be done with the rhythm, I experimented with making the guns shoot melodies by writing short passages, and cutting out the individual notes to be triggered when the player fired. Unfortunately, this didn't work because the gun audio kept getting lost within the competing frequencies!
Wrigley on avoiding stale sounds: I tried having the music generated as you played the game as I wanted it to be melodically interactive. Sadly, this didn't result in a cohesive soundtrack. Then, I tried having a piece start with a consistent rhythm with varying sections and styles. I recreated the piece with 6 different rhythms that the game would switch between. This was overly complicated, and it left us with stale-sounding music that wasn’t exciting.
Wrigley on finding the rhythm: I also tried the metronomic route and just went with a four-to-the-floor kick snare synth-wave style. Again, it left the player simply shooting in time, and it was too linear. I came to the conclusion that we were over-simplifying things that didn't need to be simplified. GUN JAM is a rhythm FPS game. Surely anyone downloading to play it either has a good feel for rhythm and/or is an avid fan of FPS games. I thought, why are we 'dumbing down’ the firing patterns? It was drying up the juice of the gameplay. In the end, I went all-out making the craziest music I could. Through trials of play-testing, I took out the sections that were impossible to shoot to, leaving just the good stuff.
From your experiments, how did you start to build the different tracks?
Wrigley on variables: I had to figure out so many variables. What tempo felt good to shoot? What elements of the soundtrack drove the rhythm - bass, kick, melody, etc.? What felt good to play for hours on end without getting fatigued? I had to work out how the soundtrack could grow in intensity once the player enters a level, starting with literally kicking through the door to getting into the rhythm and shooting everything in sight.
Wrigley’s method of immersion.
Wrigley on immersion: Many pieces started with a PlayStation controller in hand in front of an empty Cubase session tapping rhythms. I had to imagine what it would feel like to blast hordes of enemies or the nastiest boss battles. What kind of fire would they return? How will the player interact with these characters?
How did you decide on the genres?
Wrigley on vibe: The reaction I want from the music and gameplay is, “F*** YEAH!” I chose the 3 most aggressive styles of music I could imagine: EDM, hip-hop, and metal. Within these, you have many sub-genres, and I tried to bring as many of those different flavours into the tracks as possible too.
What other challenges did you face when writing?
Wrigley on song length: The song length! At first, we were aiming for 2-3 minute long pieces. They grew into 5-minute pieces, which escalated into songs that are now over 6-7 minutes long. There is very little repetition, save for the vocal themes. A 7-minute long track with constant variation but repeating rhythmical themes are incredibly challenging to quality control, especially on the exporting stages!
Wrigley on fusion: The tracks evolved to overlap with one another. For example, Metal tracks have heavy amounts of synthesis in them; TrapHop has distorted guitars and neo-classical influence; and EDM has everything I could throw at it! When you reach a point where you physically can't fit any more plugins on a track, you know it's getting a little bit crazy!
Did you face any challenges when it came to recording?
Wrigley on acoustics: On the first couple of tracks, I made a grave mistake in recording the vocalists in my new studio with 0 acoustic treatment. I thought using a fancy Fet47 mic would make the vocals sound crisp. Unfortunately, it picked up the entire room. I might as well have recorded the takes in a bathroom. I thought, “Ah, that's what a swimming pool sounds like!”
Check out Wrigley’s stunning studio set-up!
Wrigley on back to basics: Alice added some incredible vocals, sung in Japanese, that you’ll hear in the track called ‘Encaged’. The funny thing was, she didn't have any recording equipment and we were working together but from different countries meaning we couldn’t record together in the studio. So, I made it work with just their headphone mic. I cleaned the vocal tracks up and removed any background noise and reverb utilizing spectral processing and transient designers. I loved how they turned out so much that I kept those initial takes in the mix! Wrigley on time pressures: I didn’t have the time to re-record any of the vocals. With too many levels of spectral processing and transient design, I was able to get the vocals right where I wanted them. I ordered a tonne of acoustic panels after that (thank you, GIK Acoustics), and I switched to an SM7B for all of the other sessions.
Wrigley on beat maps: As for creating the beat maps, I loaded the track into Cubase and used a snare to sketch out the firing patterns. I couldn't send the coding team a midi file or anything straightforward, so this was the best solution.
Can you tell us anything about your gear?
Wrigley on headphones: I mix as I master as I produce as I write. It's all part of the same process. Everything is mixed on headphones. I use Sennheiser HD800s headphones with a Grace Design M900 DAC. For reference, I also use Neumann KH80 speakers. Even with the new room treatment, I can't trust my room with 100% accuracy. So, I primarily rely on my headphones. This has the added bonus of allowing me to work anywhere.
Let’s make some noise!
Wrigley on layering up Metal: For the track called ‘Carbon Copy’ I went for hyper-augmented Djent. The song is written in drop E. I used my custom Warmoth baritone 28-inch equipped with an Evertune bridge and Bare Knuckle Impulse pickup along with my Dingwall bass to create this track. All of the leads were created with my Fender 1954 custom shop Stratocaster, which is not typically thought of for Metal. My secret to a track like this? Layering, layering, and even more layering! There are several snares, 4 kick drums, a couple of toms, and many, many synths screaming away.
And finally, can you tell us the names of each track?
Wrigley on releasing the OST: Yes! Here’s the track list for GUN JAM’s official soundtrack. As well as being available to download in a bundle from the Steam store, you’ll also be able to listen to it on Spotify, alongside 150+ other music platforms at launch! There’s over an hour's worth of music in the soundtrack.
Anything else you’d like to tell the community?
Wrigley on extra insight: Everything I’ve already referred to doesn’t even scratch the surface of the amount of work that went into the music alone. I could talk about it forever! If anyone would like to hear more insight into how the music was made or has an interest in composing, reach out to me in the music channel in GUN JAM’s Discord!
One more kit shot for the road.
The entire soundtrack was completed in an intense 6 month period, including the lengthy experimentation phase. As you can tell, writing and composing the music for GUN JAM pushed our composer past the limits of what he thought creatively possible. Do you think he accidentally created new fusion genres in the process?! We’re all incredibly excited about the game release, but we also cannot wait to hear what people think about the official soundtrack.
Until the next beat… As Wrigley said, come and hang out with us on Discord! You can also follow us on Facebook, feast your eyes on our Instagram, tweet about us on Twitter or simply fall down a rabbit hole of behind-the-scenes on our TikTok.
And if you haven’t done so already, please wishlist the game on our Steam store page. We’d really appreciate it!
