Video Game / Guts & Blackpowder

Blood stains your gun's iron.

"Do not go gentle into that good night."

Guts & Blackpowder is a Roblox horde shooter taking place in the Napoleonic Wars, created by Fuze Studios. The dead have risen, and a small company of soldiers armed with 18th century armaments must hold their ground against the walking dead in hope of rescue.

As the title implies, this game is heavily inspired from the Roblox game Blood and Iron.

The game currently have 10 maps: Hougoumont, Vardohus Fortress, Leipzig, La Ferme d'En-haut, Catacombes de Paris, San Sebastián, Kaub, La Haye Sainte, Berezina, and Tyrolean Village.

The game's three main gamemodes are Endless (Fend off escalating waves of undead until everyone is overrun), Objective (Complete various objectives on a map to reach salvation), and Holdout. (A mix of Endless and Objective, holding out against hordes while contributing towards one central objective.)

Players can play as one of seven different classes, each with unique weaponry or equipment. All classes carry a melee weapon^note Technically, the Pikeman/Lancer, Piper, and Engineer count as distinct classes, but they are merely equipment-dependence reskins of Line Infantry, Musicians, and Sappers respectively.

List of classes

• Standard classes:
  • Line Infantry: The default class. Wields highly accurate primary weapons with great penetration. An effective general unit, but not specializing in many roles.
    • Pikeman/Lancer: Subclass of Line Infantry. Ditches firearm for a pike/lance that have extremely long reach, but slows down movement.
  • Officer: A commanding officer, equipped with pistols, which can be reloaded the fastest and have the least movement penalty when reloading or aiming, at the cost of accuracy and damage. Officers also have the ability to command a powerful charge through filling up a meter.
  • Seaman: A member of the Navy. Their weapons of choice share the ability of firing multiple pellets, being able to devastate tight hordes, but struggles at further ranges.
  • Musician: A pure support unit. Does not carry a firearm, instead plays a musical instrument to grant nearby teammates helpful buffs, like faster reload speed or swingrate.
    • Piper: Scottish-exclusive subclass. Identical to Musician, but uses bagpipes instead of fifes if it's equipped.
  • Sapper: Carries slower melees which can kill most zombies in one swing. Sappers can also use their hammer to build various fortifications, like stakes and walls.
    • Engineer: Subclass of Sapper. Equips a set of siege engineer armour, gaining increased resistances to most damage, at the cost of being slower, less effective at building, and more vulnerable to fire.
• Specialists:
  • Surgeon: Every army have its medical personnel. Surgeons carry around medical supplies which they use to heal injured teammates, and have a deployable box of bandages for their teammates to heal themselves with.
  • Priest: A devoted man of God. Only armed with a wooden stake, but is capable of repelling and stunning large amounts of zombies with his crucifix, and cure teammates' infection via blessing.

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Guts & Blackpowder provides examples of:

• Abandoned Area: Most maps, which makes sense. The sole exception is Notre-Dame in Catacombes de Paris, as it is an active evacuation site which requires defending.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
  • Line Infantry in real life do not usually carry sabres, but they do in the game.
  • Muskets also had quite poor accuracy. The in-game musket is the most accurate weapon in the game.
  • All infantry regiments include Seamen, despite them being... infantry regiments. This is because only Britain and France have actual navy regiments in-game.
  • Firearms still function, even when out in the rain.
• Action Bomb: Bombers carry powder kegs. They begin to light their barrels once they get close to a human, detonating a few seconds afterwards. Bombers will also explode when killed. Their explosions are notorious for destroying Sappers' hard work, forcing them to rebuild their defenses.
• Always Night: Most maps in the game takes place at night.
• Amputation Stops Spread: In Hougoumont, there is a bloody bonesaw and a nearby bucket containing a decapitated leg, implying a soldier attempted to cure their infection via field amputation.
• Ancient Tomb: The Catacombes de Paris.
• Apocalyptic Log: A few are found throughout the game, each giving extra context to the maps they're found in.
• An Arm and a Leg: Zombies can have their arms decapitated, which is purely visual.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Cannons are able to shred hordes. However, they are stationary objects , require a long loading process, and are slow and cumbersome to aim.
  • While grenades can instantly kill any zombies caught in their blast radius, their long fuses, ability to kill their user, and the need to account for physics mean it's difficult to actually hit anything with them.
• Bayonet Ya: Line Infantry's muskets have attached bayonets. They deal much greater damage than sabres, however they cannot hit multiple targets. They become significantly more powerful when paired with an Officer's charge, automatically dealing massive damage to any zombie they come into contact.
• British Teeth: The British face have rotting and missing teeth, as well as being the only class to smile. Notably, this is completely absent from the Scottish and Irish.
• Burn the Undead: Any zombies that walk through burning wreckage will be ignited, dying after a couple seconds. Luring a horde through fire can dispatch them with ease.
  • In La Ferme d'En-haut, there are writing behind a pile of burning debris that reads "BRULER LES MORTS", roughly translating to "BURN THE DEAD".
  • Piles of burnt corpses can be seen in Hougoumont, San Sebastián, and La Haye Sainte.
• Character Class System: There are 7 classes for players to pick from, each with unique attributes.
• Clown-Car Grave: Small graves are common areas for zombies to spawn from, sometimes leading to hundreds of zombies climbing out of a couple tombstones.
• Creepy Cemetery:
  • One is featured in Leipzig's finale.
  • The entirety of Sleepy Hollow is one giant graveyard.
• Contrived Coincidence: What exactly was the HMS Undaunted doing in the frozen waters of Norway? The fact that it is close enough to Vardohus Fortress that it is able to reach the port in 5-10 minutes (assuming the ship was alerted by the firework, not the lighthouse) makes it even less likely.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Barry's fate, being jumped and feasted on by two runners, all while banging against a hatch above the players, before a bomber finished the job.
• A Day in the Limelight: America is the playable nation in Sleepy Hollow. It's the only map they appear in.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Shamblers can punch the player, dealing relatively low damage. However, this attack is much faster than their grab, so you'll often find your health drained in seconds if you try to squeeze past a horde.
• Defiant to the End: During the trailer, the group of soldiers get overwhelmed one by one, until one last soldier remains. Injured, he barricades himself into a room, only armed with a sabre. When the undead breaches the door, he shouts and charges them. He can be seen dropping dead in The Stinger, having half of his torso bitten off.
• Devoured by the Horde: What happens if a player get grappled by more than 3 zombies at once.
• Draw Aggro: A common strategy when a low number of players are left. One person draws away the horde, while the others complete the objective while clearing out any stragglers. Runners are specifically designed to make this much riskier.
• Dwindling Party: Inevitable for most teams. It's not uncommon to only have one player escape. Some objective maps do offer respawns, but they aren't guaranteed and only spawns you at halved health, as well as locking you out of unlocking the map's completion badge.
• Deadly Lunge: Averted with shamblers, who actually become much slower when lunging.
• Enemy Mine: Most maps contain soldiers from opposing nations working together to survive. It's quite easy to convince the enemy to join you when the only other choice is to brutally die to the undead. For example, in San Sebastián and Hougoumont, players can choose between playing as the French or the British together on the same team, despite Great Britain being at war with France at the time.
• Everything Fades: Zombie will despawn after a while, or when the player-set ragdoll limit is hit. Curiously, player ragdolls aren't affected.
• Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: The 42nd Regiment of Foot's Musician variant, the Piper, replaces the fife with bagpipes.
• Explosive Stupidity:
  • Leipzig and San Sebastián contains sections where explosives are used to clear the path. Standing next to those explosives while they are detonating will not end well.
  • The fate of a French soldier named Jacob. Players in Leipzig need to call for survivors for assistance destroying a gate, the final thing standing between them and a bridge towards escape. Jacob arrives soon afterward, carrying a barrel of explosive and a torch to blow the gate. Unfortunately, he miscalculated the explosion range.
• Eaten Alive: Shamblers feast on players after draining all their health in a grab.
• Fragile Speedster: Runners can outrun the soldiers and tackle them to the ground. They will always die in one hit from any weapon, and their health never scales in Endless mode.
• Fate Worse than Death: The zombies are damned souls incapable of passing on to either heaven or hell, stuck inside their own rotting bodies with their mind completely deteriorated.
• Frigid Water Is Harmless: Averted in Berezina. Stepping inside the river greatly accelerates the rate of hypothermia.
• The Goomba: Shamblers are by far the most common enemy encountered. They are slow enough that players can easily outrun them, even while reloading. However, their sheer numbers (and bulkiness, in the later endless waves) still make them an extremely formidable threat.
• Guide Damn It!: There are no instructions for using cannons in-game. Considering how many specific actions and button presses are needed to operate one, most new players just get confused when tasked with using one. ^note You need to press E while holding a swab to clean the barrel after firing, press E while holding a cannonball to load it, use the swab again to push it in the barrel, walk back behind the cannon and press E to aim it, and finally click F to fire the cannon. None of this is ever explained in-game.
• Guns Do Not Work That Way: The procedure for loading and firing cannons is heavily simplifed, for the sake of streamlining gameplay.
• Headless Horseman: The Sleepy Hollow map have the players fight the horseman as a boss. He can decapitate players with a single swing of his sword, toss pumpkin heads to deal heavy damage and summon the undead as Mooks. Surviving and killing the horseman unlocks the Jack-o-Lantern utility.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When Barry is killed, a player will have to sacrifice themselves to lower a platform downwards. Even if they aren't overrun by zombies while interacting with the winch, the platform being lowered means they have no way of reaching the beach without breaking their legs.
• Hitbox Dissonance: The game's gore system is client sided, which means you can encounter scenarios where zombies don't take any damage despite visually having both its arms cut off.
• Historical Domain Character:
  • Gebhard von Blücher can be found in the top room of the castle tower in the Kaub map in a wounded state, having been bitten earlier. He will hand players a key to open the cellar door at the bottom of the tower. If you stay in the room for a little while, he will turn into a Runner, kill his officer, and attack players nearby.
• Hold the Line: A very common objective in Objective mode maps.
  • The players must hold off against a massive swarm of zombies within the central tower of Pfalzgrafenstein Castle, in order to secure a path for the Prussian army's escape in Kaub.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Bombers can blow other zombies up.
  • Zombies can be burnt by the Igniter's fire pools.
• Holy Burns Evil: The Priest can ward off the undead by temporarily stunning them with his crucifix.
• Holy Ground: Multiple churches are featured in the games' maps, like St. Thomas Church in Leipzig and Notre-Dame in Catacombes de Paris.
• Hope Spot: After an arduous journey through the town of San Sebastián, it seems like the players are about to make it out, as Barry begins to turn the winch to lower them onto the beach... until some runners find him. A bomber soon finishes them off, opening a path to the winch in the process, forcing at least one player to sacrifice themselves to use the winch.
• Intrepid Merchant: The game's shopkeeper, Bubbles, is an American Revolutionary War veteran. Upon hearing about the situation in Europe, he decided to provide wares to assist them, albeit at the right price.
• Interface Screw: Infection tints the screen dark-red, with increasing severity depending on how far infected someone is.
• Incongruously-Dressed Zombie: Rarely, shamblers spawn as undead soldiers, still wearing their uniforms.
• Jack of All Trades: The Seaman class is considered to be this. Their blunderbuss deals massive piercing damage, often outclassing the musket's damage output. Since it is a shotgun, it would be easier to snipe Bombers or Runners as their margin for error is much bigger. (Only one pellet needs to connect to kill them.)
• Last Stand: Endless mode is... endless. The only way a match will end is when all players are dead.
• Man in a Kilt: Playing as the 42nd Regiment of Foot naturally gives you one.
• Mercy Kill: You can deliver one to any reanimated players.
  • You can break your legs by jumping off a tall area without cushioning, resulting in you becoming defenseless and crippled on the floor. Other players will be able to perform one on you. (Doing so grants a badge.)
• The Musketeer: Every class with a firearm. Since they take a long time to reload (the fastest one have a reload time of 5 seconds while boosted by a Musician), pulling out your melee weapon to fend off zombies is done regularly.
• Near Victory Fanfare: During final holdout segments in Objective maps, classical music plays as the survivors make one last stand before help arrives.
  • Vardohus Fortress plays Four Seasons (Winter) by Vivaldi. Fitting for a map taking place in the arctic Norwegian coastline.
  • Leipzig plays The Final Push, composed by Bradley Farmer, when Jacob is about to arrive with the explosives. It also acts as an climatic final dash through the bridge before it explodes.
  • Catacombes de Paris plays 1812 Overture. The map have the longest and most straightforward finale holdout in the game, and the music being about Napoleon's retreat from Russia parallels the French evacuation from Paris. The music's iconic cannon fire are even represented by AI artillery firing at specific moments.
  • San Sebastián have Facing the Inevitable. It represents the somber sacrifices made to get the lift up and down very well, and serves as a great motivator for finishing the longest Objective map in the game.
  • Kaub has Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, 4th movement "Ode to Joy" playing over the final act. Fittingly enough, this symbolizes the united brotherhood of the soldiers, even though they came from different European nations, as they defend themselves from the hordes of the undead, trying to survive long enough to find a way to get through such mess altogether.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: Justified, since this game takes place during Napoleonic times. In-universe, the zombies are usually referred to as cannibals, or simply the undead.
• Off with His Head!: Killing a zombie with a melee swing to the head cuts it right off.
  • All ranged weapons can also achieve the same effect with headshot kills.
  • Some corpses in San Sebastián have their heads decapitated.
  • Sleepy Hollow's headless horseman can decapitate players with his sword, instantly killing them.
• One-Hit Polykill: All guns are capable of this.
  • Melee weapons can hit multiple enemies as well.
• Orchestral Bombing: In Catacombes de Paris' finale, 1812 Overture plays in the background as a massive horde of undead approaches. The supporting artillery fire and Notre-Dame's bell ringing are even in sync with the music.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The basic shamblers are not that different from stereotypical zombies, except for the fact that their Zombie Gait is much faster than normal. The zombies are actually the souls of the damned incapable of passing on, as hell has become full. This is why they fear the power of the crucifix, and why a Priest's blessing can cure the infection as long as the infection hasn't progressed to its final phase.
  • Some zombies carry around large powder kegs, and are intelligent enough to light them once in range of any victims.
  • The freshly turned will become runners, zombies sprinting at full speed with glowing eyes. They can tackle humans to the ground, but cannot convert their victims into more undead.
  • Infected Sappers still wields their signature axes, becoming a slow but sturdy Mighty Glacier. One hit with their axe lunge will cut off a large chunk of health.
  • Zombies that appear to be heavily burnt during its reanimation can become Igniters, shamblers that carry a lantern in their hand, tossing them at any survivors to set a large area ablaze.
• Player Mooks: The soldiers players play as are generic soldiers from random nations trapped in a zombie infested area, having no unique character traits beyond their class.
• Recoiled Across the Room: Downplayed. Firing the nock gun will cause slight knockback to its user.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • The runners all have glowing red eyes, and they are much more threatening than shamblers, being able to outrun the soldiers and pin them to the ground with a tackle.
  • The headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow does not have physical eyes (which a lack of a head often results in), but he have a trail of red light located where his eyes would normally be.
• Saved by the Church Bell: Jean-Louise-le Petit-oui-oui-Duboire tells the players that they'll ring Notre-Dame's bells to signal that the rescue boat is coming. This is represented by the bell sounds in the background soundtrack.
• Scare Chord: Plays whenever you are grabbed by a shambler or runner.
• Shoot the Mage First: Players often prioritize shooting bombers to detonate their explosions away from their barricades. It also helps that bombers' explosions can kill nearby zombies.
• Shout-Out: The French soldier in Leipzig is named Jacob, a reference to the man starting the boat in 28 Week Later's famous opening. They both die while providing escape for the main characters from a horde of zombies.
• Snowed-In: In Vardohus Fortress, the pathway leading to the port is completely filled in with snow, forcing the soldiers to dig through the path while under assault from zombies.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Downplayed. Leipzig contains multiple events where explosives are used to clear the path, referenced by the map's completion badge "Explosive Retreat".
  • Fighting multiple bombers will certainly result in this.
  • Players can equip grenades as utility items for certain classes.
• Super Drowning Skills: Touching or going too far into the water in most maps instantly kills players and zombies alike. Averted in Berezina, where you freeze to death faster instead.
• Scare Chord: A loud sound will play when caught by a shambler's grab or a runner's tackle.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Killing a single shambler with a fully loaded nock gun blast^note 250 * 7 damage! or a canister shot^note  36 * 100 damage. to the face.
• A Thicket of Spears: Possible, if enough Line Infantry players equips the pike. Also works with bayonets!
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • Igniters toss whale oil lanterns to achieve the fire pool's effects. You are able to put out the fire by pouring water over the ignited oil.
  • To cross a pit full of spikes, the players opt to detonate an entire shed full of explosives to break the door into pieces of planks, which they use to build a bridge through. Instead of simply breaking the door down, or even grabbing an already broken door right next to the shed.
• We Hardly Knew Ye:
  • Jacob, a French soldier arriving to blow open a gate, gets blown up moments after his introduction due to a fuse mismeasurement.
  • Similarly, a British soldier named Barry lit up fireworks to signal a ship in San Sebastián, and began operating a winch to raise a platform for the players to escape through. Once he started to lower the platform, two Runners jumped him, and a Bomber arrived soon afterwards, blowing him up.
  • The accompanying officer in Kaub gets killed by a turned Blücher, moments after his sole line of dialogue.
• You Are Already Dead: Full infection will stop degrading over time, and cannot be cured by blessings. Once you reach that point, you'll only have about half a minute left to live, before subcumbing to the blight and joining the horde. Better make your last moments count...
• Zerg Rush: Naturally, this is why the zombies are so dangerous.
• Zombie Apocalypse: One taking place in the 19th century! While the details of the outbreak is unclear, ^note Although it's heavily implied that the blight is demonic in nature. the Leipzig, Catacombes de Paris and San Sebastián maps imply that whatever's causing the dead to rise is large-scale enough to devastate massive cities.
• Zombie Infectee: The infection mechanic can turn you into one. If your hidden infection meter is raised to full, it will stop being passively reduced, and your screen will be tinted a dark shade of red. Some time later, you will drop dead and reanimate as a runner.
  • Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher became infected offscreen during the map Kaub. When you find him and a nearby officer on the top of Pfalzgrafenstein Castle, he is already in the late stages of infection. He ordered the players to release and clear the horde locked underneath the castle, soon falling victim to the infection and killing his officer.