Dumbbell’s gunship game is a top-down circle of fire and a 20-minute run. The cannon is the toy. The rest is still being built.
Dumbbell Games developed and published Metal Thunder. It entered Steam Early Access on November 1, 2024 at $10.99. I reviewed the PC build from a code provided by Dumbbell Games. You command a gunship over a changing map, spend a run unlocking guns and perks, and try not to lose the objective on the ground. This is not a finished campaign. The store page says Early Access because it is.
The Circle in the Sky
The pitch is the Call of Duty AC-130 segment turned into a roguelite. You hang over a desert or a town, switch between guns, and spend the thermal camera on whatever is walking toward the thing you are supposed to keep alive. Missions run about twenty minutes. Enemies arrive in waves. You pick upgrades between bursts: a bigger gun, a perk, sometimes ground assets that fight while you shoot.
There is no novel. Radio chatter and a briefing are the story. The fiction is a generic near-future scrap. You are not here for the politics. You are here because circling a map with a 105mm is a specific kind of fun, and almost nobody else sells that loop for eleven dollars.
A Run Is a Loadout
You aim the guns yourself. That is the wrinkle versus a Vampire Survivors clone that fires for you. Ammo and cooldowns matter. Hover-and-spam works until the map punishes it. Then you have to pick a target, switch tubes, and stop lighting the wrong truck.
Procedural layouts keep the first dozen runs from being the same street. They do not keep every upgrade trio honest. Some nights the three cards are all mediocre and the run dies of math. Difficulty spikes exist. They are not always fair.
At launch the meat is Survival. A campaign, extra missions, and a zombies mode sat on a roadmap rather than in the build I played. Treat those as a promise, not a feature list.
What $11 Buys
Mostly Positive Steam scores match a toy that clicks for an evening. Recent samples have cooled, which is normal for an Early Access gunship that has not grown a second verb yet. Performance on PC was fine for the size of these maps. Presentation is functional military from above, not a showcase.
If you wanted a story campaign on day one, wait. If you wanted a short, loud roguelite that feels like the gunship level and then lets you stack cannons, this is the aisle. Solo-dev scope is visible. So is the hook.
Final Thoughts
Metal Thunder is for people who will circle a map for twenty minutes and spend crumbs on a meaner gun. Skip it if you need a finished campaign, a fair upgrade table every run, or a game that does not look like news footage from above. The AC-130 loop is real. Early Access is also real. 8.0 / Great.
Good
- Gunship guns you actually aim
- Twenty-minute runs with a readable thermal view
- Upgrade path that turns a cannon into a loadout
- $11 Early Access price for a loop nobody else is selling
- Maps that change enough for the first week
Bad
- Still Early Access, with campaign and extra modes on a roadmap
- Upgrade RNG that can dump a run
- Difficulty spikes that are not always earned
- Thin fiction and radio chatter instead of a story
- A toy that needs more verbs before it is a season
We prepared this review with a digital copy of Metal Thunder for the PC version provided by Dumbbell Games.
