Shotgun Cop Man review: Super Heat Boy

A pumping soundtrack. The sounds of endless bullets. Naughty words that start with “eff” and rhyme with “pluck.” Yep, it’s time for a Devolver Digital-ass Devolver Digital review. Hopefully this one’s better than Anger Foot.

It says what it is right on the box

From My Friend Pedro developer DeadToast Entertainment, Shotgun Cop Man is a physicsy platformer about a bald, metallic-voiced man who is a cop and has a special shotgun. Shotgun Cop Man. He wants to arrest Satan, who does not like Shotgun Cop Man very much. Despite being the star of a platformer, Cop Man can’t jump, but when you’re a Shotgun Cop Man, you don’t need to.

This game is as straightforward as it gets. You have a shotgun that doubles as a jetpack, and a secondary weapon used to fight enemies and control your mid-air descent. Use these tools to navigate platforming challenges across a bunch of levels and a few boss fights, then confront the big boss man (Satan) at the end. Credits. The cadence is similar to Super Meat Boy, but a bit more reined in. The pace is slower, the challenge isn’t as intense, and the story is much simpler. It’s funny, but more so because the few moments that aren’t gameplay driven are just plain odd. There aren’t really jokes so much as idiosyncrasies.

Shotgun flow state

I cruised right through, completing the game in a few hours and barely running into any tough spots. But while I wasn’t met with raw challenges and dying constantly, the levels were designed in such a way that I was constantly engaged and reacting to something. The obstacles were surprisingly intuitive, simply offering a satisfying measure of lizard-brained “fun” for just as long as I needed. The game neither overstayed its welcome, nor ended too soon. Goldilocks would love this thing, assuming she was a bit of a gun nut.

Shotgun Cop Man is at its best when its levels naturally flow from one moment to the next. When each obstacle leads to the next in a way that lets you almost float through on the power of your bullets, it feels good to hop from moment to moment as you shoot, aim, shoot, reload, aim, shoot, and so on all without really stopping to reorient yourself. Levels often feel perfectly designed in that way, to the point where you almost don’t have to think once you get the controls down.

Shotgun nitpicking

If I had to reach for something to complain about, and I really did, it’s that there’s more gun variety than necessary. There are several different guns you can pick up, and after about four of them you run out of relevant functionality. Then you either get stuff that’s kind of pointless, or practically indistinguishable from other weapons. You can’t even really tell some of them apart before you pick them up.

There was also one single challenge that was kind of annoying, but was over so quickly I only remembered it just now while I was aching for more to say about this here video game. It’s an auto-scrolling gimmick that demands you blast through masses of terrain to stay ahead, and do so in a way that leaves you ground to climb up at the same time. This part feels unintuitive and like a struggle against the controls, a stark difference from the rest of the experience.

Also worth noting: I played the Nintendo Switch version, which is missing a level editor feature that’s included in the PC version. I don’t typically engage with level editors (I haven’t even played Mario Maker!), but in the interest of substance and my personal concerns about word count, that’s a thing that does or doesn’t exist depending on the platform.

If you can’t tell, reader, I’m struggling to find more to say about Shotgun Cop Man. It was a fun game about a bald man who shoots guns at the floor to do Mario Things while Satan says mean words at him from a distance. It is never more or less than exactly that. I had a great time for around three or four hours, and will probably never think about it again. But that’s okay, because I don’t think Shotgun Cop Man intended to reach beyond that outcome. Shotgun Cop Man simply is, and I respect that about him.

Shotgun Cop Man is available on May 1, 2025 for the PC and Nintendo Switch. A Switch code was provided by the publisher for review.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.