Father, Son and Holy Guns Demo Hands-On: Sanity, Sisters and a Stubborn Camera
- How we played: Game Empress played the Father, Son and Holy Guns demo (build 0.70.03) solo on Oct.
- Father, Son and Holy Guns is a co-op roguelite from Bangkok studio Jumbo Jumps.
- The game enters Early Access, the paid but still-in-development version, on Oct.
How we played: Game Empress played the Father, Son and Holy Guns demo (build 0.70.03) solo on Oct. 21 and 22, 2026, on a Windows 11 PC (Intel Core i9 14th gen, Nvidia RTX 4060) at 2560 x 1440 on the High graphics preset. Steam logged 113 minutes of play. Jumbo Jumps, the developer, provided the Steam key. Every screenshot in this article is from those sessions. The developer did not see this article before publication.
Father, Son and Holy Guns is a co-op roguelite from Bangkok studio Jumbo Jumps. It puts you in the boots of a Gunsader, a gun-toting holy warrior sent by the Church of Humanity to wipe out cosmic-horror cults inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. Like most roguelites, it is built around runs that start fresh each time, so the upgrades you collect along the way reset when a run ends.
The game enters Early Access, the paid but still-in-development version, on Oct. 27, 2026, according to its Steam page. Until then, anyone can try a free demo during Steam Next Fest, which runs to Oct. 26 and is where we also went hands-on with Penguin Fury. The game supports up to four players online, but I played the demo alone, so what follows is a solo report from two sessions on Oct. 21 and 22.
How a run works
Every run begins in the church, where you pick one of four Gunsaders. All four share the same basic tools, a normal attack, a Heavy attack and a Special, but each also has a personal mechanic that changes the way you fight.
| Gunsader | Weapons | Personal mechanic |
|---|---|---|
| Brother Varun | Rifle, shotgun blast, grenades, RPG (rocket launcher) | Last Bullet: the final bullet in each magazine always deals critical damage |
| Sister Lilith | Hand-cannons | Ferocity: builds as she deals damage and powers up her Heavy or Special attack |
| Father Piero | Gun-throne, Dread Cupid drones, homing missiles | Energy: hold Heavy to fill the bar, then release for Burst Mode |
| Sister Kamara | Flame-saw | Berserk: builds with damage and drains when she stops; when full, her Special triggers Berserk Mode |
Once you leave the church and step onto the map, a sanity meter in the top-left corner begins to drain, and it keeps draining. In practice, it works as the clock for the whole run, pushing you from one objective to the next.
Each objective you clear earns a Blessing, a run-only upgrade you choose at a statue, such as a 15% shorter cooldown on your Special. Restoring a shrine of Yidhra gives you Nectar, a healing potion. All of this builds toward the main goal of every run I played: killing the Gatekeeper, a boss the Steam page says you lure out with Human-Oil earned from objectives.
Lost against the clock
Knowing how a run works did not help much on my first attempt. My sanity read 100% when I left the church, and less than five minutes later, by my screenshot timestamps, it had fallen to 27.4% while I was still working out where to go.
Much of that confusion came from the camera, which follows your Gunsader and moves only when you move. I kept wanting to grab the view with the mouse and pan ahead to check the path before walking into it, and when every wrong turn costs sanity, not being able to see the next area really hurts.
Moving around added to the strain. Shift is the dash key, but holding it down does not keep your Gunsader running, so I had to tap it again and again while also juggling attacks, jumps and the heal. A simple hold-to-run option would take a lot of that pressure off.
The map set its own trap as well. At a broken bridge, my Gunsader fell every time I tried to jump the gap, and turning back to look for another way cost sanity I could not spare. I still do not know whether that gap is meant to be jumped at all.
You cannot stop to think, either. When I opened the menu mid-run, a line at the bottom read, “The game is not paused, for crusade waits for no one.” That suits a group playing online, but on your own it means the clock keeps running even while you check the options.
By the time my first run ended, Ervin, the Head Priest, was waiting back at the church to tell me, “Well, that was a horrible first try.” I could not argue.
Sister Kamara made it click
Between runs, I made one change that I would not recommend. I switched Aim Control to “Keyboard Only,” which the game describes as “attack toward character’s facing axis.” From then on, my Gunsader fired wherever it was facing, usually the direction it was walking, so I could not circle an enemy while shooting. If you want to do that, stay with the mouse controls the game starts with.
The change that did help was switching to Sister Kamara, who gave me the best time I had with the demo. Her flame-saw tears through enemies up close, holding Heavy spins it into a tornado that lasts longer the longer you hold, and once her Berserk bar fills, her Special pushes her abilities even further. Sister Lilith, who fights with hand-cannons and quick aerial combos, came a close second.
With Kamara, my run on Oct. 22 went much better. She cleared an Elimination objective, and along the way I found the Black Market, run by a deacon who, according to the Steam page, scavenges dead Gunsaders and resells their gear.
Its eight Blessings cost 200 each and come with the tagline “All profits go to our beloved Prophet, and never to charity.” I had only 25, so I left empty-handed.
The sanity meter still ran out, but not with the result I expected. In that run it fell from 98.5% to 0.0% in just under six minutes, yet hitting zero did not kill Kamara. She kept fighting, and with the meter empty I reached the ritual altar that starts the boss fight.
Stillborn and the ring
The Gatekeeper waiting at the altar was Stillborn, a purple, many-tentacled brute, and it is not a gentle first boss. As soon as the fight starts, a ring of thorns forms around you, and there is no way out of it.
The map outside the ring is large, but inside it there is very little room to dodge, so you are forced to trade blows up close. On your own, staying alive while dealing enough damage is hard. Stillborn beat me about a minute after its health bar appeared, and the screen read “UNWORTHY.” If you play solo, expect the same on your first attempt.
Worth the download?
Despite that ending, yes, if you enjoy fast top-down roguelites. The four Gunsaders play very differently, Kamara and Lilith are a joy to use, and the sanity clock keeps every run tense. Just go in knowing that the first runs are confusing and that the fixed camera takes some getting used to.
If you can, bring friends. Playing alone, I kept feeling that one Gunsader can only do so much, and the Stillborn fight in particular felt built for a team of two or three. Since I could only play solo, my verdict on the co-op will have to wait.
Early Access is close. Jumbo Jumps says on the Steam page that the Early Access version holds about 70% of the content planned for the full release, that it should last six to eight months, and that the studio plans to raise the price gradually as content is added. Steam had not listed a price when we checked on Oct. 23.
If the studio changes one thing for Early Access, I hope it is a small camera pan, because it would make those confusing first runs much easier to learn.
