Gunman Contracts – Stand Alone has been live in Steam Early Access for a day, and the first long-form hands-on is in. The Elite Institute calls the solo-dev shooter impressive for what it is — and incomplete for what the trailers sold. Steam’s own page now lists a firm $24.99 price, OpenXR VR plus flat PC and Steam Deck support, and a “Mostly Positive” score from hundreds of early reviews.
This is not another launch notice. Metaverse Watcher already covered the September 10 unlock and the decision to stop waiting on Steam Frame. What matters now is how the build plays once the wishlist button turns into a receipt.
What Elite Institute found
Reviewer The Elite MYT frames the game as a John Woo–style hitman fantasy from a single developer who spent years expanding Half-Life: Alyx mods into a from-scratch title. The prologue leans stealth — silenced pistol, security hacks, bushes that do not hide you from “supersonic” guards — before the second and third contracts flip into timed waves and corridor slaughters. Gunplay and the door-breach gimmick land. Enemy variety and AI pathfinding do not. Stuck hostiles that block objective completion, grab-physics glitches, and AI tumbling over corpses are called out as Early Access friction that breaks immersion in tighter maps.
Content at launch matches the Steam Early Access FAQ: three connected story contracts, five challenge maps across Takedown and Last Stand modes, the Hive home base with a gun wall and bench, and 18 unlockable weapons. Elite Institute estimates the story contracts at roughly an hour, with challenges as diversions rather than a second campaign. Flat mode runs well even on Steam Deck, but the review says it feels generic without the VR-exclusive systems — a predictable outcome for a hybrid that still designs around standing shootouts.
What Steam confirms
The Steam listing prices the Early Access build at $24.99 in the US (Elite Institute logged €24.99). Developer ANB_Seth and publisher 2080 Games state that three more story contracts are planned as free updates, that price will rise toward 1.0, and that VR and non-VR both ship day one. Leaderboards are split between VR and flat. An optional low-violence mode strips most blood while keeping the gunplay. As of this writing the store shows Mostly Positive from about 690 reviews — early, but not empty.
The Frame angle is settled for buyers if not for rumor-chasers. The developer already said on Reddit that the September 10 date was chosen independently after the “alongside Steam Frame” plan stopped being useful. SteamVR 2.17 shipping stable this week is Valve’s signal, not Gunman’s calendar.
Bottom line
Elite Institute’s close: impressive for a solo Early Access shooter, not the next Half-Life: Alyx, and not finished. That is a fair read against the store page’s own honesty about three contracts now and three more later. If you wanted the Alyx-mod energy without waiting for Frame, the $24.99 build is live. If you wanted a polished campaign, the review says wait for the AI and enemy variety work that still has to land.