If you’re of a certain age, or let’s say…vintage… you’ll know what the words Ebaum’s World mean. Ah, the good ol’ days of the early 2000s internet, where the craziest stuff you saw on your home or school computer was stickmen fighting to the death and vulgar cartoons and games.
When I started playing Blood Dungeon, I was immediately taken back to this era of online debauchery and insane ideas. As an avid retro gamer and indie fan, that was a massive plus for me, and I couldn’t wait to see what Messhof‘s Blood Dungeon offered.
Blood Dungeon is Insane in the Best Possible Way
What I found in the hours and hours I’ve played is that it is not only a treat for the eyes and ears, but it has its own spin on the Survivor-like genre that has exploded in recent years. Sure, you have weapon and ability pickups and level-up screens flashing with excitement, but you’re doing it all in a set of fast-paced 2D platforming stages.
Blood Dungeon pulls no punches in being wacky and sets you off on your path of collection, destruction, and survival. The game includes a number of different “heroes” and playable characters, but you kick things off with an arm-flailing person who fires an automatic machine gun as their primary weapon.
If you’ve played a survivors-like before, you’ll know what to expect for the most part here. Start with basic movement and a starting weapon, then level up and build your kit from there. As enemies of all kinds start swarming you, it’s all about being efficient with your movement while collecting experience points. In Blood Dungeon, that comes in the form of small floating blood pools and spatter.
The game moves quite fast and is essentially a two-button experience, with movement on the joystick or D-pad and a jump button. For the most part, the game appears rudimentary at first, and I think that’s by design, but it has more to it under the surface. Especially as you unlock more and more and sink more and more hours into it.
The Ups and Downs
I do think Blood Dungeon is doing its own thing here and forging a fun new path, but the core gameplay loop is still very familiar at this point. I feel like it’s a victim of the genre, as the rinse-and-repeat factor works well, but after I unlocked a large chunk of the content and all the playable characters, I was less compelled to continue. I did, but it never felt as special as it did 3 or so hours prior.
The characters, stages, and weapons are a wonderful time and give you so many awesome opportunities to experiment. After achieving certain prerequisites, you’ll be able to select characters with even more insane looks, like a woman who runs around ‘naked’ and fires a shotgun, a spider-like guy who shoots webs, a baby with a gun who coos and cries as you jump around, a dude who shoots out a giant red whip, or what about a pyjama-wearing creature that farts? These are just some of the wild and random-feeling ideas thrown at you.
Combining some of these loadouts is also great. Abilities like higher jumps, faster movement, money collection to unlock chests, a shield, and shrinking down in size all add to the formula of a successful run. Each time, you’ll be attacked by giant bosses that are just as mind-bending as the characters you control. Add to that the numerous levels that are all different layouts and have their own quirks, and you’ll have hours and hours of variety in your hands.
One of the pluses in my experience playing Blood Dungeon is how short most of the runs are. Especially in the opening couple of hours as you upgrade your stats and learn the ropes, it’s not uncommon for a run to last 10 minutes or less. The goal, of course, is to survive as long as possible, but when you do eventually fail, at least it was quick and simple. Once I hit roughly 6 hours of playtime, I could last a few minutes longer on most stages, and that in itself felt like a reward.
All of what the game has to offer is presented in what I could only describe as childlike with an emphasis on insanity. No this game is not meant for kids, but it sure looks like a kid may have drawn these monsters. It truly feels as though a child sat down with a colouring pad and drew what they thought a spider person, a giant frog, a fencer, an exploding eyeball, a fist, and several weapons would look like. It’s a very charming and dark take all at once, and I loved it.
Verdict
The best thing that Blood Dungeon has to offer is its unique take on the survivor-like gameplay. Bringing the experience to a 2D platformer with insane visuals and characters you’ll just chuckle and shake your head at is awesome. There is still a lot of been-there-done-that here, but the minute-to-minute gameplay is still a whole lot of fun.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: PC
