Blood Dungeon Review

I was fully ready to hate Blood Dungeon. The playable characters are ugly, the enemies are ugly, the animations are ugly, and it finds itself amidst a genre that’s quickly become so overpopulated that any self-respecting government body would be thinking about a cull. That was my prevailing thought going in…and then I played almost 10 hours on my Steam Deck across the span of two days.

Messhof, the team behind Nidhogg and its sequel, is back to its crudely animated and addictive roots with Blood Dungeon, having most recently dipped into artistic cycling with Wheel World. This shift back into the familiar comes in the form of a Survivor, or bullet heaven as I think we’re calling them now. For those unaware (all two of you), this refers to a semi-automatic action game where your primary focus is moving about an arena, avoiding masses of enemies as your weapons automatically fire on your behalf.

Blood Dungeon ticks the auto-firing box, but it looks to give the genre a little shake-up by introducing a new element: platforming. And I’m not just talking a simple run-and-jump affair – this is the kind of platforming that’ll demand you pay attention and practice. Controlling one of the nine playable wobbly characters, you’ll scramble across every flat surface in sight, avoiding all manner of creatures and projectiles as you do.

Platforming is tight and responsive, so any mistimed leap or misstep can only be attributed to your own skill or impatience. Each of the six unlockable levels comes with its own obstacles and challenges. The Catacombs are your basic fare of corridors and caverns, while the Pit and Corridor provide a looping track that allows for endless runs and split-second decisions to leave a power-up where it is for when you come back around again. Each level is borderline visually identical, save for a few flourishes here and there, so I found myself largely sticking to the loops, but you’ll likely find your favourite and attempt a high score run there.

The hundreds of endearingly wonky enemy knights, ghosts, skulls, centaurs and other unrecognisable abominations will always be making a beeline for your little guy, so arming yourself is important. Each character has a unique starting weapon, ranging from a machine gun or a revolver, through to webs and a whip that looks too much like a tongue. Gathering Blood as a resource, you’ll level up quickly and choose from a random assortment of weapons, weapon upgrades, charms, and spells. Whacky effects like turning enemies into zombies, making them explode upon death, or leaving flaming tracks wherever you walk are fun to experiment with, but you’re almost required to look for specific items if you want to best the dungeon.

Upgrades to reload time, bullet size, and damage, combined with some of the crazier spells and charms, have the potential to make you unstoppable, but I didn’t find the depth in the build craft that I was hoping for. I rarely found success in beating the dungeon’s three bosses without my combo of whip, bouncing ball, and maxed-out enemy slowdown and knockback charms. Some of the weapons and upgrades are goofy as hell and fun to mess around with, but their effectiveness was often lacking.

You’ll die a lot as you find your perfect combo, but falling off the coil has its perks. Depending on your proficiency during the run, you’ll net yourself a score, which is added to an online leaderboard, and some Bones. This secondary resource can be spent back at the hub area to unlock permanent upgrades to things like overall damage, jump height, speed, and weapon slots. Some permanent progression is appreciated, but like the loadout depth, I felt like I hit the ceiling very early. Once I had maxed out a few stats, I didn’t find myself heading back to the kennel very often.

Your enjoyment of Blood Dungeon will live or die on your reaction to its aesthetic. As someone who thoroughly enjoyed Nidhogg’s crude look, I love the off-putting character designs and overly floppy animations here, but not everyone will. It’s also worth mentioning that shit gets really hectic during the latter stages of a run. If your idea of a good time is purposefully overstimulating your senses, boy do I have good news for you.

Final Thoughts

In the most complimentary sense, Blood Dungeon is as close as you can get to an interactive aneurysm. The blotchy, wobbly art style, combined with the overwhelming number of sprites and animations on screen at any given time, will either be amazing or intimidating, depending on your proclivities. Beneath its love-it-or-hate-it aesthetic, Blood Dungeon is a fun take on the Bullet Heaven genre, albeit one that could do with some tighter balancing and a touch more depth in a few key areas.