Blood Dungeon Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 & PC)

Blood Dungeon isn’t a game that likes to cut you a break. Take a split second to catch your breath, in fact, and you’ll come to notice that, regardless of whether or not you think you’ve eliminated every individual in the room, there is always another lurking in the dark. If you put your controller aside for even a moment, then you’ll come to the bitter conclusion that not even the nastiest of fart clouds can save you from eternal damnation. Everything hates you, and no amount of blood phials will ever keep you from falling to the same sorry state. But that’s a rogue-like bullet heaven game for you, in a nutshell — and it honestly couldn’t care less if you live or die.

There’s an atrociously ugly bullet hell here that wants you to feel nauseous. The characters are grotesque, the weapons are bizarre, and just about everything that makes up its blood-addled biome is utterly and unapologetically bonkers. It isn’t a game that’s blessed with classic good looks, but rather, a game that knows of its ugliness and chooses to roll with it. The fact that one of your primary weapons is a poisonous fart sort of says it all, really. But, again, that’s the tone that it tries to set, and it happily embraces it like a true love. Meanwhile, every other soul in the room is barfing at the post-nuclear farts of an energetic wrecking ball.

As I said, Blood Dungeon isn’t a game that wants to be your friend, nor is it one that likes to pepper a series of helping hands along a primrose path to give you a fighting chance. Given its rogue-like structure and randomized weapon wheels, post-session upgrades and mismatched abilities, it essentially does all in its power to drop you in at the deep end, and then force you to learn on the fly whilst it slowly dismantles the world around you. You’ll fart, launch basketballs in all manner of directions, and after so long, begin to learn that there’s more to your life than simply being the brunt of a crude joke with no real punchline.

If you’re a fan of rogue-like bullet hell classics that favor high-octane frills and chaotic action sequences that get your blood pumping and your body sweating bullets, then Blood Dungeon ought to feel like a home away from home for you. Similar in design, it mostly consists of bouncing around in a fit of rage, volleying bullets and projectiles, and collecting blood samples and bone fragments to upgrade passive abilities and weapons. Oh, you’ve definitely seen this one before. Matter of fact, Blood Dungeon is about as close to the mark as you could possibly get. But of course, that isn’t a bad thing. Predictable in some cases, sure — but not conceptually lackluster or overly aggressive in its application.

Lined with a handful of horde-like stages and tough boss battles, Blood Dungeon leans into the cliche with two smoking barrels and an enormous grin on its face. With some effective, albeit nonsensical weapons that range from basketballs to machine guns, the game gives you access to a fully loaded weapon wheel to fool around with. The only downside to this wheel is that, with weapons and upgrades being unconventionally randomized, you never truly know which you’ll wind up with. In some cases, it could be that you need a specific weapon to eliminate a certain threat. Hence, you need to have luck on your side if you plan to stick around till the bitter end. It’s a minor inconvenience, though nothing particularly soul-destroying.

The general purpose of Blood Dungeon is to survive. As each bout hits your doorstep, you must unleash all hell on your enemies, outmaneuver hordes of sprites, and collect blood droplets to further enhance your powers and passive abilities. It’s a simple setup that you would have seen several times before, but it’s also an idea that works as is, without the added frills and unnecessary padding. Simply put, you enter one of six arenas, pepper bullets and projectiles at enemies, and gather enough resources to survive an onslaught, all whilst evading environmental threats, like pools of water, spikes, or deadly traps.

As Blood Dungeon finds a good balance between being a chaotic bullet heaven and a sizable rogue-like platforming game, there’s plenty for you to enjoy here. Even with as few as six arenas to work through, each biome features its own distinct style, obstacles, and challenges for you to navigate. What’s more, as it fosters numerous weapons, abilities and bone-based attributes to unpack and upgrade, it offers a good deal of replay value. Again, it’s an ugly game that’s about as smooth and as sleek as a derelict grotto in a post-apocalyptic wasteland — but that’s partly what sets it apart from its generic siblings.

With a generously sized hub area to tie it all together, Blood Dungeon provides a good spot for you to wipe your feet between battles. With nine characters to unlock, various NPCs to converse with, as well as a variety of arenas, abilities, and charms to experiment with, it always feels as there is something more to find out in the dungeon. Granted, it can take a little while to figure it all out, and the NPCs don’t always provide much food for thought or palpable energy. But that’s just me nitpicking at this point. A few issues aside, Blood Dungeon delivers a thoroughly enjoyable bullet heaven that, while quite challenging at times, packs a weighty punch with all of the elements of a bashful, albeit ugly rogue-like shooter.

Verdict

Blood Dungeon proudly wears its ugliness like a mark of honor as an oddly grotesque, albeit indescribably effective bullet heaven rogue-like shooter that knows how to keep your trigger finger twitching and your backside blowing clouds of toxic chemicals. With tiers of arenas, unconventional weapons and abilities to keep you mindlessly distracted from an unforgiving predicament, Messhof once again delivers a gripping experience that can and will keep you entertained for hours. To echo, it might not be a beautiful thing, but it is a rebellious haymaker that dares to do things a little differently.