I have sacrificed many an hour to the altar of Vampire Survivors and its kin. Deep Rock Galactic Survivors, Nimrods, Brotato, TerraTech Legion, Soulstone Survivors. I could go on. So I will, Rogue Genesia, 20 Minutes Till Dawn, Halls of Torment, Swarm Grinder. I’ve even put more time into the Warhammer Survivors demo than I’d care to admit. Many of them follow a similar formula to Poncle’s original with only slight tweaks, and yet I’m still drawn into the loop of dodging about an arena, kiting hordes of enemies as my autofiring weapons soar up a generous power curve.
Blood Dungeon, though, is different. By stretching the familiar mechanics of Vampire Survivors over the skeleton of a platformer, Nidhogg’s creators Messhof have made something delectably different.
As in Vampire Survivors, enemies pour in from the edges of the screen and your character does all the business of fighting them off without your input, firing at whatever bat, rat, or knight in armour gets too close to you. As enemies die, they drop gobbets of XP, and when you hoover up enough of them you’ll level up and get to pick a stat upgrade from a small selection. Upping your fire rate, the number of bullets your gun fires, or how much damage it does.
But in putting all of this into a platformer, keeping out of reach of the horde’s clutches is a much trickier business than most Vampire Survivors-alike. There you largely move into sweeping circles, looking for a gap in the encroaching wave to thread through. Here, you need to pay more attention to your surroundings – is there a ladder you can climb to safety? A hain you can run along to stay above the spinning spike trap? Can you jump off the wall to soar over the bat but not into the feet of the pipe-playing fawn who’s coming down from the top of the screen? By strapping all of these familiar mechanics into a new form means I can’t slip into my old rhythms, it makes for a much more thoughtful game.
Then there’s the look of the thing, which has the aesthetic of a six-year-old let loose in MS Paint and it’s an utter delight. Your character’s walking animation has more the look of a terrified run. They wave their arms about in the air, their mouth panicked and agape in a permascream. Every enemy is similarly slapdash and the world you’re moving through is all chunky platforms, and single colour doors. Shading be damned.
The movement, too, may look simple, but there’s a lot of options to use when escaping enemies. Your single jump can be extended by jumping off walls, and you cling to any wall like Spider-Man, crawling up if you’d rather not fling yourself into open space. You can also grip on to the ceiling and move along it like you’re swinging on monkey bars in a children’s playground.
The Blood Dungeon’s Steam demo only lets you loose on one world, but there’s enough there that I’ve instantly wishlisted it and added ito my internal list of ‘Games you’re allowed to play until you’re staying up until 2am and then have to delete from your library to maintain your health’. It’s right up there with Super Hexagon.
