The Daily Demo: Blood Dungeon masterfully applies platforming to the Survivors formula
Blood Dungeon seems like a masterclass in game design. None of the game makes sense, but everything is so equally ludicrous that blends together. You’d never think that a smoothie with strawberries, bananas, spinach, and kale would be good, but it is. Blood Dungeon is that kind of crazy. And it’s funny, too, so it might be just as healthy.
When I heard of it during Summer Game Fest, I waved off one the developer’s selling point that you can climb on things. The image showing while that was said was a flailing baby character latching on to a gate. It looked like nothing more than Super Mario World—nothing original about that. I must’ve been doing something else because I didn’t see the character climbing on everything. That’s the single-most fascinating thing about the movement.
You could be on a square and crawl down the side of it, then swing from the bottom of it, and climb the opposite side to reach the top. Depending on the surface, you may not need to jump. Considering the jump isn’t all that great anyway, it’s good there’s more then just finding the best route around the top of a surface. It’s the perfect movement system for a game where enemies can fly through walls and mob you from all sides.
It feels like the game is moving faster than it is because the art is constantly wiggling, writhing, bouncing, spinning, and twerking. Even the default character runs with its arms flailing just because it looks silly. Everything else is changing colors and grooving to the beat of whatever is going on like it’s a silent dance party. It livens the pace and strangely isn’t distracting because the color palette is pretty neutral except for you and everything that’s coming after you.
Blood Dungeon is an experiment in how far they can take the craziness. The characters are just as wild. The mature content description on Steam says “Two characters the player can choose to play as are nude.” Yes, one male has its genitals just hanging out. It’s crude silliness, but it totally fits. He climbs and does everything the same, but grunts and lets it all hang while doing it. He also swings a giant sword around his body. Hehe.
The jokes don’t last long once you reach higher levels as the enemies swarm and become bigger and badder. You’re focused on surviving. I wish skillful platforming were a much more necessary way to succeed, but these games have always been about blasting away hordes of enemies in overpowered glory rather than moving through the hordes. In that regard, it’s consistent with other Survivors, where it’s more advantageous to run. But it’s so much more interesting navigating a dungeon in all directions than walking up and down while enemies swarm. There are even timed gates that as you cross them, they shut and you cannot pass until the timer is up, which could be disastrous. In situations like that, Blood Dungeon does demand more compared to other Survivor-likes in terms of movement and spacing, and makes the Survivors concept more engaging.
As more people continue to experiment with Survivor-types, Vampire Survivors may find itself exceedingly outdated in a year or two. Blood Dungeon is certainly making that clock tick faster.