The Besties - Blood Dungeon Takes Us to Bullet Heaven

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

Blood Dungeon is a spectacular evolution of the Vampire Survivors formula. Developer Messhof plops the auto-shooting, upgrade-building bullet-heaven genre into something a bit more strategic and conscious of your time. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the art looks, at first blush, like Spelunky by way of a child’s sketchbook. In the back half of the episode, we chat about what to call these games, and then pick some of our favorites. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Hey, let me ask you guys a question. What is your favorite song from Blood Dungeon? They have names? I'll tell you mine. You have one? You have one? Yeah, my favorite song in Blood Dungeon is someone that's like, Oh, that one's pretty good.

You're talking about Dickwhips. That's called Dickwips. Dickwips is good. I think that is the name of the song. There's also the one that's like, tat-d-d-t-t-t-da-da-da-da-tah. And that one's from the flood level. Yeah, yeah.

That's Dick and Ball Whips, yeah. Dick and Ball Whips is cool. What's the one in the tower? The, oh, the pit level? Yeah. That one's actually, it slows things down a little bit where it's like, boom, boom, chattig-ch-ch-to-boom-chat. Giant dick and ball whips, yeah.

That's a good one, too. Why is that? Can I ask Russ why you keep going back to that well is such a really, such a rich, why you keep going there? Have you ever played a game with Dick Whips before? But guess not. Before Blood Dungeon? I'm starting to think that you wanted to do an intro that was very Dick Whip sort of

centric. You kind of had like an idea coming into it. And I stole it with my drum and bass sort of beat that idea. I'm just saying Dick Whips are a big part of it, not only in the orally, but also visually. You know what I think it is, Griffin? I think it is that you have kind of transported us back to the era of course. to the era of the 90s, and Russ is reverted to his 90s self.

His rude boy kind of era, that is so flattering. He was always jinkling it up. He was always coming down the hallway. He had his nasty boy headphones on. Yeah. And he was saying, oh, and they had to cinch those jinkos way up, dude. And he was like, yo, cheat, you've seen that new movie Clerks? And they were like, yeah, as I saw it.

Yeah. barely fit down the hallway. Barely, he floated when he jumped. My name is Griffin Macro. I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Planton. I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Farshick. Ah, I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the best season. We're talking about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club. And just by listening, you are a member.

This week, we've got a fun one, a weird one. Maybe you have or have not heard of. We've talked about it a bit on this show. It is the new game from Nidhog developer Messoff, and it is called Blood Dungeon. That's a, I mean, objectively rad name for the game. How is that not taken? Blood, I know, right? It sounds like a, like, edgy, like, 1993, like Windows PC game with, like, FMV sequences. Or like a Winap skin. Kirk Cameron, like, fighting demons and stuff. Like, it sounds like. It sounds like. one of those. But no, this is a new game. What is it, Chris? Blood Dungeon is a survivor's like, but this time, rather than just aim in a random direction

and get those numbers up, you're doing something closer to a platform or Spalunky-like. You're jumping through these strange 2D environments that look like they were drawn, fittingly, in the back of a school notebook in the 1990s. That's a good summary of what this game is, and we're going to talk more about it after this short break. man so when I played blood dungeon at summer game fest I was immediately smitten yeah but I was also like there's no way I'm gonna like I mean this is fun for 20 minutes but like I don't know how much longer I can play with it I think I'm like I have like 15 hours at this point I played a lot of blood dungeon yeah a lot I don't know if I'm quite that deep in it but I have played it for for quite a long time I spent a lot of time finishing up Fields of Mystery yeah in the last couple of weeks, but I definitely, when I was not doing that, playing blood dungeon, uh, because it is, as you said, pretty much fun from the jump. Yeah. Pretty much fun from the start. Uh, and it only gets funner. Yeah. But fresh. What pulled you through 15 hours of a survivor's like, or a bullet heaven?

I mean, some people play vampire survivors like 300 hours. So yeah, sure. But those people aren't you, you know, I want to know what, what got you through. You just got you hooked. Um, so I, I, Let me take a step back because I think it relates more into the like nitty gritty of how the game works. And I want to make sure that people have like a clear picture in their mind. This game is made by Messhoff. Messhoff, I think is most known for Nidhog, which is like that indie fencing game where the giant worm eats you at the end of each. And Nidhog too. And Nidhog too ruled.

It was also a worm in that, I believe. Yeah. And they also made Wheelworld, which is a very cool, a bike game. This feels like a return to form. this like freaky-diki 2D art environment, which I immediately found like instantly appealing. Like it does not look like any other game out there. It really stands on the sound.

It's got the same sort of jittery sort of animate. Like nothing is static on screen ever. Everything is always moving all of the time, which is a little bit. You have to learn how to kind of just visually parse the screen if you want to have like any hopes at kind of scaling the sheer cliff face of difficulty that this game presents to you sometimes. And it's worth considering who you're playing as.

So I'm just going to run down very briefly some of the characters that you're playing as in the game. You start as, I believe, his name is Gunman. He just has a gun guy, I think. Gun guy. He has a shirt, and I believe no pants, and he runs around shooting a gun. And then later on, you unlock a large, naked barbarian guy that swings a sword around. And there's the leech who... He's got like a two or three pixel long penis.

that is visible at all times. Well, you can block it. If you're worried from a, you know, if you're a pure, if you're playing at a church. Yeah, if you're at a church, I would be wary. But you can block the nudity.

And then some other guys, there's like Leach, who I like a lot. He has the aforementioned dickwips as his main weapon. Yeah. And so, when eventually you unlock Baby, who's a baby with a magnum.

And all these characters can control very differently and have different, like, jumps and starting powers. and sizes, like there's a guy who's very, very large, so he can't necessarily navigate it through this 2D platforming map super easily. So they all feel very differently. You can scale any wall, like moving around the map is fairly easy because you can climb any wall, hang from any ceiling.

And you're also, because it's a survivor, like, constantly shooting. Like, whatever weapons you have equipped, you are constantly automatically shooting at, you know, the nearest enemy, usually. And then you are leveling up and getting, you know, choosing drafting upgrades, whether it's like upgrades to how much damage your weapon does or how many shots it shoots out or charms that like give you different bonuses, like a shield that regenerates every 30 seconds. One of my favorite perks you can unlock is just bigger bullets. And so the bullets will start at like, oh, you'll increase your bullets like 30% bigger. And then eventually it gets the like 250% bigger and the entire fucking screen is like one big bullet.

Just full of bullets. Yeah. Which is very, very cool. Okay, so that's a lot of preamble. To answer Chris Plant's question, how did I play this game, which ostensibly, if you look at it, looks like a score chase game, which like I like score chase games,

but not enough to play 15 hours in a week. What I ended up doing was playing it similarly to how I play Binding of Isaac, because in this game there's a number of challenges to chase, which in turn yield new unlocks. So if you fully level up, the machine gun in a run that might unlock a new perk or a new weapon, and then suddenly that weapon unlocks something else,

and some of those unlock permanent upgrades in the bone shop that you're giving credits to to, like, permanently upgrade your jump size and things like that. And so that's what ended up, I think, hooking me was just the idea of, like, building this arsenal of potential unlocks and using those different kits to have better success in runs. It's really clever because it keeps you, like, I think the core gameplay of the game is so good and so tight. And when you have a run that is like working well for you,

keeping it going and keeping it alive and continuing to like pull yourself through these like near misses and narrow scrapes just for, you know, five sustained minutes, it's so like thrilling and it feels just so, so good. But sometimes you like have to try and engineer a run and the upgrades that that you get away from, you know, what is optimal or what you usually have found success with because you're trying to do one of these challenges. Like, one of my favorites, it's really clever, is you just have to be in a state of free fall for like five seconds and trying to figure out like, okay, where can I go that I can like actually pull this off? It really gives you a lot to kind of sink your teeth into rather than just like grinding out the bone currency that you need to get the permanent upgrades. Yeah.

Which, which I know Chris is not, when we have talked about Survivor likes in the past, I know that has been a complaint of yours of feeling like, well, I got to play this much so I can start having fun with it. And, you know, I have to grind out these upgrades? Do you, do you, have you felt that way playing Blood Dungeons? I think this game is pretty damn brilliant. At solving for the many problems I have with the Bullet Heaven or Survivors likes, whatever we want to call them. Because you're right. My problem is I feel like my time is being in. intentionally wasted. I feel like I have very little control over what the game is. And I feel like

it's like a dopamine gambling. Like, I'm going to play a run and hopefully I get a really cool build, and that's going to set off all my dopamine. And I realize most of these games have a bit more skill than that. There is more say in it than that, but it just wasn't working for me. What I like about this game is, I feel like it's respecting my time and it is giving me actual goals that I can chase from run to run. So the first bit is of those 15 hours at Fresh Played, there's probably about five or six hours that I think is just this game. If you want to spend $8 to $10,000 however much it's on sale for right now, you can get a great six-hour game where you beat the first boss in every level and you unlock all the levels and you unlock the first round of all of the upgrades that you can do. And that feels like a very complete game and it moves very fast. I thought I was done.

I genuinely, that's why I dropped it and was like, well, I'll go back to Fields and Mystery because I guess I've done. And then I found the character who's like, and here's a big book of things you can unlock. And I was like, Jesus Christ, there's like 400 of these things. And then it gives you really two directions that you can go. You can do that character unlock thing or you can do the score chasing thing. And really you're going to end up kind of doing them together if you want to accomplish either goal. And I think that is also really clever because it's like, hey, if you had a great time, great. You do not have to keep playing this game forever.

It is not meant to just be kind of this like addiction loop that you use to, like, distract you from reality. Which those have value to. Don't get me wrong. I just struggle with them. Yeah. That I felt like most of the time when I sat down, I was making progress towards something in the game to unlock some new cool thing to see. And I was doing it with like intentionality. That really worked with me.

And then the unlocks themselves are just fucking sick. Like, you mentioned the giant bullet fresh. There's, like, basketballs or volleyball you can unlock. Dude, it's the most, that's an auto pick for me 100% of the time. If I get the bounce, I think is what it's called. Absolutely. Every time. There's turrets that fire lasers that then will ricochet across the world.

It is a game where you feel truly rewarded, even though there are those upgrades that are, hey, we're going to reduce reload time from one point. 0.7 seconds to 1.3. Oh, God, those are so good, though. I always reduce very reload time. It makes so many more bullets on the screen. It's great. There's a, the build crafty sort of on the fly stuff.

I use that term kind of lightly, right? Because in this genre, it's a temporary thing. You die. You lose all of the upgrades you start again, right? You don't lose the permanent bone upgrades, which are like, you know, you get more blood, which is what you used to level up. Or you can unlock, you can use more weapons at once, right? Like, that stuff is permanent.

But you start to draft things and like I have had so many different builds where I've been like, hey, I wonder if I can try this. For instance, there is a shield that you can get, like I mentioned earlier, that you can take a hit and it doesn't drain a heart and it regenerates after 30 seconds. And then there is an upgrade called limit break that you get that when you take damage, when you take a hit, it like reduces your cool downs by like 90%. And so you just turn into this like supernova of bullets. Using those two together, I realized like, oh, shit, like, if there's a big group of enemies that I'm, you know, struggling to take out quickly enough and they're shooting bullets at me and I'm so, I can just jump into them intentionally, right into the guts of them, take that, you know, shield break and then the limit break will, like, shred through all of them. There's so many different ways that, like, I have found to synergize stuff kind of on the fly. I think that stuff's really great. I think what really works for this game is just the act of.

of platforming in the context of a bullet heaven game. Because it is so much more, I love this genre. I've played so much like Holes of Torment and Brotato and like all the classics. But they're not like, they're not super challenging. It can get hard when there's lots of enemies on the screen and then you have to like avoid them. But it's not like, what you are doing in this game, I think is inherently much more engaged. Like it requires a level of engagement and activity and like millisecond by millisecond kind of decision making that it achieves because you are also, you know, working on this.

You're working against gravity. You're like working with an additional axis than most other top down ones. The previous top of the crop for me was deproch galactic survivor, which had an understanding that on top of all of this, you should be able to have some strategy. and the way that you would burrow through caverns to create these choke points in the game gave you something to do. It turned the movement into the strategy of the game. And the same thing is happening here. And yet we talked about the fact that you can climb on any wall and climb on the ceiling. And there are these like chain link fences that allow you to kind of almost move vertically and horizontally as you want.

But then the level designs themselves are creating different strategies. The pit or the tower, as I called it, creates this thing where you are motivated to pick weapons that are going to rain fire down below you and then pick a perk that increases a 50% damage to any time you have the high ground over your enemies. So suddenly all these different perks have different advantages if you're in a vertical level or if you're in a horizontal level or there are levels where you can go underwater but you have to actually surface. to catch your breath after a certain amount of time or find an air bubble like Sonic. And these things create like gameplay. Like things that feel like skill-based challenges? I mean, they create choice in your navigation

beyond just avoid the guys. They give you options where, let's say I'm using the like bouncy ball perk. I'll go into a corner where I know I'm going to get a ton of ricochets and basically turn that entire corner into like a death zone, whereas if I'm using something more long range, maybe I won't do that because it limits my mobility.

So that, it seems like such a minor difference, but that extra added interactivity makes me feel much more in control of the run. It adds some thrills. Like water, drowning in video games is one of my least favorite things. It's super annoying. The trick here is the water just feels like anything else that you're moving around, basically.

But you have that countdown time. And when you have a swarm of enemies coming at you and you think, you know what, I bet I can go underwater to dodge it. But if they get above me, I can't surface. Yeah. And not get out. Like that choice that you have to make, it feels, it's silly to say for a game that looks like this, feels very dramatic. Yeah. It does.

And especially when you get into like flow state, which I feel like happens all the time while I'm playing this game where there's a million enemies on. screen, a million bullets on screen, and I am weaving between them, just getting away by the skin of my teeth. Like, it's so good. It feels so, so, so good. I think the game has a lot of stuff going for it. I think that there's a lot of stuff I would change about the game as well. The sort of first and biggest sort of thing for me is like all of these different unlocks,

it is very clumsy how you like can look at what unlocks you have to do. There's like two different NPCs you can talk to and one's like, here's all the weapons you can unlock and one's like, here's all the challenges, and one's like, here's the weapons and the challenges. And you can't just like press start or like, you know, pin them or like do anything to check your progress. And the game is weirdly cagey about certain unlocks where it like just won't tell you. But it'll just be like, oh, I don't know.

And that's fine for a couple. them, but like a lot of them are locked off. And knowing what you're chasing, I think, makes a big difference. And just knowing, like, in the middle of a run, how close you are to completing a certain challenge would be nice. But, yeah, there's just, like, a lot of ferrying back and forth between NPCs to figure out what's going on. There's so many unlocks, too, right?

That, like, even just, like, finding the one that you were looking at earlier, like, it's, it is, I don't know, they have so much there mechanically. and I don't know that they did quite enough interface-wise, I guess, to keep it parsable. What do you think is the expectation for a game like this? Because so many other survivors likes or bullet heavens, whatever we want to call them, come out at the $10 or less price point. And then it seems like the expectation is, well, they're going to update this. Like we're going to get more and more of this. They're going to refine the UI.

They're going to refine the goaling. They're going to add more stuff. Do you think that is the same for a game like this? I think, look, if the game sells a million copies or whatever, it does really well, I think it's very easy for me to see how they could update this in a number of different ways to, like, keep growing that audience. I think if it doesn't sell enough copies to justify continued updates, this feels like a very whole experience. That granted, there are some edges that I would like, will, like, sand it off, whatever. but largely like, so in that way, like, I think it's a relatively low-risk project that clearly, I think this feels very consistent with the studio's past games.

So in that way, like, it's kind of an ideal scenario where I don't imagine that they're, they need for this game to hit for it to save Messhoff as an organization. Right, yeah. Obviously it'd be nice, but like, you know, I think we'll just see how it does. I think the game's going to do quite well I think that like I love Nidhog I think Nidhog's really fun when I you know

had like groups of local friends that I played games with like I feel like Chris when like we lived in Austin together like we fucked around with Nidhog sometimes with groups of friends because it was such a fun game but it was also like

really a multiplayer like a local multiplayer game and that is like limiting the audience of like who's realistically gonna buy it I think anyone can play this game and have a pretty fucking great with it. So I do think that it's geared

to do well. I hope they continue supporting it, not just with like expanding the stuff that is available, but like maybe tweaking the stuff that is there. Because my other big complaint about the game is just, it feels kind of unbalanced. Like some of the weapons are incredible, like the bouncy ball one, like

that is a run winner if you can find it. And some of the weapons are like so, so bad. But same with the upgrades. Like there's a lot of cruffed in the upgrades, I think, of just like if it pops up and takes up one of the spots that you're choosing from, it's like, oh, fuck. Like, I'm not going to, I don't care about that one. It doesn't do anything. Like, some of that stuff, it feels like they could, they could, like, mathematically

maybe tweak to improve. Yeah, I did get the sense that as you get deeper, I was having a lot more success, being more active about re-rolling rewards when I leveled up. if I felt like there wasn't anything of value in this. And I'm sure some of the bad ones, there's ways to make them good, but it would require so many items to like synergize for it to happen.

So I agree with you. I think some of it just needs some tweaking for or against. But largely, I mean, out of the gate, it's a pretty fucking fun game. I've just really enjoyed it. And it's the sort of game that, you know, we've been talking about handhelds being able to run Steam games,

perfect for like a small handheld device. I haven't tried it, but I'd imagine. Did you try it on your Einthor? Was it very good? It ran so well. Silky smooth. Weirdly, one of the few games that shows up is not confirmed as supported, but yeah, I played most of the game on nine.

Yeah, and that's great. I mean, you know, I think more and more we're going to see these smaller releases that are, again, not as risky to put out, but we'll find. a home among either a dedicated fan base or maybe this is sort of game you watch video of like if you haven't seen what the game looks like in person to take two seconds watch a trailer because i think it immediately sells itself and either it's your jam or it's not i know some people find the art a little off-putting but i thought it was fantastic i want to i want to record my gameplay i've had moments playing it where i've been like man i bet that looked fucking cool like i bet that looked really impressive i wish i could see that i wish i could watch that again I do think it's a game that like watching someone who is like actually very good at the game would would look pretty bonkers. Yeah, I had an absurd combo with like explosions and then 50 explosions are 50% bigger and then they're just every time you hit with the whip it explodes and it just got absurd and really satisfying. A cool fucking game.

It is, let me check. It is $8.49. Oh my God. Now. So that's a, that's great. Just get this fucking. On Switch is, well, it's probably on other consoles, but Switch seems like a very good platform for it as well. It's 8999 on the Nintendo Switch.

Oh my God. I don't know. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know how it's going to. That's Blood Dungeon. Let's take a quick break and talk a little bit more about this genre and maybe decide on a fucking name for it so that we don't have to continue saying four different things mixed all together. I like bullet heaven. I like it.

I like bullet heaven. I think that's a good name. Where did it come? Okay, let me through this, please. What was the origin? I mean, it's the opposite of a bullet hell, right? In bullet hell, you're a little guy, and you're getting 100,000 bullets shot at you, and you've got to go between them and get away from it.

But in a bullet heaven game, you're the thing shooting a million billion bullets. You're being given rewards constantly. And you're being given rewards constantly for it. I think that's kind of the opposite. I mean, it's better than being called bullet hells, which was happening for a while. It's not a bullet. right like i don't think of that that term has such a limited application to to me i think of like vertically oriented spaceship games maybe not spaceship every time but i don't know that that genre feels

so set in stone and has been since the 80s or whatever i do think that this is a completely different beast that does not feel like that and the key difference as well is whereas in a schmup you are generally the weakest thing on the screen. Like one day it will usually kill you. Whereas in these games, bullet heavens, if you will, the strongest thing on the screen by like a mile. You're the boss.

You're the boss. Yeah. Yeah. So what are we, what are we, what's our highlights of this genre? Because there's so many different versions of this. Yeah. So I will say, I still really like vampire survivors,

specifically on mobile. It's not a game that I play on PC anymore. or console, whatever. I think on mobile, because it's relatively simplistic and because it runs really well on even a mobile phone, and it doesn't require

a very complicated input, I think it still holds up really strongly. I don't know that it's my favorite, but definitely worth considering, especially since it's free on mobile devices, like crazy. Yeah, my only thing

that has kind of soured my relationship with Vampire Survivor, a game I've played so, so much, is I've never been able to really get into any of the DLC. And I don't really have a great reason why. The first one that dropped had like an insane difficulty spike right at the very beginning that I thought like, well, this is anti-fun. And some of the other ones I've tried.

I don't know. It's it is the OG, I think. Well, actually I guess Survivor.com is maybe, I always forget which one was the original. but I feel like I have enjoyed a lot more games. Like Halls of Torment, I think is my gold standard. Yeah. I love the Halls of Torment. It looks like, you know, old school Diablo,

different character classes that you are unlocking. But then there's like a proper loot system in the game. A lot of the kind of like, you know, loot reward systems are very ARPG kind of, you know, inspired stuff like your like your Diablo's. And I just think that they did such a great fusion of that and just a really cool looking game. And I played that one quite a lot.

Yeah, I honestly am hankering. I have been hankering to return and start a new run. I love Hals of Tournament. It does the thing that we were talking about about tracking challenges really well. Like you always know what you're chasing, which I think is very smart. My only nag on whole thing,

of Tormant, and honestly, a number of the games we'll probably talk about that I think Blood Dungeons solves is, I don't think runs should be nearly as long as they tend to be in a lot of these games. 30 minutes is crazy. It could take 45 minutes to finish a run in Hals of Tormant, which is nuts. Yeah. And oftentimes they don't have saved mid run and things like that. So that's my only downside, but I love the, like, permanent build crafting stuff in Hals of Tournament. I think it's so smart and definitely would love to see more. games do that. I mentioned Deep Rock Galactic Survivor. There's a few other things I love about this

game. One, it is a quintessential example of a game that just kept growing. That came out strong and has just gotten better. In April, there was an expansion that added a new class where you basically are a dude driving a bulldozer through the environment. Wonderful. But I think what's so special about it in particular is it feels both like a bullet heaven and like kind of like a demake of the deep rock galactic formula it really keeps a lot of what that game does well and that can be aesthetically that you are in these very dark environments and basically anything that has light is good you want to be moving towards that it has the actual mining elements from that game and you're incentivized to mind both to get some resources and also to create these chokepoint paths.

And I think the visual fidelity of it just looks amazing. Because Vampire Survivors was the first to really break big on this, I think they aren't always the most beautiful games. Ironically, Blood Dungeon intentionally goes so far into the not beautiful direction that it becomes beautiful. But Deep Rock Galactic Survivor just looks nice. When you're in the center of a dark room and you have what looks like zombie hordes, even though they're all bugs, just closing down on you. Sick.

Love it. Video games. I love Brotato as well. I'm a big Brotato supporter. I would say Brotato, he's a lot closer to vampire survivors in how temperateau. kind of all of your build stuff is. But the game is, for one thing, a lot faster. I think the rounds are much shorter than a Halls of Torment or a vampire survivor.

You are drafting, you know, upgrades between levels and when you level up and you can carry six weapons at a time that are on screen that your little potato man is carrying, which is very cool. And they could be six different weapons, or you could equip six slingshots and you could then try to just build a build entirely around like getting crits with slingshots or whatever. For as silly as the game looks, it is, there is a community of like build crafters out there for Brotato that is still like, still out there coming up with new shit. And I always really enjoyed going online and seeing like, how can I make things work with like the brawler? How can I make things work with the engineer class? What do I need to be drafting?

And then, you know, seeing some stuff that people have done that is absolutely fucking busted and then taking that back into the game and, you know, trying to make some more progress with it. I realize that's probably not everyone's idea of fun. But for me, I just, the feel and speed of Brotato and the, like, the complexity of, like, the builds, I always, I don't know, I got stuck in to Brotato. rotate a pretty pretty deep yeah yeah um i played a lot of megabonk which i quite enjoyed um this was the third person uh bullet heaven i'm just going to start using it we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna good it's gonna go yeah feel it out third person bullet heaven uh where you can play as like a skateboarding skeleton or like a wizard fox and things like that and i think it made this smart decision of even though it is third person even though it is three d

keeping the visuals very, very simplistic to the point where you can still have thousands of things on screen and the game doesn't like die on you. And in that way, I thought it was really strong. It looks great. It looks like a PS1 game, like EverQuest kind of. Yeah, it does. Polygonal kind of teaser. Yeah, I like the style of it a lot. It didn't necessarily grab me long term.

I think I played it very intensely for like three or four days. I'm not sure why that is or whether new updates. I mean, I have I have thoughts. I feel, I loved Megabonk. I love the aesthetic of it. And just the, it was a game about momentum, right? So, like, it was all about staying ahead of the pack of enemies that were behind you. The jumps were very kind of, like, floaty because you were supposed to land on a, you know, a ramp and then slide down it to pick up more speed and just, like, keep your momentum going.

You're unlocking, like, extra jumps that you get in midair. and there's so much stuff scattered around the map to help you out and get you stronger so you can move on to the next level. I think that the game had a lot of structural issues in terms of progression. Like you had to finish a level and then finish the run after beating that first level before it would let you unlock the second level. So then you would have to go in and play that level. Like that stuff felt really clumsy.

And also a lot of the unlocks in that game were super grinding, super duper duper, duper grinding. Like, you want me to get 15,000 kills as this character to, like, unlock this upgrade? I've been playing for 10 hours, mostly as this character, and I've got, like, I'm not even halfway there. Like, that stuff felt very, yeah, I felt like it was a little bit too stingy with the stuff that it was giving to you. Also, with the four days, as long as the game can keep its price low. Yeah. When it comes to mind, for me, is Vital Shell is,

I start to treat these like idle games, right? Like, as long as I can pull myself away from them, I can enjoy that time. If what I need is just a distraction and a break, it does that. I think the challenge is, many of them are dopamine, you know, machines and it can be hard to pull yourself away, even when you know that you're not having the best time. I will, I want to shout out Vital Shell because I think. it in Megabonk get at something these games can do really well, which is just be a little snack, a little potato chip of a genre or an aesthetic that you love and crave and maybe have not gotten enough of lately.

So Vital Shell, that is the one that truly looks like it could run on the PlayStation 1, extremely low poly, and you play basically as an armored core mec fighting fantasy polygonal shapes. They're almost hard to make out. And yeah, I want that. I would love a PlayStation 1 Armored Court game. I'm buying this game right fucking now. I don't know how I miss this.

This looks great. Yeah, it's great, right? I don't think we did. Maybe you mentioned it. It might have been an honorable mentions. But yeah, it's six bucks. And it was what I needed for a couple of days. And then I put it down.

And that was the last I thought about it until now. but I really enjoy it while I was playing it. This game is $5.39. Get in there. It's hard to regret. Crazy. The last thing I want to call out, just from a historical standpoint, I do not think this is the best bullet heaven ever made,

but the first one that I ever played was called Crimson Land, and it came out in like the early to mid-2000s. And it was a top-down, kind of like an aliens vibe to it. You're fighting bugs. and you would level up and you'd get perks, pass abilities, whatever, and it would increase your rate of fire or your spreadsheet or weapons or whatever it was. Like, you can see the DNA in this game in later vampire survivors games. I'd be curious to know if anything predates this,

if there's any examples of like other bullet heaven games before Crimson Land, right in the comments if you know of anything before this. but this is the one that I always think of when I think about these sorts of games. It's just like, I think the strength of this genre is they're so kind of like mechanically like progression focused and if a game can do that well,

that's like some of my favorite shit in games. I think the reason that it is such a, I don't know, has become such a sort of cultural touchstone for video games as a whole is you mentioned that Vital Shell game and then I just bought it for $5.39, and then I downloaded it in a second and a half. Like, the games are so little,

but they have such a huge footprint in terms of, like, how much you can get out of them. Like, there's, it really is a unique exchange rate, I will say. No, it's a great genre, and I agree. Like, as we see more of these handhelds coming out that could potentially run Steam, like, I think they're, they're only going to become more popular. Because the one thing,

downside of playing on mobile, these games on mobile is just like, from an input standpoint, like touch is never going to feel as good as having a controller. Well, and also you're dealing with some, like, with some of these games,

like mobile bullshit, right? I played a lot of Archie Roe one or two, I can't remember. Which sucks, because I played a lot of it. And it's, it is fun, but it is very difficult

for a game genre like this that is so built around its progression to feel like, well, this would be going better if I dropped 20 bucks here. I don't know, a little bit of that. I mean, props to vampire survivors for being not only free, but like incredibly generous with what they give you for, like, you really do not need to spend money at all or even watch the ads at all to do well and have a ton of time in that game. Yeah. Hey, I know that we have other stuff to talk about before we wrap up the show,

but there was a really important announcement out of Gamescom that I think one Griffin McElroy is going to care about. So I wanted to make sure that he had a chance to see this before we go any further. Griffin, did you click the link that I just sent over to you? All right. You sent me a YouTube link. Let's see. It's happening right now. Stage tour.

I'm watching Jeff Keely and he's talking about, oh, damn. Oh, what does that game look like? Well, it's not, I mean, it can't possibly be harmonics because they're not around. It does look like Guitar Hero, though, holy shit. Could it be Red Octane Games? Oh, my God. No way. Coming back from the dead to bring back the guitar hero experience with an actual plastic guitar that you can buy now.

And the year of Our Lord, 2026 or 27, whatever this comes out. Yes. It is... So it's just Guitar Hero. It's just Guitar Hero. And Red Octane, for what it's worth, so Red Octane before Harmonix, kind of launched the Guitar Hero series, and then they basically got shutter... They became bought by Activision, which later shut it down in 2010. And then in 2025, they started a brand new studio called Red Octane Games, which is now making this game.

And we got the, we got what you to expect. So it's drums also? Is it just, is it drums also and like singing and shit? Or is it just guitar? Is it like full band? I have no idea. I don't know. I think it's, I think it's just guitar.

They're really just showing guitar. No, there's a karaoke mode. It's got everything, apparently. This trailer is only showing off the guitar bit, but then they'll show like drums. And so now I'm confused. Yeah. Here's the thing. Here's what you need to know.

The important stuff. We got the chili peppers. We got slivars. We also have baby metal in here. We got Blink 182, Fall Out Boy. Weedis, we've got the teenage dirtbag itself back in video games. We've got Olivia Rodriguez. They are going for.

They really live all in. So it's not called Guitar Hero at all. No. It's called Stage Tour. Activision owns Guitar Heroes, so they can't. Well, that's crazy because it's a guitar hero. Like, it's crazy. It's a guitar hero.

It also won't. But it does have drawings. drums and it does have a mic. So you're right. There is a karaoke mode. So, I mean, it's basically rock band, I guess. I guess so. It's coming this year.

It's coming in December. Hey, I'm all about it, man. I mean, the last attempt to revive Guitar Hero, was that Guitar Hero live? Yeah. Yeah. God, I can't believe I remember that. That was 11 years ago. Oh, my God.

And that was like a cool idea of like a games as service version of Guitar Hero, but it really fell apart before it really got off the ground. This looks like Guitar Hero, man. I'm very excited for this. Absolutely. Yeah, could be good. Yeah. We have some reader mail before we wrap.

Some of us, actually all of us, have been playing Big Walk. And Admin Chobb wrote in to say, if you guys love the landscapes and Big Walk, you should definitely do the real thing. The game is a faithful representation of the Australian bush, which makes sense, house houses in Australia. They're encouraging us to do a live show on Australia as well. As more and more Australian Indies find worldwide success, I'm excited to see people discover sides of our country

that aren't just Crocodile Dundee, Hugh Jackman, or putting shrimp on Barbies. There's nothing wrong with that stuff either. No, it's great. Yahoo Sirius, loved him. Yeah. Hopefully didn't get canceled. But I didn't know that this was an accurate representation

of any kind of real. It feels so misty to me, like an island full of these colorful puzzles and stuff. Yeah, I was saying when I first played it, it reminded me of that open-air museum in Hacone, Japan. Yeah, did you go to that? Yeah, I actually went with that, which was fantastic. That's like my favorite single place on Earth, I think, is that place. Yeah, but I do think the Big Walk map is inspired by a specific national forest in Australia. Okay.

It's just because it's so far from us that we're always like, hey, did you know that Australia and New Zealand are like the most beautiful places on Earth? We only get reminded whenever it pops up in our pop media. Oh, that's known. That is a known quantity. Well, Australia didn't get quite as much of the good PR from the Lord of the Riggs movies, but yeah. No, no, it didn't. It didn't. But it has the Basel-Lerman effect, you know.

Yeah, sure. Let's not write them off. Yeah. It sounds like it's a real-world national park in Victoria called Will. Wilson's Promotory National Park. Oh, that's cool. And so if you want to, you know, have some big walk fun, maybe be careful. Don't just fall off cliffs.

There's probably fall damage in your life, so be careful out there. But it sounds pretty cool. We have another letter. This one comes from Bass Toad, Base Toad. I always forget how to say it. They put Sonic in Fortnite and he looks like shit. Oh, man, I didn't see. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I am not wrong here. Frush has been sending me all the sonic stuff. And he's like, here you go, Little Piggy. Just open your mouth. You like your Sonic shit. And I'm like, no, I actually, Sonic fans have very refined palettes when it comes to this thing.

We have expectations. And you can't just do this to us. You can't make a human, a lanky human with a sonic head and call it a Sonic. And then, you know what, Frush tells me? He goes, well, it's not technically a Sonic. So they can do whatever they want. And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean?

It's not technically a song. It's a robot. Okay, so they made Fortnite and Sega made a comic book. Disgusting. And in the comic book, the lore is revealed that the real Sonic and Knuckles, et cetera, Shadow, sent robot versions of Sonic, Knuckles, and Shadow into the world of Fortnite. I'm sorry. No.

We have robot versions of Sonic and Knuckles and Tales and the gang. We have Metal Sonic already. This is not Metal Sonic. This is a different robotic Sonic that just looks exactly like Sonic except with human proportions. I think it feels like something that maybe Sega was like we can't have Sonic the Hedgehog with a gun. Only Shadow can use guns. So this was there. Let's stretch him out so he looks like an adult man in a Halloween costume.

I wonder if it's the opposite. I wonder I agreed with Fresh at first. And now I wonder if they just saw the designs and they're like, nope. And then Fortnite was like, this is the best we can do. And they're like, call him a robot or something. Sure. Like this is. There's a certain height of Sonic the Hedgehog that you can reach and a certain amount of

accessorizing that you can do with Sonic the Hedgehog that makes him look now nude in an inappropriate way. Yeah. If you see a little hedgehog scurrying along the ground and he's not wearing any clothes, that's fine. If you see a little two-foot tall Hedgehog man and he's got on red shoes and he's got kind of a cute little round belly, that's fine. If this is a six foot tall Sonic the Hedgehog with human proportions and he's got shoulder pads and a belt and and anklets and boots but no pants. Now we're in dangerous territory. We're in choppy fucking water. It doesn't help.

He has a streaker energy to him too. Like you know that if you took Sonic to a baseball game, he's going to go out there. He's going to hit the field. Yeah. Sonic is standing next to James Headfield. field of Metallica and it's not a good look. It's not a great look. He's got his hands on his hips and he's thrusting his hips forward.

Yeah. And it's like, put some fucking pants on me. Like, I'm sorry that, but you've crossed the threshold. You need, now you need pants, Sonic. Now I will. It's like when they gave Sonic a scarf in that, in that one Sonic TV show. And then it was like, that's weird. Why does he have some clothes on?

Where's his pants? His neck is cold. I guess so. I will say they did a very good job on Eggman slash Dr. Robot. Nick. That skin is basically fantastic. He's a man. He's a person. He's a guy. They also have tails in the game as a sidekick and tails has proper tails proportions. Not a robot. You know, cute little tails follows you around and flies around.

So they know how to do it properly. But I think they were like, oh, fuck, how are they going to make Sabrina Carpenter and Sonic the same height? And this is what they came up with. So not idea. All right. You picked two people who are actually about the same size. as far as I can travel. I do think you. Yeah. We've been playing anything else. Any honorable mentions we want to get around to?

Blue prints is a game about a house. Yeah. Here's my... I'm going to give you know, here's my hot take, and I might feel differently. But hot take is, I think,

everything, I'm going to keep this spoiler-free, but everything through the sanctum doors of blueprints, 10 out of 10, unreservedly, the best game I've maybe ever played. I think everything after that is like eight out of ten. Not as good.

Okay. Interesting. Not as good. Gosh, that's interesting. Mostly because I think a lot of the late game stuff railroads you into very small number of puzzles where when I was drowning in like other things to chase, I was having much more fun. Whereas here I'm like, well, we're going to be here for a while. It's like running into a boss in Dark Souls and you're like, well, I better learn it. Yeah. I'm still enjoying the game.

I'm still going to see it through, but I will say like, it's hard. I'm not really complaining because it took 100 hours to get to that point anyway. But like once I was at that point, it feels like maybe they went a little too far.

And maybe they were targeting the real major sickos and should have given me more of an off ramp at some point. Sure. That's, I mean, there are plenty of end.

I think there's plenty of off ramps in the game. Sure. That is when I, That is when it became a much more collaborative exercise for me. That is when I stopped kind of being as precious about spoilers and started like looking for cryptic hints to kind of give me a boost. Yeah. Otherwise, the last few puzzles in that game are so bonkers that without some sort of crowdsourcing, I do not know how I would have, if I would have ever done them. Y'all, you got to fit in Shin-chan, Shiro in the Coltown before the end of the same.

summer. You got that. You got that. Shinchan Shiro in the Coal Town is basically the latest in the Boko No Natsu Yasumi series. Got it. I think the best way of thinking of it, which is the series of games where you just go to a small town in Japan and enjoy the summer and collect bugs.

Most of those games did not come out to the U.S. officially, except for Shin-chan. Two Shin-chan games, inspired by the comic book by the cute little character Shin Chan who likes to show is Tushy have come out in the States. They are a little bit more gaming than Boko Nozegasamy or my summer vacation. Like you actually have stuff to do. But Shin Chan, Shirin the Cold Town, that's the second one. It came out in 2024. I had been avoiding for a while because, one, not a big Shin Chan person.

I don't need to see that little kid shaking his tush all the time. And two, the idea of like a coal town, that doesn't fulfill my wanting to take a summer vacation. sounds yucky and dirty and depressing. And let me tell you, no, I was completely wrong. It is some great chill-out summer vibes. You do go to a coal town, but is this basically like a jibly theme park version of a cold town? It's absolutely delightful.

It runs on the AY and Thor and has been a great bedtime cool-down game. But, yeah, it really really. Really, if you are looking for cozy games that are truly cozy, where the expectations are to actually just hang out, collect some bugs, watch as the day turns from morning to afternoon tonight, and is rendered in these, like, the original Resident Evil way, where it's the beautiful preset backgrounds with your character moving around them in really distinct camera angles. this is it. You can go play the game right now. Hey, is this the same team that did Attack of the Friday Monsters? So I actually don't know if Cold Town is, but the one that did, maybe it is, because I believe the one that did the Chin Chan before this was the same team. Okay, so it was designed by Kazayabe, who I guess created the Boku-Nazu Yasumi series.

Yes. Okay. I love that game. So good. I finish sort of my first year of Fields of Mystery and finish the kind of like big minds storyline and have in a similar fashion, I think, finished my time playing Fields of Mistria, which I did enjoy, but I don't know. I kind of, it kind of just reinforced a lot of the stuff I said about the game in the episode that we. did about it. I found the resolution of the story

to be not so great. Not that that's ever been like the strongest suit of this genre necessarily. And yeah, I don't know that there's a whole lot more

to say about it. I enjoyed playing Fields of Mystery but I don't think it's going to leave as big of an impact on me as a Stardue or a lot of other cozy games. It does make me wonder if it's whatever

one of these, you played obsessively first. Sure. Oh, absolutely, right? This could be very much a case of like, you know, back in the day when there were lots of MMOs, it was like, well, I played wow. So, like, I can't go and join Wild Star or whatever. Another game I've been playing is that my five-year-old has discovered geometry dash,

you know, this fucking game? That's just the jumping one, right? It's just a jumping one to music. Yeah. It's just jumping to music and avoiding spikes, and it's hard as fuck. Despite the name not Educated. No, not at all. It is wild this game because it, I feel like I played it, you know, it's such an old game. I feel like I played it back when it was just like, there's techno music and you're jumping over things and, you know, sometimes there's like a little gate and now you're flying a ship and you have to dodge stuff and the levels are like, you have to play them perfectly, basically. There's like a practice mode where you can set checkpoints, but for the most part, if you want to like unlock stuff and, you know, progress, then you've got to just do a whole run and not die and it takes a million attempts.

And that is, I would say, incompatible to being five years old. So there's a lot of like, hey, dad, beat this level for me. And I'll sit down and just as I start to get in a flow state, he'll be like, I want it back now. It's like, ah, I only had five attempts. You've got to let me really, I'm not going to beat this one unless you let me really grind in there. But they've added a ton of shit to that game. it's a whole, you can, like, make your own levels. And some of the stuff people have done with the creation tools are like bonkers.

It reminds me of Little Big Planet when people would make like turn-based RPGs. It's like, how did you do that? Yeah. And I don't know. I think it's cool. Music's great. I think it's free. I don't know.

But my kid's been wanting to play Steamworld Dig and it's a similar situation where we'll be like deep in a tunnel loaded for bear with a giant fucking bag of gems. And I'd be like, my turn. from directly into like a giant bug that eats us and it's hard hard to turn that off it's hard thank you so much for listening

to our show the besties hey we got a live show coming up in October it's closing in it's closing in we're gonna have some dope

shit going on there we're also going to have very cool merch that we were making specific for the live show so that's going to be awesome bit.el.l.combees on Broadway get your tickets now

we're coming to New York City October 9 October 9th, Friday, October 9th in New York City at the town hall, which is a very cool venue, historic venue. Roger Daltry of the Who is playing like two weeks before our live show at the same venue. So keep that in mind. If you enjoy this show, we got a Patreon over at patreon.com slash the besties. You can support this program and listen in to bonus episodes of the Resties and our bonus monthly bracket episodes where we, Take a guest and we do like, you know, a silly bracket.

Like, who would be the best video game roommate or which game has the most delicious looking video game food? Atrium.com slash the besties is where you can go to sign up for that. Please support us. You're allowed to say that Dotry is opening for us and like kind of some thing. I think we can't say that. Yeah. Legally a capacity. Yeah. Chronologically. Next week, we're doing the blood of Don Walker, a game that I can't keep the next. Sounds straight.

Yeah, I really... I've called it the dawn of Blood Walker more times than I can count. The new game from... Oh, what's the team? It's called Rebel Wolves is the name of the team, but it's former Witcher developers basically making...

Like a vampire, actually. Very similar to the Witcher game. Sure. So if you like the Witcher, keep an eye out. Like vampires. And vampires. You are a vampire.

Yes. You are the Dawn Walker, yes. Maybe you won't like it if you're a vampire. Maybe. I will say they don't get a rosy reputation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not very nice in this game. Blood of Dawn Walker, next week,

join us for that again and every week. Please hear on the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties!