Blood Dungeon PC (Build 25023610)

Created by the team behind Nidhogg, Blood Dungeon is a fast-paced 2D platforming autoshooter where waves of monsters are waiting around every corner. Fight through them, collect Blood, gold, and bones, and use what you gather to make each run stronger. The big question is simple: can the Blood Dungeon be conquered?

Running and jumping are only part of the challenge. Enemies fill the screen, so dodging matters just as much as attacking. Climb ladders, move across grates, swing along chains, and use walls and ceilings to your advantage. Even sections filled with water become part of the movement system, giving the arenas plenty of ways to get around.

More than 100 enemy varieties can appear throughout the dungeons. There are bats, centaurs, exploding eyeballs, and plenty of stranger creatures. Some enemies pass straight through walls, while others walk, cling, or bounce across them. Learning how each type moves makes a big difference, especially when several appear together. Once they are dealt with, their blood can be collected to improve the run.

Raising the Blood level lets builds become stronger, while hidden chests scattered around the arenas provide another reason to explore.

The Dogmancer also offers permanent upgrades, provided enough bones are available to pay the required toll.

There are nine unlockable bunkmates to try, each bringing a different weapon and movement ability. Leggy can spin climbable webs, Bug can take to the air, and the Skinja offers a much faster way to move through the dungeons. Switching between them gives Blood Dungeon a decent amount of room for experimentation.

Characters and Levels

Two of the playable characters are nude, although this is presented in a non-sexual, extremely small-scale way, with roughly 4px representations of breasts or a penis. Streamer Mode removes the nudity entirely. Cartoon-style blood also splashes across the screen during combat, and that effect can be disabled as well.

Each level features three bosses. The early portions feel enjoyable enough, but things become much tougher once the second boss arrives. At that stage, every level starts throwing large numbers of the same DPS-check enemy, the Banshee, at the player. Most builds simply cannot keep up.

That creates a frustrating progression loop. A few levels can be gained, only to reach the same point and realize the current setup is not strong enough. Then the process starts again. The achievement numbers also suggest that relatively few players are getting through even the second boss wave on the easiest setting, with only around 18% appearing to have done so.

Exploration-focused goals feel like a better fit for the current balance. Objectives that require seeing everything in a level can still be completed with different builds, as long as movement and speed are handled well.

The problem is that getting to the later stages can depend heavily on luck. Some weapons, particularly Bouncer, are dramatically stronger than the alternatives. A large portion of the upgrade pool also feels difficult to justify. An upgrade such as 5% extra gold or Blood does not feel particularly rewarding when a level-up could instead provide something transformative, such as explosive shots. In Blood Dungeon, where reaching level 15 is already considered fairly high, the difference between weak upgrade rolls and a powerful high-roll can be enormous.

Progression

It is probably the biggest issue. The progression attribute itself has to be unlocked, which can leave stretches where there is nothing useful to spend accumulated bones on. That kind of progression wall adds pressure in an unpleasant way. When a DPS check keeps ending runs, the natural response is to ignore anything that does not contribute directly to the strongest possible damage build in Blood Dungeon.