Megabonk: Game Review

Preface - Games Suck Now

Megabonk is an absolute gem. I can honestly say that I’ve not been as obsessed with a game like this in maybe years…I can’t explain it. Games that release these days are missing a certain charm that games of old once had for me.

I can remember on multiple occasions as a child visiting the games boutique in the mall where they had giant boxes full of loose cartridge games. At the time I was playing a Sega Genesis, and later in my childhood a Nintendo64. There was just something about seeing a cartridge with an awesome front cover image on it, purchasing it for a couple of bucks (often 4-8 bucks lol) and taking it home and throwing it into your console and not knowing what exactly to expect. No tutorial, no game manual, no online videos to review it beforehand…just pure randomness, and no pre-conceived notions about the product.

Megabonk hit that itch for me…I just kinda saw it on the Steam store front-page and noticed it had very positive reviews…and I just went for it 🤷 It did not disappoint in any way whatsoever. My first run or two were absolute garbage, and I almost put the game down. But the more you play Megabonk the more you see it has nuances and complexities that only reveal themselves to you when you give it time! As any game should!

The last time I can remember a game “scratching my itch” like this is when I kinda did the same thing for the original Dark Souls. There is something about being thrown into a game world and not knowing what to expect, and being asked to learn through experimentation. That shit is just plain fun.

Games these days too often hold your hand - give you a mini-map, an icon, HUD…do they think we aren’t capable games anymore? I don’t think they do. Either it’s that or game development companies these days try to cater to the broadest audience that they possibly can - and I once heard a indie dev on YouTube say it best:

So, yes, you can appeal to a broad audience by making the game super accessible - but that means your game isn’t a niche for anyone. I think I am a person who love niche games maybe? 🤷

The Actual Review

Megabonk is a unique game in my opinion. As stated above it scratches an itch that hasn’t been scratched for me in some years. I loved exploring the game and learning its mechanics and nuisances.

Starting out you may think it a very simple game; and in a way it is. The controls are dead simple:

• movement (Left stick)
• Jump (A)
• Slide (B)
• Camera (Right stick)

However, from these simple controls some really complex gameplay mechanics emerge. Each game your character starts out with it’s base stats. Some characters can run slightly faster or jump slightly higher. The real meat is in the upgrades that you can earn either through slaying enemies and picking up exp/gold or visiting shrines which you have to stand near king-of-the-hill style. There are other various things to interact with during gameplay as well:

• Jars
  • give you exp/gold
• Shrines of succ
  • draws all gold and exp to your player
• Challenge Shrines
  • spawns a group of tough enemies that give nice rewards when defeated
• Chests
  • for an ever-increasing price you can open chests that give you randomly-rolled items

These interactables give the player a nice reason to try and explore the entire map on each run. The more of these you find the higher potential killing power of your character; the more fun you’ll have.

Every aspect of the game is addictive…from the movement mechanics ( learning to keep momentum while sliding and jumping off of slopes is very rewarding ) to the gambling-esque sounds of enemies dying, chests rolling your weapon tiers, to the amazing sound of gold exiting enemies corpses as you obliterate everything around you.

It really makes you wonder what it is about some of these single-developer games success that sometimes overshadows AAA studios. Goes to show you how out of touch they are with modern gamers 🤷 But then again I believe all companies are out of touch with people. All they want is our money and we don’t have any 😂 Jokes on them though. Every time I’ll pick giving my money and my time to small indie devs rather than AAA companies using AI to serve us slop and charging us top-dollar for it.