Last year Messhof departed the 2D design of Nidhogg for the cell-shaded landscapes of Wheel World. But now, Messhof have returned to their visual roots to try their hands at the action roguelike genre in Blood Dungeon - a frantic auto-shooter that feels like a blend between Vampire Survivors and a propulsive platformer.

Blood Dungeon sets a drastically different tone from the outset with an intro animation that shows its cast of characters dispatching hordes of enemies. It's a bloody and over the top affair only heightened by the first occurrence of the game's phenomenal soundtrack. A pulse-pounding score from Thomas Hooey that matches the non-stop action dungeon runs.

Beyond the opening animation and a few written lines from NPCs, Blood Dungeon is purely focused on the gameplay experience. There's some visual world-building and dark humour, but everything here is about getting you back into a combat arena for another run. Even the art design is a simple smooth pixel art style with vibrant colours and a CRT overlay, so that no visual information is lost when kiting a gigantic horde of monsters through a dungeon.

You first meet your machine gun toting character being pushed out of a ceiling sphincter into a central hub made up of tiered layers. Some contain buildings such as the Bunkhouse where the 9 characters can be selected once they're unlocked. Off to the side is the Dogmancer's Bone Shop to unlock permanent upgrades, and another room to access daily runs that are singular attempts to position yourself on a one-off leaderboard. And the Library: a place where you can access a compendium of your unlocked weapons in a Blood Tome, view the credits, and look at the quest log with over a 100 tasks to complete.

After exploring your surroundings, you're guided to press a detonator to open up the route to the first of 6 dungeons; a set of environments like all have their own dangerous obstacles and shapes. Upon entering the catacombs, Blood Dungeon truly begins. Instantly, your character begins to auto-shoot at the nearest enemy as you try to understand how the game functions. Killed enemies drop blood, gold and bones that magnetise to your character when in range. Blood is Blood Dungeon's form of experience points that level up your blood gauge. Once the meter is filled, you level up like Vampire Survivors, where you choose from three randomised upgrades, or pay gold to re-roll.

Upgrades are either weapons, spells, or charms. You can choose to focus on upgrading your base weapon by increasing it's damage, size, the amount of bullets fired at once. Or select another weapon to dual wield, like dual pistols, or a rocket launcher. But then, it'll become harder to roll an upgrade for your primary weapon as the secondary will now be in the mix.

Then, there's spells and charms to level the playing field. Things like being able to knock back enemies, leave a trail of fire wherever you step, equip rings to inflict burn or zombification, and countless more combinations to suit every playstyle. Although two of my favourites are the recharging shield that enables you to take an extra hit, and a defibrillator that grants a ten second reprieve to run and find health upon death.

All of these upgrades make for bespoke play-styles. Some players will prefer close-proximity weapons to be able hold their ground for as long as possible. Others will want to enhance their agility to better their parkour movements.

Despite this, you'll need to master the basics of Blood Dungeon's platforming to survive the relentless waves of monsters. With over a 100 monsters, you need to memorise attack patterns to know the best way to avoid failure. You can run fast, jump, climb up and along walls and ceilings, swim underwater, and more. It's easy to get so far without parkouring around the map, but once the monsters increase in number, difficulty and gain more complex move-sets, moving is the difference between life and death. You'll need to be agile to perform a befitting strategy for your equipped loadout, or once you're really confident, kite enemies around the sprawling maps in order to survive, uncover the map, and complete the dungeon.

Although it's equally important to understand the environment. Blood Dungeon's in-dungeon currency operates on gold coins, which can be spent on re-rolling upgrades or saved up to buy treasure chests located around the map. Outside of obtaining bones to spend at the hub, you need to keep a look out for coloured keys, which can unlock certain corresponding pillars to open blocked routes, or access treasure chests. Whereas, other pillars can lock behind you for a set amount of time, or fire deadly projectiles to chip off your limited health made up of a set number of hearts per character.

There's also orbs and assists to find and use to your advantage. Blue orbs freeze pursuing enemies so that you can mow them down. Red orbs suck in any missed blood to allow you to level up quickly on the move. But most importantly of all is the hearts and max health packs that keep you in the fight. But without learning and being aware of your environment, early to mid enemies will make easy work of you.

Within a few runs, you'll already know your preferred routes, how to take down particular enemies and vanquish bosses. And whether it's worth the risk to blast your way through destructible blocks as enemies close in, or risk drowning underwater in search for something useful.

But in order to progress to the next dungeon, you'll need to complete quests such as defeating a dungeon's first boss. Highly dangerous, bigger scale enemies such as a giant wyrm and mummy head. Forcing you to parkour like your life depends on it, as it does. As within four or five hits, depending on the character, you can easily get overwhelmed by powerful or numerous enemies and lose what was turning out to be an excellent run blessed by the RNG gods.

After beating a boss and dying, you're returned to the central hub to visit the Dogmancer to use your bones to purchase permanent upgrades. An integral roguelike element that creates a satisfying gameplay loop of getting a little further each run, and then, upgrading key stats such as damage, speed, reload time, and more.

You'll naturally open new areas to detonate to carry on to the next dungeon, each time getting further, completing quests, and unlocking new playable characters. This is maybe the most important roguelike element, as Blood Dungeon encourages you to play as each character. In doing so, you unlock each character's primary weapon and other skills or charms to use with every other character. A wide arsenal from a machine gun, shotgun, whip, spinning sword, magnum, and more.

After you've unlocked a vast array of weaponry, you can choose whichever characters stats and main weapon suits your playstyle and combine them with another supremely deadly set of tools.

This roguelike progression incentivises you to return to previous levels to creep up the global leaderboards, and stay alive to complete the quests to beat other bosses, and eventually, complete the dungeon.

Blood Dungeon takes a level of skill to master its platforming, but once you do, it compels you to keep going until you've completed every dungeon and set high scores on the leaderboards. It's the kind of game where friends will have fun setting scores against each other.

However, I can't see Blood Dungeon being as approachable as its progenitor Vampire Survivors, as it is more involved. And although Blood Dungeon isn't as vast, I can see it growing into an appreciated game for those who like the added platforming to the auto-shooter genre. I only hope Messhof continue to build on the idea, if it finds its audience.

Blood Dungeon is the ideal pick up and play video game, that I booted up many times with the intention to complete 1 run, only for 1 to turn into numerous. As if you're a competitive gamer or enjoy battling for high-scores against friends, Blood Dungeon is a uniquely zany and responsive video game that's a good time.

*Review Code Provided By Publisher

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