Megabonk has been out for less than a week on Steam, and despite stiff competition in the form of games like Silksong and Borderlands 4, the humble indie game is still tearing up the charts. Once you see it in action, it’s easy to understand why. This is an experience that: A) understands that it is a game and B) oozes aura. Skateboarding skeletons, cowboy robots, a shirtless mega-Chad: This is the sort of game that a terminally online, brainrotted teen boy would come up with. I mean that in the best way possible. Only in this analogy, the teen boy discovers Roblox and Discord rather than Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan.
Megabonk is a roguelite arcade game in the style of Vampire Survivors, except in 3D. At the start, you have access to two characters: an unusually lucky mage fox, and Sir Oofie, a knight who moves slowly but hits hard. No matter who you pick, you’ll automatically attack enemies periodically. Each character’s base attack functions slightly differently. The knight, for example, swings a sword directly in front of him, whereas the fox will throw fireballs at faraway enemies. As you go along, you gain powers that help your character expand their arsenal of projectiles, like bouncing bones and banana boomerangs. You will quickly become a walking ball of chaos whose every step brings about destruction.
Enemies also never stop spawning, much in the style of Risk of Rain. Enemies and breakables drop money, which you can use to open randomly generated chests. Chests are full of upgrades and abilities of varying rarity, like health regeneration and attack cadence. Your aim, at least initially, is to find and defeat the map’s boss without getting overwhelmed by the swarms of enemies on the screen. Simple stuff, and while the mechanics are solid, Megabonk’s style and tone are what set it apart.
Though this is a modern game, the 3D graphics are like something out of the N64 era. There are a lot of jagged edges, muddy textures, and rasterized pixels. All the animations are slightly choppy, as if your internet connection is having trouble loading a GIF. As you play, a rock soundtrack shreds in the background and hypes you up; naturally, some characters have their own theme songs. When you die, your character will stiffly topple over as if it were a toy. “you ded,” the game will proclaim as your lifeless body fills up the frame. “maybe him skill issue?” This type of humor won’t work for everyone. The magnet-shaped “shrine of succ,” which collects all the surrounding XP, and the “slutty missiles” that hone in on enemies will surely elicit some groans.
But when it hits, it hits. I couldn’t help but smile during a run where the game threw in a suspiciously Donkey Kong-shaped primeape named Monke, whom I was tasked with chasing as tropical music boomed in the background. Eventually, Monke ran into a wall and simply kept going up at a full 90 degrees, as if it were lagging out of the game. As I tried to keep up, enemies surrounded me and made it impossible to move anywhere. I died, but Monke was free.
This is a game that uses the conventions and aesthetics of the internet to cobble together something deeply surreal and silly, almost like a fake video game in a TV show. Shops come in the form of business suit men who will call you an idiot after you purchase something. You can equip something called Turbo Socks, which of course increase your speed. You can summon a ghost named Bob, because why not?
None of this would work without a game that’s actually fun, and to its credit, Megabonk is endlessly replayable thanks to all of its unlockables and challenges. There are 20 characters to try, as well as an array of different maps with varying types of enemies, from mummies to floating heads with giant tongues. Quests can range from straightforward things like “kill 1,000 of x enemy” to things like “find the hidden Banana” and “get the item that has a 0.001% chance of dropping.” So far, I haven’t progressed beyond the initial forest map, but I’m having a blast theorycrafting builds. Your character has a ton of different stats that impact things like shield regeneration and area of attack, but you never feel bogged down with too much information. This is the epitome of number go up game. At most, you will spend a few seconds deciding which number becomes bigger. You spend the bulk of your time shredding, literally and figuratively.
Runs can last around 30 minutes or less, which makes Megabonk a perfect pick up and play game. You can amass so many upgrades and abilities that you’ll feel like a god who simply deletes anything that displeases them. You are not, however, immortal. The game will start generating enemies at a ridiculous clip, such that if you ever make the mistake of getting caught in a corner or against a wall, that’s it. No amount of automatic health regen, evade percentages, or high luck stats can save you when there are so many enemies on the screen the game might well crash at any moment. A devlog suggests that the game might spawn up to 10,000 enemies, even if it means turning the experience into a slideshow.
Megabonk is a game where standing still is dangerous, but you’ll have to do it often. Where chests will become increasingly expensive as you go along, Megabonk also offers free upgrades at claw machines that will only drop something if you charge them for long enough, which requires staying in close orbit. Running around in a game that never stops moving while having to stop and collect upgrades in order to survive makes for action that is as tense as it is exciting.
Did I mention that Megabonk costs $9.99, or slightly cheaper if you buy it during its launch period? Or that the developer intends to support the game with content updates? No wonder Steam users are flocking to this game. The high of nearly drowning in a sea of goblins as a shades-totin’ skeleton only to kickflip down a mountain as the army scrambles behind you is peak video games.