Review: #BLUD Feeds Nostalgia with New IP

A little less than a week ago (as of writing), Exit 73 Studios and Humble Games released a new game called #BLUD.

The game is an animated dungeon crawler that is available to play on Nintendo Switch, PC via Humble Store (affiliate link) and Steam, PS4, and Xbox One (affiliate link) with an MSRP of $24.99.

A huge thank you to the team for providing me with a PC copy to review which I played exclusively on my Steam Deck OLED. All thoughts below are my own.

In #BLUD, slaying the undead is just another day at high school for Becky Brewster, new kid in town and latest in an ancient bloodline of spellcasting vampire hunters.

Root out demonic infestations through the town’s buzzing social media, and take selfies with demonic forces to analyze their weaknesses. Power up your trusty fiend-thwacking field hockey stick, and level up your latent magic skills through grimoires and school supplies.

Master the slaying game with the help of an eclectic cast of hilarious characters, and teach the vampires a thing or two about messing with Carpentersville High!

#BLUD is, in my opinion, the exact kind of nostalgia that I want exploited. It’s an original IP, but so much about it transported me back to my childhood. Back in the early 2000s I remember playing a game on Cartoon Network’s website (yes kids, that was a much bigger thing back in the day) where you ran around a summer resort helping various characters with a plethora of tasks.

Watching the trailer for #BLUD somehow reminded me of this and that nostalgia persevered while playing. The gameplay is very different as #BLUD is about slaying vampires and saving the world while the Cartoon Network game was mostly about fetch quests if memory serves me right. I think I know what it is though.

The art style and animation remind me very much of Cartoon Network shows in the 2000s. The game isn’t set back in time or anything, but the art style evokes this nostalgia in me and I love it. So much of the animation ends up over the top and it has just been very fun to watch as I play.

Character designs feel very expressive while staying rather simple. The animation is possibly my favorite aspect of #BLUD. It is what convinced me to agree to reviewing the game in the first place.

Another piece that I love about #BLUD is the writing and humor. If the animation feels very 2000s, the humor and writing feels very 2010s. I’m reminded of cartoons like Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, Gravity Falls, etc.

There’s even a joke about how all the women with a certain character model share the same name and it feels like it was directly inspired by one of my favorite jokes from The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

I will say that I have not completed the main story of #BLUD yet, but after the approximately 3.6 hours (according to Steam) that I have played, the story has been intriguing.

You play Becky Brewster who recently moved to Carpentersville and stumbles into the world of vampire slaying when she gets her mom’s old cookbook. I’m not sure how everything works out, but I’ve determined there are two main bad guys: an ancient vampire named Dragur and the evil tech CEO Geoff Freya.

All of the characters have incredible personalities and the writing team clearly had fun writing their lines with many zingers and puns thrown in.

Now let’s talk about gameplay. As I’ve played #BLUD it has felt both punishing and forgiving. Some of the fights are pretty challenging as you try to figure out how to deal with certain enemies. However, if you do die, you just go back to where you entered the current map.

That said, all the enemies respawn when you die. However, you do respawn with full health. The balance feels very well tweaked. If you’re looking for a complex combat system or anything like that, keep looking. The combat feels fine, but is rather simple with only one button for attack, a dodge, a projectile weapon (pencils), and then a couple of upgrades for your trusty field hockey stick like an umbrella that can shape how you play.

I do like how you can upgrade your weapon, but I wish that the gems you collect were maybe a bit more common. I only have one gem but it feels like I should have a couple more by now.

The main upgrades are tools like an umbrella to give you a block or the shovel which allows you to dig in specific areas to uncover goodies or traverse through the world.

Let’s talk about the less than positive parts of #BLUD now. There are a few moments where I have felt that the game requires maybe a little too much precision as it seems to really hone in on an 8-axis system and so I would be looking left to block, but they were attacking from the upper left quadrant and so I got it. Conversely, aiming with projectiles felt harder.

I wish that there had been some kind of reticle or something to help me better see where I’m aiming. I also was not a fan of the fact that just touching an enemy would hurt you and so it was very easy to try dodging one enemy but then get hurt because I just touched another enemy during my dodge.

It felt very frustrating at times. Also, when I got the shovel they didn’t make it clear what ground could be dug and it took what felt like too long to figure out that the spots I thought were going to be used for a story point were actually the dig spots.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I played #BLUD exclusively on my Steam Deck OLED. It ran without any problems and the system requirements are so low that I would be shocked if your PC couldn’t run it. In my opinion, this game is absolutely perfect for handheld gaming.

#BLUD is not a perfect game, but it’s a fantastic recipe for feeding nostalgia with a brand new IP. Others should take note of that. I have had a lot of fun playing the game and will be finishing it after writing this review. In my opinion, you come for the animation and stay for the writing.