A slot machine for gags disguised as a Vampire Survivors-like is taking over Steam, and I'm just as addicted to pulling the lever as the other 90K people playing it
One of the most popular games on Steam right now looks like it came from the mobile game ads I scroll by on TikTok. Every clip I saw of Megabonk before I actually played it seemed primed to yell "EPIC BATTLES", "INFINITE XP", and "FREE GOLD" at me until I hit the download button.
Megabonk almost didn't look real at first: Its aesthetic is like some kind of 3D asset nightmare where skeletons pop into Mario coins and a fox wizard shoots fireballs at Piggsy from Manhunt. It's a crude mixture of pixel art and chunky 3D models that wouldn't look out of place on a TV in the background of an episode of NCIS. But despite the assault on my eyeballs, Megabonk is a coherent, surprisingly cerebral auto-shooter roguelike in the style of Vampire Survivors.
Even the creator, Vedinad, calls it "Vampire Survivors but 3D" in a YouTube video about its inception. You mow through waves of enemies until you die or defeat the boss, discovering all sorts of weird upgrades along the way.
If there's anything about Megabonk I could point to that sets it apart from the piles of Vampire Survivors-likes on Steam, it's the physics. It has a good jump and a bouncy weightlessness that can be harnessed into a bunnyhop. You don't run through its levels as much as you slide across them. I've been swallowed by the swarms simply because I was having too much fun catching air as a skateboarding skeleton named Calcium.
The other large part of the appeal is the novelty of playing a game where you find items with descriptions like "Upon hitting an enemy, clap their cheeks so hard it generates a lightning strike." Thankfully Megabonk doesn't drown you in memes until you're sick of them. It mostly lets the absurdity of it all speak for itself. I've played enough of these types of games to fall right back into the usual rhythms, herding packs of monsters around like livestock until there are too many effects on the screen to see clearly, but it isn't the grind to godhood that keeps me playing Megabonk. It's simply the drive to see what will happen next.
Each level is littered with breakable pots, treasure chests, and mysterious statues labeled things like "Shrine of Succ" that slurps up every XP coin in the entire level. You won't know what they do until you interact with them. Sometimes I found myself suddenly surrounded by bosses and other times I was slipping cash to a mysterious "Shady Guy" for a scarf that gave me a damage bonus while airborne. Megabonk is basically a game about gambling for weird objects that make the numbers go up, except it's $10 and has zero microtransactions. I'm having a blast every time I pull the lever.
I've had no trouble rolling with whatever the RNG gives me, and I think that's the ideal way to bonk.
When the gags inevitably dry up, my interest in Megabonk might wane like it has for plenty of other Vampire Survivors-likes. I've never really enjoyed turning the power fantasy of them into a long-term grind for unlocks and achievements. Megabonk has those—you can spend silver coins from your runs to add new powers to the pool or new characters to play—but none of them stand in the way of launching into run after run to see what ridiculous build you can put together.
And Megabonk has enough depth to its systems that you can start to identify which items and stats synergize. I wasn't always sure if it was better to enlarge my boomerang bananas or to slap as many damage bonuses on them as possible, but you won't catch me ever turning down opportunities to increase my luck because the chance at finding legendary items is too good to pass up. Nothing about Megabonk suggests to me that you need to be an expert at snapping the right pieces together to overcome its ramping difficulty as you progress through the levels. I've had no trouble rolling with whatever the RNG gives me, and I think that's the ideal way to bonk.
Despite not being in early access, Megabonk will have a whole roadmap of updates coming soon, according to the latest patch notes. I'm not surprised, given that it's already sold one million copies as of this week. Vedinad specifically said they "wanna try to add multiplayer down the line," which is a feature that sounds better the more I think about it.
Megabonk is already brimming with so much random stuff that I think you could probably toss anything into it and it wouldn't feel out of place. If you told me it's getting a deckbuilding update, I'd believe you. While I still wonder if at some point it might get too full and burst, I'm happy to keep playing with all its toys until that happens.