I am gonna stage with you—I didn’t have excessive hopes for Mega Cat Studios’ tie-in recreation for Renfield (opens in new tab), a horror-comedy with Nicolas Cage enjoying Dracula in what appears like a riff on What We Do In The Shadows. I have been inundated with Instagram adverts for it for awhile now, and my coronary heart yearns to see anything—Traeger grills, meal prep providers, topical CBD ointment, please, God, something.
Would not you realize it although, Renfield: Convey Your Personal Blood kinda whips. It handed probably essentially the most essential take a look at for me in that I sat all the way down to play it for a fast “yea or nay” writeup and saved at it for means longer than I deliberate, promising “okay, that is the final run” to myself at least 4 instances.
Renfield has the swarming hordes and auto assaults of Vampire Survivors, however as an alternative of surviving for a set period of time in a single play area, Renfield has a room-by-room setup extra like a conventional roguelike. Clear all of the baddies whereas choosing up new assaults and leveling them up, then rinse and repeat.
Renfield’s fundamental gameplay advantages from some nice pixel artwork animation, robust enemy selection, and an arsenal that, whereas not precisely balanced, feels actually good to make use of. This recreation’s equal of Vampire Survivors’ whip and bible specifically really feel nice, with Renfield’s “shadow claws” and “black bat” churning up crowds of enemies into chunky pixelated salsa.
At a sure level, issues get spiced up with a form of “stage escape” mechanic for the previous couple of rooms. The setup for every stage is that you’ve got come trying to find a helpless sufferer to convey again to Dracula, and when you attain them you get a Bioshock-style “Press X to reap harmless creature, press Y to save lots of them.” It is rather a lot much less goofy in an arcadey pixel artwork recreation, and as soon as you’ve got made your selection you set off the Wario Land/Pizza Tower-esque timed escape.
Rescuing your goal as an alternative of bringing them to Dracula triggers a tougher escape sequence with a tighter time restrict, however better rewards. I dig the chance/reward ingredient right here, and having the stress turned up for the previous couple of rooms of a run actually helps it really feel memorable—my first clear felt very hard-won.
Renfield is in early entry in the intervening time, and undoubtedly feels slightly barebones—there are solely three levels, and so far as I can inform just one playable character, although I anticipate that to alter within the three to 6 months Mega Cat estimates it should take to complete the sport. Nonetheless, like Vampire Survivors or Boneraiser Minions, Renfield is barely 5 bucks on Steam (opens in new tab), and it appears like it should keep that means by way of the complete launch—a fairly attractive worth proposition.
What a wierd street the universally-maligned film tie-in recreation has taken. As soon as the realm of essentially the most 3/10 console video games you’ve got ever performed ( you, Eragon (opens in new tab) for Xbox 360), now it is all these tongue-in-cheek riffs on indie video games. Nicely, Renfield stands head-and-shoulders above that pack—it definitely beats one other smugly self-aware joke relationship sim, anyway.