Megabonk is a roguelite beatem-up released in 2025 by vedinad. Imagine if you will a large square map of randomly arranged square ramps and plains littered with pots, chests, shrines, a boss portal and other junk you want. Every second one or more enemies spawns in your general vicinity and the spawn rate increases with time as well as including faster and more dangerous foes. Enemies drop experience which lets the player level up and choose from three options of weapons or tomes. The player attacks automatically at a set rate that can be upgraded with leveling. Enemies uniformly try to walk into the player to do damage and boss enemies have ranged area of effect attacks. This creates gameplay of constantly fleeing and exploration as a horde of enemies accumulates behind the player with occasional backtracking to collect xp.
If all of this sounds like it's very generic addictive slop coded design then I'll add that the death screen message is "him ded maybe him skill issue?" This game knows what it is. It is maximalist gamification, with randomized advancement for that intermittent reinforcement hit, ten minute rounds with clear goals and targets, and enough choices regarding synergy that decisions in character build actually matter. Combine that with silver coins being awarded at the end of runs which can be spent on unlocking new items, spells, weapons, characters, and the like and the replay value is phenomenal for the actual level of complexity. The character choices cover robots, knights, the Giga Chad meme, and anthropomorphic wizard fox, skateboarding skeleton, and many more kooky dudes. Graphics are that Playstation one era low poly goodness with some deliberately awful frame rate animations that make the game look like it's always getting ready to die. I assume this is as much an actual concession to having five hundred enemies on screen at the same time as an artistic direction but either way it works. Megabonk is built using all of the psychological tricks developed by casinos, social media, and the "free to play, pay to win" environment mixed with contemporary internet memes and puts them front and center in a bizarre display of self aware self deprecation. As with most electronic games it can be found on Steam.
IRON NODER XVIII: NEGLIGENCE IS THE RUST OF THE SOUL