Megabonk is a 3D survivors-like with a very specific sense of humor that has been getting a lot of buzz lately. I’ve played about 15 hours as of writing this, so while this quick look is more meant to share my early impressions across that time rather than being a full, scored review, I’ve already done plenty worth talking about. There is still a fair bit I haven’t seen, but I got a little more than half the achievements and unlockables in that time, and I have been enjoying myself a lot. Adding an extra axis of movement does a lot to set it apart, and it’s more than competent at all the usual conventions of the genre already.

If you’ve played these kinds of games before, the basics are pretty much the same. You run around and fight endlessly-spawning waves of enemies that get harder and harder as the time ticks down. It’ll start with little goblins, and then you’ll get goblins with swords, and eventually build up to some more dangerous stuff like ogres or giant scorpions. Every once in a while a miniboss will pop up and those add some variety and a nice little spike of challenge.

There are also shrines that let you summon powerful elite packs and even more bosses with the promise of greater rewards, and I always appreciate that kind of thing where I’m not going into a menu and turning the difficulty up, but I can kind of tweak the difficulty as I go based on the decisions I make in the run. I prefer that, honestly.

As is common for these kinds of games, all of your weapons do their things automatically, whether that’s a sword or a rocket launcher. The only controls you’re worried about are movement-related. I like the variety and the bombastic attitude of the weapons. There are no two that feel overly similar, and they’re all pretty fun to use in different situations. Getting the revolver and the missiles and stacking bonuses to the number of projectiles I can spawn is great.

But of course the most obvious and I think the coolest difference here is that Megabonk is built with fully 3D levels and 3D movement. You can jump, and even get power-ups that give you better jumps or double, triple, quadruple jumps which is a ton of fun. There’s an item that makes all your weapons do more damage while you’re airborne, which can be quite powerful. One of the characters, Monke, can actually climb walls, which gives him some big advantages.

And this exploration and planning routes across steep cliffs, up and down ramps, is a big part of Megabonk, which makes every run feel interesting and challenging in some ways a lot of survivors-style games aren’t. First off, to finish a level, you have to locate the boss gate so you can summon the final boss before the timer runs out and you’re eventually overwhelmed by endless waves of ghosts. So there’s that added need to get out and comb the map, unless you get lucky and spawn right by the boss gate which sometimes happens, and I like that.

Then the second part is that the map is littered with breakable containers, shrines, and chests, and your power level is going to be directly related to how many of these you can hit within the time limit before you move on to the next level. So there’s this frantic but also very tactical loop where you want to go fast while planning out your path carefully to avoid backtracking and tag as many points of interest as possible. Chests also, at least most of them, cost gold to open, and that price goes up every time you open one, so sometimes you have to know when to pass one up because it’s not worth waiting around to farm coins when you’re not going to be able to afford to open every single chest anyway. The number of considerations I have to weigh in my head to put together a really good run feels satisfying and like I can usually overcome at least a lot of the capricious force of randomness by playing smart.

Now I do have to talk about the humor, because it’s one of the first things I noticed. The entire theme of Megabonk seems to be Millennial and Gen Z internet brain rot. And it’s honestly hard to tell if – at the rist of sounding a bit mean or snotty – this supposed to genuinely make me laugh in a surface-level way. Like is this the straightforward sense of humor the developers were aiming for? Or are they doing a Tim and Eric cringe comedy thing, like the real joke is that it’s kind of stupid on purpose? How many layers of irony deep are we? In the former case, it doesn’t work that well. But if it’s the latter, it kind of does.
Yeah, in 2025, I’m totally still sending my friends all the latest GigaChads. Remember him? There’s an item that spawns “borgars.” Dang, did John Hammond show up to pop your champagne after you dug that one up? (The irony is not lost on me that I’m using a reference from a 1993 movie to criticize how old this meme is, but it’s a classic, okay?) There’s a surprisingly safe for work boss called “Scorpionussy.” There’s a power-up that “claps cheeks.” Practically everything you pick up is some kind of reference to years- or decades-old meme culture. It never got in the way of the gameplay for me, but there were a few times I thought my eyes were going to roll so hard I might sever my optic nerves.

Megabonk currently only has two levels, a spooky forest and a deadlier desert, at least unless there are some secret ones I’m not aware of. But they do each have three different tiers of increasing difficulty. The first is just a single stage, while each subsequent tier adds one additional stage with a new boss that lets you carry over all your power-ups from the previous one. I do find the lack of changing scenery a bit disappointing. Those two biomes are definitely starting to feel repetitive, and I couldn’t find anything like a roadmap that said the devs plan to add more. It’s not labeled as Early Access either. But the three tiers definitely provide a good challenge and give me more room to push myself.

Meta-progression isn’t super deep, but it is meaningful and rewarding. Everything outside of a run costs a separate currency called silver that you can pick up on runs. Getting permission to buy new characters, items, and power-ups requires you to first complete an objective or achievement thematically tied to each one, which is kind of neat. Then you have the more straightforward buffs to level up like getting more rerolls or more weapon slots. I appreciated that you only have to pay for the ability to toggle unlocked items on or off once and then you can use it as much as you want, since I really like to optimize my loot pool going into a run in these types of games.

The characters are mostly pretty simple in their design but enjoyable to use. I think my favorite is CL4NK who is a robot cowboy gunslinger that starts with the revolver and gets increased critical chance every level. But you’ve also got a skeleton on a skateboard who does more damage the faster he moves, and the ninja is also a lot of fun because he automatically kills any enemy who misses him with an attack.

As far as survivors-likes go, this is a pretty strong one. Especially with the added consideration of the jump button and the whole vertical axis, and the emphasis on route-planning and exploration, I found it had that crucial ability to make me want to start a new run as soon as I finished the last until it was suddenly several hours later. I’m regularly groaning at some of the uninspired image board humor, but I feel like I can sometimes appreciate it in an ironic way, and otherwise just ignore it. I’d say it’s worth a look if you have an appetite for another one of these that isn’t basically just a Vampire Survivors reskin. I just wish there was a little more level variety.