Devolver Digital has been a huge force in indie games, publishing a whole bunch of hits like Dennaton’s Hotline Miami and Dodge Roll’s Enter the Gungeon. You may ask yourself: can I play a cheaper version of those games? Well, regardless of whether you’ve thought of that, at Devolver’s last E3 “conference”, they’ve come up with just the thing. Doinksoft, the developers behind recent Devolver Digital published Gato Roboto, has stepped forward with a parody of those cartridges filled with bootleg games: the Devolver Bootleg.

Devolver Bootleg consists of downgraded, minigame-like versions of eight well-known Devolver Digital published titles. For the sake of this review, I’ll be looking at all but the PikuNiku and Absolver parodies, as those are two-player games and I lack somebody to play those with.

First we have Hotline Milwaukee. I immediately zeroed in on the Hotline Miami pastiche, because if you knew me personally from 2015 to 2016; I was really into the Hotline Miami games. If you don’t know the core premise of the first Hotline Miami game, you’re a guy that receives coded phone calls telling him to go kill Russian mobsters while wearing an animal mask. Here, a strange man drawn in a lousier version of Hotline Miami‘s face sprites tells you to go to a building that… just seems to keep going on and on. You get to choose a mask to wear at the beginning, but as far as I know, they’re just cosmetic and don’t have actual bonuses tied to them.

The thing to know about all the Devolver Bootleg games is that they’re all controlled with arrow keys, Z and X, regardless of how they controlled before. Without the mouse and keyboard controls of the original game, you’ll have to point your character toward whoever you’re trying to shoot, which feels finicky and imprecise for this kind of game. X shoots and Z throws things. Throwing things is lethal regardless of weapon type. You have a selection of melee weapons, a pistol, a machine gun and a shotgun to use. The shotgun is easily the best gun because it shoots out in a spread.

Enemies are simultaneously less and more dangerous. Less because they are not attracted by the sound of gunfire like the original game, so you can shoot things up without worrying about a bunch of guys rushing in. There are also frequently rooms where you can just kinda find enemies chilling and they don’t react unless you get up close to them. On the more dangerous side, enemies can actually punch you out whereas before they were harmless without a weapon. Also unlike your character, they have a mastery of shooting in static eight directions.

There are dog enemies in the game, but in true bootleg fashion, instead of acting like they originally did they’re actually just interchangeable with the human enemies, giving you the funny image of a dog with a knife walking slowly toward you.

You keep going down, with occasional interruptions of the strange guy doing lousy versions of Richard’s speeches. It all ends in a jarring boss fight that requires multiple hits and acts unlike anything else in the game, giving some bizarre sense of a finale.

Overall, Hotline Milwaukee is a perfect example of the Devolver Bootleg‘s ethos. It does not have the smooth and responsive controls of Hotline Miami. Enemies are both dumb as bricks yet unfair to fight. Awful chiptune remixes of Hydrogen and Paris keep playing. However, combined with the cutscenes it’s all done in a very tongue-in-cheek way. As a game, it’s just kinda okay at best. As a joke, it’s wonderful.

Enter the Gungeon‘s sense of progression goes by the wayside in Enter the Gun Dungeon. Gone are the bullet hell bosses, multiple unique guns and items. Instead, Enter the Gun Dungeon transforms the game into an arena shooter like Smash TV, but without the dual stick controls. Funnily enough you play as the Bullet, the one character that doesn’t start out with a gun, shooting up waves of enemies before advancing to the next room. And honestly? I sincerely like it, even though it doesn’t play like Gungeon.

You enter a room and enemies spawn in clearly marked areas. Some just do contact damage while others fire bullets, imitating their behavior from the original game. Enemy varieties seem to stick to the more simpler ones and avoid the tankier, more complex enemies like the knights. Enter the Gun Dungeon still brings in Dodge Roll’s namesake, allowing you to roll through bullets or enemies with invincibility frames.

Instead of new guns you get power-ups with limited ammo, which you can refill by dodge rolling through armed enemies. The spread gun is always good while the rapid shooting power up is good in terms of DPS. There’s a weird omni gun, which explodes into a ring of bullets as long as your shots don’t hit anything, so unless you’re careful about where you shoot it feels ineffective.

After a set number of rooms, there actually is a boss fight, though I have yet to reach it in my playthroughs on the sole basis that this game is actually kinda hard. It’s not nearly as much of a bullet hell as Gungeon, but Enter the Gun Dungeon balances that out by giving you only one hit point. With that, it kinda turns the game into a fun little arena shooter arcade game, encouraging multiple playthroughs of shooting action.

Ape Out is a top-down beat em’ up where you play as a gorilla brutalizing their human captors in a Saul Bass-esque world. Alas, the gorilla is once again captured, so instead you play as their child in an NES arcade type game in a quest to rescue them.

Ape Out Jr. combines the joys of old NES games with the mechanics of Ape Out, navigating one-screen levels with body flinging combat. As per the original game, you can grab enemies and toss them, either to use them as bullet shields or projectiles. Enemies comically fall off-screen instead of exploding into blood as you rampage through a level, giving a playful vibe to the whole thing. It’s not required to defeat all the enemies, but doing so gives you a point bonus. There are also obligatory bananas spread around levels that will also give you a point bonus for collecting them all, if you actually care about that.

I’m going to be honest, I feel that Ape Out Jr. is something that can stand on its own. Whereas the previous two games feel like downgraded (but still okay) versions of their originals, Ape Out Jr comes off as a pretty alright re-interpretation of its original; embracing a different genre of game and it honestly nails it. There are a fair amount of stages to go through, making it a fun classic romp.

Let’s talk about Shootyboots next. The game design of Downwell revolves around doing multiple things with one mechanic, creating the practical and addictive gun boots gameplay that people have come to know and love. Doinksoft looked at it, smiled, and said, “let’s make this impractical and horrible.“The impracticality comes with the boots. In this game, the boots are too big, so you can’t walk around.

Instead, you have to constantly hop to move, holding down the jump button and releasing to move greater distances. It takes the “doing multiple things with one mechanic” to an insane conclusion that feels really annoying. It’s not just moving left or right that’s inconvenient, but moving down is too. Your character is finicky in that if even one bit of the boot is touching ground, you can’t descend. Remember how in Downwell you can blast holes through blocks and move yourself down the hole?

Well, you’ve gotta make sure that hole is double wide, because you won’t be able to maneuver down a normal sized hole. Everything else about Downwell is grossly simplified. Enemies drop gems that you use to open treasure chests that will give you an alternate gunboot and a small health up. Alternate boots shoot different projectiles but have a different ammo count, which is refilled when touching the ground or landing on an enemy; the “HEEL” has four bullets for each letter, shooting down big lasers. As a joke? Shootyboots is a pretty good mockery of Downwell. As a game? Thanks, I hate it.

In Luftrausers 3, Vlambeer’s intense, omni-directional dog-fighting game has been vastly simplified in every respect. It plays like a more traditional side-scrolling shooter, where you destroy waves of enemies across a screen-wrapping play field. When you get hit, your plane heats up and will stay that way if you keep shooting. Sadly though, the more visually interesting enclosing circle is swapped out for a plain meter. This is truly a bootleg game.

Blowing things up gives you currency that you can spend. Instead of having multiple ship parts that you can mix and match to make an ideal aircraft, you purchase flat upgrades like a defense and speed boost. Once you buy everything, the shop boat no longer has anything to offer and you can just blow it up on future waves. At this point, getting currency, which will mostly come from infinite spawning UFOs (that I’m honestly not sure is a glitch or not) exists solely for the achievement of getting a ridiculous amount of wealth.

My opinion is sort of like the Gungeon parody in that it’s an alright arcade experience. Though, I praise this one less because the original Luftrausers was already a pretty intense arcade experience.

In Cat Game/Catsylvania, Doinksoft finally turns to parodying their own game, Gato Roboto. Gato Roboto is a Metroidvania, though it borrows more from the Metroid roots with its sci-fi leanings. Here, your little cat fellow leans far into the Castlevania roots, foregoing the exploration and instead mimicking the earlier, linear Castlevania games.

Instead of a whip, you swing a sword and can throw chakrams that you can refill by finding more in breakable objects. You know what else is breakable? Your armor. Catsylvania also parodies Ghosts ‘n Goblins in that you die in two hits; with the first hit removing your armor and revealing that your cat melded into a jacked human body. Catsylvania is also really hard because of this, especially when you’re up against flying enemies like those dreaded ghosts in the first part that swoop down at you.

Unlike Ape Out Jr, you don’t have unlimited lives, which makes Catsylvania frustrating to play. I honestly couldn’t get very far in the game. I still hold it in higher regard than Shootyboots because I think it’s funnier, though. Like Hotline Milwaukee, it leans pretty far into the joke with the stiff controls and dumb dialogue.

As I’ve previously said, I’m unable to play the two multiplayer games in the collection. Though, if the other games in the collection are a good indication, you can expect some jokey, stripped down versions of Absolver and PikuNiku.

Devolver Bootleg is absolutely a joke game, making fun of the concept of bootleg game cartridges in the company’s embrace of a satirical corrupt big company image. However, that does not mean the games inside are bad, well, except for Shootyboots, I guess. You’re obviously not going to get a full game experience from any of these games, but it’s a bunch of mostly fun diversions in one pack that I think is worth checking out.

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Devolver Bootleg

$4.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Cheap fan service for Devolver Digital fans
• Ape Out Jr genuinely good
• Pretty okay minigame collection

Cons

• Part of the joke is being really frustrating
• Downwell, what have they done to you??