I tried to look up the plot of Bore Blasters, since I’m all about the exploding earth when I play, but it turns out the Steam store page doesn’t bother explaining any of the plot either. Hence the purity of Bore Blasters. However, there are some facts that can be gleaned from the ground: you play a dwarf piloting a petite ship similar to Robotnik’s flying hedgehog killer, and you’re dropped onto a petite, circumspect patch of ground containing gems. You grind it down, with the goal of finding a huge chest of gems somewhere below. Your drill is your ship’s machine gun, your efforts regulated by about two minutes of depleting fuel and a hull that can take a total of three hits. This is Gimli’s cyberpunk.
Bore Blasters is also a roguelite from Gimli, in that if you don’t find a treasure chest before you run out of fuel, or bounce off too many walls, or get hit by environmental hazards too many times, your round is over. That’s fine, because you keep any gems you manage to collect along the way, and you can operate them to upgrade your ship. A better shell, more proficient fuel consumption, and more damage, all of these things can be upgraded to make your runes more successful. Successfully completing missions, meanwhile, can unlock fleeting abilities that you have the chance to operate in future missions, from passives that mean regular dirt tiles drop gems to Vampire Survivors-style area-of-effect weapons like cartoon bombs that jump out at you in all directions, or an axe that circles your ship as you descend.
Such boons are helpful because the environmental factors are varied and enhance in number and quantity as you venture into more challenging levels. There are monsters, of course, including pink whales that inflate like pufferfish, but different biomes offer different blocks, such as lava levels with blocks that shoot fireballs at you, ice levels with blocks that shoot icicles on impact, moss blocks that quickly take up any available space, and strange eye blocks that limit your field of vision for a few seconds if you destroy one. They’re inventive and pose different hazards that you quickly devise different strategies for.
Some worlds have fly nests that burst when you shoot them and release a worm – annoyingly low health, but when you have a few nest blocks around you, they quickly reproduce. Then there are the goblins, who are your antagonists in a way. In some levels, they will appear in their own rockets or flying jetpacks and fire spiked mines at you. In other levels, they will plant proximity mines or defensive weapons in the place, and you have to find the switch if you want to survive.
These, along with your dwindling fuel supply, force you to keep moving, falling into the abyss and firing with gleeful abandon. The 2D pixel graphics are surprisingly evocative, as is the sight of the ground transforming into pixel art before you. Bore Blasters teaches you a constant, almost instinctive calculus, as you scan the screen for the glowing primary colors of gemstones like a prospector panning for gold, while also considering the best path down through the softer, empty ground. There are also ways to tip the scales in your favor. You can find fuel-bearing blocks to extend your run, and you can trigger cascading events by hitting a mine or the first exploding block in a long line, clearing a path for you with less effort. There’s something a little Noita-y about it at times.
You also have special abilities, which vary between dwarven pilots. I preferred the heat-seeking missile barrage, but I have a tender spot for the first pilot who charges up his entire ship so he can ram anything for a few seconds. This special attack ability bar is charged by shooting dirt, so destruction begets destruction in a nice way – just as each success on the home map screen opens up more levels around it and shows you a petite representation of the threats and rewards to be found if you dare to go down another level. This detail in particular may be my favorite part of Bore Blasters.
And like the hidden deposits in the level, Bore Blasters itself seems plain at first glance, but it has a lot of related little things that just work well together. A bit of procedural generation, a few levels with side quests (explode x number of bomb blocks; find x number of research computers), and some appropriate sounds for the many explosions on screen all add a little more polish to the flow of the game. There’s even a modern Daily Run mode that challenges you – say, “kill as many enemies as you can” – and posts your efforts on a global leaderboard.
At first I thought Bore Blasters would be a one-time thing, given how quick the runs are, but once you level up the engine enough it starts to become a bit of a chore, despite some clever twists like goblins trapping the entire level in acid. Maybe enough thought has been put into this game that you don’t have to think at all when playing it. There’s a story to it, but I think I’m more into dwarves screaming and shooting mud, as long as there’s that urgency. Maybe Bore Blasters is a very well-designed stress ball for endless kartharsis. Don’t expect significant diggy diggy hole. This is an explosive hole.
This review was written based on a copy of the game provided by the developer.
