Released in 2018, Night of the Blood Moon is a rogue-lite action RPG. It reminds me slightly of Adventure Time.

You are a bird-like nightmarish creature trying to take over the dream world. To do this, you must kill every cute creature you encounter. But the story doesn’t really matter, truth be told. The game really is about inflicting as much damage as possible on enemies.

You have a main attack, which is a melee. You also have a secondary attack which is usually a projectile. The projectiles are quite limited because you don’t have much ammo – so you have to use it sparingly. I don’t think this game works very well with controls because you must be very precise with your aiming. So if you want a good time, be sure to use either a mouse or a trackpad.

The graphics have that 16-bit quality which I personally find appealilng. I love the colour palette. As befitting of the theme, it focuses on a dark red. I likewise like the fluid animation.

I like the sound effects, though they seem drowned out by the music. Speaking of which, while I liked the music at first, I found that it gets way to repetitive. I was this game had more variation in tunes.

Virtually any modern PC can play this game. You need 1.2Ghz single core CPU, 1GB RAM, 256MB RAM, and 300MB space. It is also natively supported on Windows, Mac, and Linux. This is more than playable on Steam Deck, but I found myself preferring this on my tower.

Night of the Blood Moon is a PC exclusive. It has yet to have a console release. Personally, I think it would be great on Switch, though I acknowledge the controls might prove challenging.

Tyler McDermott is the lone developer for Night of the Blood Moon, and this is the lone game he’s made. I hope he makes another one because he shows great promise.

That said, apart from the great aesthetic, I found Night of the Blood Moon to be quite bare bones. I’ve played many similar games, and I don’t think this adds that much to the party. You walk in, kill everything, collect money, try to level up, buy a better weapon. That’s par for the course for rogue-lite action RPGs.

But I did have fun, and that’s what matters. Yes, there’s many games like this one, but I won’t begrudge playing an evil bird that kills cupcakes.