Back in November we showed you the trailer for the new game from developer Nathan Meunier, creator of 2017’s extremely cool Missile Command/Solitaire mashup Missile Cards, and now that game is available in the iOS App Store and on Steam for desktop. It’s called DUNKYPUNG ($2.99) and it’s a level-based avoidance game that uses a flappy-style movement mechanic. You control a tiny red ball by tapping to flap while bouncing off the walls of a single-screen room. The object is to avoid all the razor sharp obstacles that randomly show up around the room, and the longer you last the more points you’ll earn which go towards filling up a meter at the bottom of the screen. The meter has multiple segments and each time you fill one up you’ll move onto a harder wave that features an increasing number of dangerous elements, before finally squaring off against a boss in the final wave of each level.
What I’m loving most about DUNKYPUNG so far is its smart risk vs. reward mechanics. Simply surviving will make your meter fill up, albeit very slowly. Collecting the white balls that appear in a level will give you a quick score bump, and you can also graze the danger elements in a level by getting extremely close to them without actually touching them for another quick bonus, which the game amusingly refers to as “Death Hugs." Once you get comfortable with the flapping mechanics it’s nearly impossible not to want to graze everything you possibly can and go for every white ball you see, but of course that also greatly increases your chances of hitting said hazard and ending your game. But I MUST. GRAZE. MORE. I need those Death Hugs.
It’s a hugely enjoyable and also an incredibly challenging game. If you die before surviving all waves and beating the boss you’ll be sent back to the very beginning, but there is a “Casual" option in the settings which will allow you to restart from your previous wave upon death instead if going all the way back to the start sounds a little too brutal for you. If you’ve enjoyed games like Flappybalt or the more recent Super Fowlst then I can pretty much guarantee you’ll get hooked on DUNKYPUNG. It’s a fully paid game at $2.99 with no IAP and you can follow the discussion about the game in our forums for more.
