Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands

I went in expecting a charming gimmick and came out genuinely startled by how much craft is packed into this small, loud, hand-drawn world. Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands is the RPG equivalent of discovering a local band playing a 200-capacity venue and realising they should be headlining festivals. Built by Dan Martin and Five Houses - two friends who grew up making games together - it has the focused, idiosyncratic energy of a project made by people who cared deeply about every line of dialogue, every patch of pixel art, every bar of music. You play as Faye, Ian, and Briff, a dysfunctional three-piece who stumble into a cursed battle of the bands contest where every entrant can literally weaponise their music and where losing means dying. The world they inhabit - kicking down every single door, wandering through muscular forests, bickering with an absurd cast of fully voiced-portrait NPCs - is overflowing with layered comedy. It sits somewhere between Undertale's sincerity and the chaotic energy of early Double Fine titles like Costume Quest. The humour lands consistently, and the writing never forgets that underneath the silliness there are three people who actually care about each other. The combat is where the game earns real respect. Battles use a Measure-based action bar that blends turn-based structure with meaningful between-turn decisions. Measure Effects - buffs and debuffs that occupy sections of the timeline itself - mean you are always watching the bar, always thinking about what fires before your next turn. Each of the three bandmates can equip one Beat (a free basic attack), three Mods that define their class and abilities, and Patches sewn onto a Battle Jacket for passive bonuses. The nine musically-themed classes - Headbanger, Show-Off, Busker, Distorter, Avant-Garde among them - are genuinely distinct, and nothing stops you from running Faye as a hard-hitting self-damaging Headbanger while Briff handles support. Build flexibility is real and rewarding. The Merch item system replaces consumables with a shared Stock resource, so you are never grinding for health potions. Performances, the band-wide ultimate attacks triggered at 100 Glam, are spectacular when they fire - the crowd, the music, the screen energy - though reaching that threshold in shorter fights is legitimately difficult and a fair criticism. Here is the honest caveat: there is no easy mode, and every dungeon caps your party level to prevent grinding past tough encounters. Bosses expect you to have cracked the current build puzzle. Players who want to coast on the story will hit walls. That design choice is intentional and divisive - some will call it refreshingly demanding, others will bounce off it before the game has a chance to reveal its best moments. Movement through old areas can also feel slow, and a handful of achievements have shown minor bug reports in the community. These are small friction points in an otherwise tight experience that runs 12-15 hours on the main questline and closer to 20-30 for completionists. The soundtrack, composed by Leslie Wai and Patrick Henaghan, spans country, metal, funk, and everything in between - different in-world bands get their own genre identity, and the music holds up entirely outside of the game. This is the kind of release that slips through the cracks simply because it has no marketing budget and a niche source comic. That is a shame, because what Dan Martin and Five Houses built here is genuinely cared-for work - the sort of handcrafted RPG that knows exactly what it wants to be, commits fully, and sticks the landing.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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