Devolver Bootleg

This is a fake bootleg collection that knows exactly what it is. You get eight tiny parodies: a gun dungeon crawler, a bloody top-down murder run through Milwaukee, an ape-prison platformer, an endless fall down a well, a two-round fighting tournament, a cat in armor, arcade basketball, and a lost plane shooter with a typo.

You pick one from a chunky retro menu and play it straight, in pixel graphics with chiptune drums and a lot of blood. Two of them need a second player. None of them are long, and that is the point: quick arcade loops, high scores, and jokes about the originals.

Most of these games want you dead quickly and laughing about it. You dodge bullets room to room in Enter The Gun Dungeon, where one hit sends you back to the start. You work through twenty levels plus a boss in Hotline Milwaukee, clearing floors fast or getting flattened.

The controls stay simple, eight directions and a couple of buttons, but the pace is hectic. You move, shoot, grab guards as shields, squash well creatures, and fall deeper for gems. It is tough in that old arcade way, and beating a boss or a high score is a highlight.

The humor is the other half of the package. Ape Out Jr. turns a jazz ape escape into a Donkey Kong Jr. climb, Shootyboots turns a fall into footwear with firepower, and Catsylvania barely explains itself beyond a cat inside a suit of armor. Luftrousers even begs you not to share its lost thumbdrive contents.

It lands best if you know the originals and like meta gags about pirates, demakes, and bad translations. The roughness is intentional, all wobbly movement and blunt parody, which keeps it funny for an evening rather than a month.