Bloody Boobs Review

Sometimes you come across a piece of media that is so unashamedly upfront that you can’t help but assume it’s a very clever form of parody, only to be crushed by disappointment when you realise that it’s definitely not. I present to you Bloody Boobs, a game by developer Eduard Bulashov that feels so ridiculous and masturbatory that it had me wondering if the entire thing was a social commentary.

The premise of Bloody Boobs is that a young, scantily clad girl has been trapped in an evil dungeon and is about to be sacrificed to an ancient deity which thirsts for virgin blood. You must take on the role of that poor woman, who is surely feeling a chill in her bra and thong, and escape. Bulashov is looking to recreate the atmosphere of the 60s and 70s sexploitation genre - where sex was used to sell everything from Westerns to science fiction. You’d perhaps be forgiven for thinking it’s dangerous territory to try to copy something which is a portmanteau featuring the word exploitation, but it can be done well (see the film Black Dynamite as an example).

That’s not the case for Bloody Boobs, however. While there is some real potential here for a proper survival horror game it falls woefully short of the mark. Players can escape from the dungeon by praying to a set of ancient altars. Pray to all three before the various beasties in the level can kill you and you’re through. To avoid these demons and horrors you must try to work your way through the labyrinth planting land mines (yes, land mines) to defeat them.

There are some good qualities to Bloody Boobs: the character customisation is fairly robust and animations are fluid, especially when it comes to the main character’s traversing of the environment. The levels are well-detailed, setting a good tone for the helplessness of the protagonist’s situation. The game also features a multiplayer option that allows for human players to control the demons, making the trial of escaping just that little more suspenseful.

There is a base infrastructure here that could be built up into a good horror game, unfortunately it is let down by its core concept: persuading horny gamers to part with their cash. Bloody Boobs is barely a survival horror game, all you do is run between places on a map, press a button and then repeat. There’s no stealth, no subtlety and no real thought. The multiplayer, while a welcome addition, lacks any real afterthought and it’s incredibly hard to connect properly. The game’s UI is outdated and minimalistic, presumably so that your view of 3D backsides isn’t obscured. On top of all that you can complete the entire thing in a ten minute playthrough, making all but the tiniest of potential price points a rip off.

I tried really hard to find some positives in Bloody Boobs, I really did. As I finished my first run through I thought “okay, so ignoring the fact there are more boob size customisations than face types for each character, and ignoring the fact that the only costume option other than underwear is BDSM gear, this title at least works.” It was at that point that my display was plastered with a victory screen depicting some cartoon breasts with “YOU WIN” splattered on them in whipped cream.

I’m not sure whether Bulashov had any intentions of making this game a throwback to sexploitation films, which - despite their vulgarity - can be used as interesting time capsules to a bygone era of cinema. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a proper videogame concept that the developer got bored of halfway through, deciding instead to hawk some cash from horny 13-year olds.

Bloody Boobs even fails to get a rise out of me. I don’t dislike this game because I feel morally outraged by its content or because I’m offended by its depiction of women, I dislike it because it’s just poor and lazy in almost every way. Considering that porn is always a mere click away these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bloody Boobs doesn’t get anything out of its voyeuristic core premise.