Bore Blasters Review

Very addictive roguelite kind of game with short runs. Has an option to shoot without having to hold down a button which is so much more comfortable! It has no missable achievements and takes around 20 hours.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 20h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: You don’t need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Yes, the 100% achievement is grindy
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty option
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Before the release of Bore Blasters, I was already very excited about this game, as it draws inspiration from “Galactic Mining Corp”, a game I did enjoy a lot. And this new game by 8BitSkull didn’t disappoint. It has a very addictive gameplay loop, which is in some ways a bit of a roguelite where you earn a currency that can be used to buy permanent upgrades. What helps with feeling addictive is that the runs are very short… but before I knew it I had played already for 4 hours without noticing. Which is in my book a good thing. I love it when games suck you in and you forget about the rest of the world for a second.

When you start the game you have only one type of miner, but while playing through the story you’ll unlock 2 others with such cool abilities, that I preferred by far over the first miner. After unlocking those I never went back and I mostly played with the second one. You start each level at the top of the service, the goal is to get to the bottom.. but there might also be an additional story objective. While getting to the bottom you try to mine as many gems as possible within the time limit because those give you temporary upgrades in that run, but it also is the currency for the permanent upgrades. I love how affordable the first few upgrades are, you’ll be able to unlock a bunch after already the first 1 a 2 runs.

Another thing I want to highlight is the settings menu. Here you have the option to not have to hold down a button to shoot, but simply press it to start shooting and press it again to stop shooting (that last part I only did on accident, because why would you want to stop shooting :P). I love that they add this setting because it is so much easier to use and it also helps with the accessibility of the game.

Bore Blasters doesn’t have any missable achievements and almost all of them you’ll unlock while playing through the story. However, the one for 100% is quite the grind because at the end (?) of the story and at the end of the upgrades, there are still many levels left which feel like a grind because you only work on those for the 100%… the currency you won’t use anymore outside of the temporary upgrades within that level. There is a question mark in that sentence because it didn’t totally feel like the end, the story comes to a conclusion but I had unanswered questions that even didn’t get answered after reaching the 100%. I hope that that means there will be room for a sequel, as I would love to play another game like this one!

This review for Bore Blasters was written on 11 March 2024, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 10 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.