Sometimes, you just want a bag of chips. I know, there’s a world of delicious food out there that has tons of nutritional value and can inform you so much about a culture or a people or a historical event that happened around or due to some dishes, but those aren’t ninety nine cents at 7-11. It’s a good snack, and that’s all it needs to be. We can watch a three minute clip of a video, we can listen to a three minute pop song, and we sure as hell used to spend five minutes reading a list on Cracked, so why not indulge the same way with a video game? I didn’t expect anything more or less with Deep Deep Deep Nightmare, and I came away perfectly satisfied. It won’t supplant your top ranked titles, but it can scratch an itch with the best of them.

The form is right, but why isn’t he crying while doing it? That’s how I eat birthday cake.

The concept is straightforward: a nameless child eats an entire birthday cake in spite of being warned against it, and he’s now in the midst of a tummy ache nightmare that’s manifesting in a wave twinstick shooter in a limited arena. In order to “wake up,” he must conquer a little more than twenty stages, each with multiple waves of enemies with various types of attacks. Luckily, he’s also dreaming of guns, spells and hats, because why the hell not. Getting coins from defeated monsters and bosses alike, our gluttonous lead will blast through some surprisingly difficult and horrific beasties in order to…what, wake up? To face his mother probably pissed he did exactly what she told him not to do? To hell with that, might as well keep dreaming and collecting hats.

Each of the encounters in Deep Deep Deep Nightmare is an arena wave fight, usually three to four groups of enemies before moving onto the next wave. Enemies have projectiles as well as doing physical damage, so you need to be aware of stationary baddies as much as those rushing at you. Killing enemies may or may not drop stuff, from different weapon ammunition to critical heart containers to replenish one of your four health points. Hearts don’t drop if you don’t need them, and drops seem to stay on the ground forever, so you can avoid the extra bullets if your gun is maxed out. Between the waves, a roulette wheel spins to either give you a reward (three or four random goodie boxes of health and bullets) or a penalty (some form of trap that exists until the next wave). Shoot, survive and keep on moving.

The reward of losing over half the screen to spikes feels…unfair.

While there’s no new ground being broken here, Deep Deep Deep Nightmare is surprisingly competent in its execution. Some really commendable moments are the weapons and the enemies. While you only have nine guns in total to choose from (and only four you can bring into the fray with one always being the starter pistol), the changes to battle strategy are pretty complex and give you lots of options. For example, the shotgun vs. the super shotgun is a natural upgrade (three bullets or five), but deciding between the knife gun (which has penetrating knives) or the wave gun (parabolic shots can go from one wall to the other) can really be a matter of preference. The only thing that isn’t is the last gun, the homing missiles, which is so overpowered it is practically a necessity for dealing with bosses.

Besides guns, the spells you can unlock are pretty spiffy, but also very limited in use. Each spell has some unique effect, like a spinning wave of bullets or a pulse that eliminates whatever trap has been laid on the floor. To prevent the spells from being too useful, there’s a cooldown time that seems to take far, far too long between casting. While I can understand that the devs don’t want you to cheese through the game, things like a protective barrier that lasts less than five seconds and then takes almost a minute to regenerate make prioritizing magic a fool’s errand. You’re better off just getting better at dodge rolling, as that makes you invulnerable to everything except physically stopping on top of enemies.

The fairy shooting a single bullet while jumping hands come to fist me to death isn’t really helpful.

Additionally, there’s no super easy way to unlock everything. Between weapons, spells and hats, everything costs money, and the best way to get that is finishing off bosses. Not just grinding the little mobs: their drops are negligible compared to the cost of getting something like the shield spell or the bouncy spike gun, and you want to upgrade as quickly as possible. Basically, it’s best to use smart shopping strategy: purchase the first couple of guns that you can (anything is better than the starter pistol) and then grind while saving to get the really big boys. Once you’ve attained the homing missiles, everything else is smooth sailing, particularly if luck is on your side going into the fights and drops provide plenty of ammo.

Deep Deep Deep Nightmare felt like it was going to just keep reskinning the same mobs from the very start, but the actual execution couldn’t be further from that concept. I was astonished at the sheer variety and number of different enemies I kept encountering all the way to the final boss. Enemies with tons of attack patterns, bullet types, survival mechanics and other notable features were everywhere, and constantly changing. The waves, while static, give you tons to worry about in being able to survive, and you need to be ready to change your approach as you encounter, die, and make note about how to survive the next time you struggle to this stage of the floor.

Interestingly, this isn’t even the final boss, which feels like an obvious thing (so kudos!).

By contrast, the bosses felt…boring. They were certainly big, and they had their own attack patterns and stages of fight, but it felt like it was really familiar territory. A giant hopping eyeball. A set of massive fists with a big head inbetween. Even the towering birthday cake boss felt really over the plate, especially once it became clear it would just rush me while pinging off the walls. There’s a ton of Binding of Isaac inspiration being drawn here, and it becomes almost laughably obvious in moments where bosses are clearly Peep, The Cage or Mom with different hats. It already felt too influential in the character design and concept, but the bosses really brought that home for me to the point where I just rolled my eyes at each new encounter.

While this little jaunt is fun, it’s also frustrating because so much of it does rely on either patience or luck. With Deep Deep Deep Nightmare, you either need to spend the time memorizing spots of safety and running trials on the best weapons possible OR you simply need to give up and pray you get some good drops over the course of the stage. Part of me feels like it’s not worth complaining about since you can run through a stage in under ten minutes (usually under five) and reloading is just that simple. On the other hand, if a game is going to be a pick up and play, I don’t want to spend the precious few seconds I have on my break slamming my head against the wall over and over.

You would be astonished how quickly I went from full health to dead after this moment.

But I’m not going to totally pan a decent bag of chips. Nothing about Deep Deep Deep Nightmare was unpleasant, offensive or boring. It has some flaws, sure, but it also has some genuine quality that comes from a well thought out gameplan. Buy guns, buy spells, buy hats and shoot baddies. Keep going till the game’s over, then have yourself a little victory party. It’s honestly a good time, and twinstick enthusiasts will find something to love with the smoothness of control and the ramping difficulty of the stages. You’re not going to necessarily keep dipping back in once the bag is empty, but you will be satisfied. It’s a good snack.

Deep Deep Deep Nightmare is available now on Steam, Nintendo Switch Xbox Series One X/S and PlayStation 4/5.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Deep Deep Deep Nightmare was provided by the publisher.