Want a roguelike, decent value way to play Bomberman against friends? Then check out this Cheapness affordable gaming review of Bombslinger [Episode 74]

https://youtu.be/k8ijvMlA8o8
Quick text review:
This roguelike, western take on the Bomberman formula developed by Mode4 and published by plug in digital is perhaps the go to option for Bomberman action. This cheap gaming review shows how:
-The game has nice visuals reminiscent of early attempts at 3D complete with edgy sprites overlain - if you can get into that retro take (But it does have some grating elements like the farm zone's gray dirt and some grungy polygons)
-Decent to good western music that's strangely upbeat for this revenge story and is maybe a bit familiar when you strip away the western theming
-Innovative and unique in that it injects roguelike elements into the Bomberman formula to create a new game (Well at least it's not a twin stick shooter) with procedurally generated (Within limits) arenas and items (Not that many of them - on a good run you may see most of the non-starting items)
-The roguelike elements are light though (You unlock starting item options and nothing else) but maybe that works to produce a nice arcadey outlier in the genre and maybe this fits with what Bomberman is (Won't keep you busy for long but you won't pull your hair out as much over it)
-Good Bomberman combat if it is similar to what it has always been (How much can you really change it) but you now have health and they did add new bomb types, weapons and enemy behaviors to shake things up and you earn more xp when blowing up multiple enemies at once (So you level up more and get more upgrades) so skill is rewarded (If some of these additions may disturb the Bomberman purist but some of these require regenerating spirit energy use so that may prevent you from completely relying on them)
-Although constantly choosing the increase flame length upgrade can feel more dangerous here because you keep it for the entire run and not just a match so you may burn yourself
-Has samescreen versus for up to 4 players and steam input and remote play together does work
-Doesn't have much story (If the ending can be lovely in a morose way)

Practical concerns:
-OK value for money (R3.59 / $0.34 / £0.25 per hour for me)
-Small download as it takes up 266.62 Mb on the hard drive
-Easy to run (Works on the Warhorse)
-Has local versus mode for old school Bomberman action

great fun to play!

bomberman-esque game
its ok

Bomberman-like game that takes place in the wild west. I was surprised how deep this game can go with all the features it has.

On the other hand, no matter how fun the game is at first, it gets really repetitive after a while and unless you're that type of person who likes to torture him/herself by getting 100% completion, there isn't much of anything else in store for you once you defeat all the bosses.

It's also good each time the maps are procedurally generated thus making the game a little less repetitive so you got at least something to look forward to while you're trying to grind digital numbers.

Honestly, even the original Bomberman wasn't that great, imo. However, this game does a decent job at bringing something new to the table.

At its heart, this is a Bomberman-style game combining gritty Western storytelling and modern roguelike gameplay. Our protagonist Bombslinger is an ex-bandit who left his evil gang to get married. The problem is he took a lot of the gang's cash when he split and presumably used that to build the house that gets burned at the start. With nothing left, he sets out for revenge on all his old pals and meets a few oddities along the way.

Having long ago played Gameboy Bomberman quite a lot, the controls felt comfortable. Classic powersups like obstacle jumping and bomb kicking work as they always did (if you can find them) while getting more Bombs and Firepower comes from a new levelup system that has you choosing a stat to increase from three random options. Defeating enemies grants XP to levelup, and there's a nice XP bonus when you defeat multiple enemies at once, which works on chickens too by the way.

Bombslinger gains stat increases when he levels, finds stuff in the field (and he finds more keys and better stuff with a high Luck stat) or purchases stuff at shops using gold – of course there's a Gold Finding stat which increases those pickups, and a powerup which lowers the cost at shops. The Health stat is probably the most important as you can easily win the game with only health boosts and full recoveries. The other stats are Speed (which I preferred at 2 of 5) along with stats to increase a spirit gauge or make spirit recharge faster.

You'll want plenty of spirit because there's a decent number of weapons and tools you can use in addition to your bombs, like the excellent bear trap or very large bombs, and even some high-skill abilities such as arc-thrown weapons or hiding as an object. Other powers are free to use, from sometimes avoiding certain damage types to an overpowered dodge roll, or changing the way regular bombs work. Neat one-time consumables include the highly random snake oil and health-for-spirit injectors.

As in many roguelike games, you'll start each run with some starting perks and unlock more through gameplay. Eventually you can start with builds that will help with gaining other achievement perks, so get what you can and remember to abuse the Restart option in the pause menu if a run isn't going well. For example, getting 5000 gold may seem impossible, but there's a way.

Beyond the Adventure mode in the front menu, there's also a Battle mode for Remote Play or when you have others over, though you'll want competitive gamers who really like Bomberman because the mode is less a party and more a desperate fight. Take care though if you play against the tough CPU opponents as there's no way to pause or quit a fight after you die and two evenly matched CPUs can take a long time to kill each other.

Overall, the core gameplay elements are solid and this mashup of ideas works. Almost every boss battle is great, with some patience for the annoying gold-stealing guy and how the final boss is a joke once you realize his weakness. There's an excellent batch of visually-distinct regular enemies to explode, each with different abilities and exploit methods to discover, like the wolves which have trouble at corners when trying to escape.

A small complaint would be not getting XP when enemies accidentally kill each other. What if I engineered that to happen or they did so outside my control? Would it really make the game any worse if I got that XP? Also, I wish utility powers didn't take the same equipment slot as useful weapons.

Mostly I wanted a bit more control over the random elements; the cost of re-rolling a shop's inventory is high, the chests which cost money to open are a gamble, and field drops can be rare. All of this makes achievements to collect specific things more about luck (and playing the game a lot) instead of skill. If I could sell unwanted keys and things, that might make everything flow better, as well as being able to swap starting perks between zones.

In the story, it's not great that a lady gets fridged to start off this quest for vengeance, plus the game reminds you of that each time you start. Burning down the house would have been enough. But when the whole gang is dead and you're choosing the ending, there is something fitting about mercy.

Really fun roguelike that pulls on the gameplay that made Bomberman great. Planning and execution are key in this game, and I had a lot of fun working up to the finale. The cowboy/desperado theming really makes this game stick out, and it was well worth what I paid for it.

Video: https://youtu.be/211YcbkXRDk

Really fun idea, especially an interesting way to play Bomberman single-player. I was definitely able to find enjoyment, although I'm not sure how much it's one you'd replay after beating the boss since there's only so much variety in a build, and achievements seem more annoying/tedious than fun.

The start of every run, in the beginning, is more rough than fun, with your bomb explosion being 1x1. This works fine in Bomberman when it's blocks that drop upgrades, but in this game, it's walking enemies that drop the goods. So you place a bomb behind them, and they simply keep walking away and avoid the explosion. You can't get upgrades from the blocks, so you have to predict and manipulate the enemy AI in a frustrating way.

Thankfully, once you unlock some upgrades from the rogue-lite side of things, runs start way better and you can pick up speed quickly. Pretty good boss variety for what the game is, and there are a decent amount of creative items, it's just you won't see a lot of them in a run and there's not really a way to manipulate that. You want all three boot upgrades in one run? Too bad, you explored every room and got to the final boss without ever seeing them.

All in all: Cool idea, I'd love to see a sequel, fun to beat, but has it's limits.

I wish there were more games like Bombslinger because in my opinion the market for Bomberman-likes is still too small.
In Bombslinger you play as a former boss of an outlaw gang in the wild west. The titular Bombslinger decided to leave his gang to live with his wife on a small ranch but because he took the money from their biggest heist with him, they kill his wife and burn down the ranch.
Now hellbent on revenge you hunt them one by one down.

The gameplay mixes the typical Bomberman formular with rogue-like elements. Each run is randomized for more replayability. You have to travel through multiple stages, each one having their own boss, a member of your former gang. In typical Bomberman fashion you can lay down bombs to kill enemies. The key here is to corner them with your bombs so they cannot escape the blast. Bombs can be chained together and all explode at the same time if the fire touches each other. This can be used to set up combos. Killing enemies gives you XP and killing multiple at the same time through your combos gives you a bonus. Leveling up allows you to improve your stats, more firepower, more bombs can be placed down, more speed and so on. If you have lost HP you can also refill them through a level up.
Your bombs deal also damage to you, so you want to avoid that.

There are many different enemies that have different kind of behaviours. The first enemies will either wander around aimlessy or will follow you if they see you. Later you get outlaws with revovlers that shoot you if they see you, wolves that charge at, farmers with shotguns that sleep but wake up if they here noises and even shamans that can summon lightning at your position.
Luckily you can also find all kind of useful tools. You can find alternate bombs that have different effects, like a seeker bomb that fires a long flame wall that searches for enemies to kill them or the nitro bomb that completely blasts through obstacles and enemies alike. You can also find guns to shoot at enemies. One thing that you will find are snake oil flasks. Those act as random potions. You don't know what it will do until you drink it and it can benefit you or hurt you. It's still usually wortht he risk because you can get stat upgrades with those.

There is also a shop in each level where you can buy items for gold that you get from crates and enemies. What I really like here is that when you enter the shop, you realize that you are actually playing a 3D game despite the look. Suddenly you are in first person inside the shop, looking directly at the wares on display. It's really cool and I wish more games would do something like that.
That being said, the game is still in 2D fashion for the rest of it, it's just that the game mixes 3D environment with 2D sprites which is the reason why you won't immediately notice that the world is 3D. T´Besides shops there is no gameplay element that makes use of the 3D graphics.

One thing I like about this game is that achievements have a real use here. By completing an achievement you will unlock an item for your loadout. Before each run you can take up to four different items with you which will give you passive benefits. It allows you to go for a specific strategy or simply give you a headstart. It's not overwhelming in terms of power but it makes reaching certain milestones more rewarding. Thre is no other metaprogression besides that however, so you won't get more powerful with each run until you beat the game by sheer dominance.
There aren't any super powerful builds either to be honest, the focus is more on skillfully playing Bomberman with added randomization and items. This is in my opinion completely fine, it's a good Bomberman game although I do wish there were more items. Variety in this game is pretty scarce and that would be my biggst complaint. You will often see simiiar items in your runs, the variation mostly comes from how the stages are built.

The game also has a multiplayer mode, a classic arena mode like you know it. Kill the other players with your bombs, don't die yourself. It's good but it's only local multiplayer, which kinda sucks if you don't have friends at your home to play with. You can play with Remote Play together but that is often laggy. But if you have friends at home, than you can have some good old-fashioned Bomberman battles, which is always fun.

Its fun, but it the movement is a bit too sluggish. Its essentially bomber with a story its fine if you can overlook the movement

Good fun. Rogue like bomberman.