Holy shit I was not expecting to have that much fun with this. Nightmare Kart is what happens when someone with too much autism plays a 24 hour marathon of Mario Kart and Bloodborne (or judging by the style this game is going for, Nightmare Creatures). It's a gothic horror hack and slash on wheels, with plenty of grotesque characters to see.

Now when I heard "Bloodborne as a 90's kart racer", I thought "That's probably gonna be fun for 5 minutes, not that great as an actual racer." Nightmare Kart looked at past me with spite, and proceeded to be an amazing and fun as fuck kart racer. The items are simple, yet enjoyable, and the track design is imaginative and fun. Although some mechanics that confused me were the difference between drifting and power braking (although that may just be me being an idiot), and tricks (which you have to do in the air, not while your jumping off a ramp, thanks Mario Kart muscle memory).

Oh, by the way, did you know this game has a story? I haven't seen a kart racer with a story in a long while. You play as the Hunter, racing through gothic streets, spooky forests, and Clock Tower-ass clock towers, all in search for the origin of the Nightmare you're all trapped in. It even has boss fights! Fun boss fights at that! I think Nicholas may be up there as one of my favorite bosses in a video game (he's just so much fun)!

All and all, this game was treat. I loved every second of it, and I might even go back to 100% it.

MAY THIS NIGHTMARE NEVER END!!

Kinda crazy how, even tho it didn’t end up using any of Bloodborne’s characters and locations directly and spawning as a joke game of sorts with a really silly idea, it still is a far more interesting and cool use of the IP than whatever Sony has done with it for the past 9 years.

Nightmare Kart is one of those weird anomalies in which I’m completely baffled with how amazing it is even tho I really shouldn’t be; some months ago I watched my girlfriend play the entirety of Bloodborne PSX and I’m still super impressed at how much effort went to what’s essentially a re-imagination of the beginning hours of Bloodborne; all the enemies and NPCs look incredible in all of their polygon glory, the sound effects and compression is top notch, and the whole final section is completely original and has a focus on my man Gilbert! Basically, what I’m trying to say is that Lilith Walther is the GOAT, and that I’ve should have totally seen coming that what was originally meant to be Bloodborne Kart was going to be far more than a thing to point at and say ‘’HA! That werewolf is on a giant wheel-shaped kart!’’… I mean it’s also that but you get my point.

This game is so delightfully silly that I wish it had even more cutscenes to showcase it; there’s nothing better than to see Father Gascoine’s cutscenes being played completely straight only for a bike to appear out of thin air followed by Akira shot for shot references. It keeps the sensibilities and character mannerisms that made the original Yharnam so unique and adds on top of that a flare of stupidity that by doesn’t feel out of place ‘cause of how dumb yet self-serious the whole premise is. Seeing a Skeleton driving on Gherman’s wheelchair fucking sent me for some reason, and the Boar being one of the vehicles is such an obvious decision that I cannot believe I didn’t see it coming, yet is genius!

Till now I’ve been referring to all characters by their original Bloodborne monickers, and even tho all locations and faces are clearly meant to represent the original game and it’s still a shame that Lilith and her team had to rework all of the characters in some way or another, that’d be a huge disservice to the admittedly creative or fucking hilarious some of these characters have received. The main Good Hunter design goes HARD, I love how the Dream Watchers’ heads are replaced by big funny eyeballs, the Matilda Sisters are honestly WAYYYY cooler than their real game counterparts and, to be utterly honest, I’m so glad the rebranding happened if only because it gave us the absolute best change to Nicholas: he still keeps the similar dialogue and big head-cage… BUT HE ALSO GETS A BIRD. A COMICALLY SMALL CARTOONY BIRD THAT SITS ON TOP HIS HEAD WHILE HE DARTS AROUND THE CORRIDORS WHILE SHOOTING A GUN LIKE A FUCKING MANIAC. NOT ONLY THAT, BUT THE CAGE IS ALSO A SELECTABLE KART THAT LETS YOU RUN ALONG THE TRACKS, BUT IT ALSO GIVES YOU THE BIRD. If getting to hear his scream when he dies in any part of the track didn’t already make way cooler and funnier than Micolash, then the bird for sure does.

It gains a ton thanks to its amazing presentation, and on that note, I really like how this one still keeps the whole PSX theme while not being completely binded by it: in Bloodborne PSX it made complete since the whole point of that game was to be a reimagination of how Bloodborne would work on the original console, while in Nightmare Kart is more of a visual throwback than anything else. There still is some sound compression on dialogue and the UI elements are clearly still referencing those of the PS1, but the controls are clearly influenced by more modern Kart racers and the music sounds SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD, the OST is hella strong, not really sound like anything in the original game at all, but a perfect fit, nonetheless.

But it wouldn’t be enough to make a hilarious kart parody game, ‘cause why not make the gameplay rock? I think I usually like the idea of combat-racing games more than playing them, so keep that in mind when I say that it’s been a while since I’ve had this much fun driving in a game. It all feels so hectic and buttery smooth, the track design is surprisingly great —both as references to the source material and tracks on their own to race on—, the act of shooting enemies both behind and in front on you or using the main selectable weapon is incredibly satisfying and responsive (most of the time), and the sheer variety in battle modes and creativity in the bosses during the campaign had me drooling, the only thing that that I can think of that comes close in what is trying to pull off is that mission mode in Mario Kart DS, and even that would be a bit of a far-fetched comparison considering the amazing hob his game does in adapting Bloodborne’s bosses into this whole new environment.

I even went for the secret ending which grants the final boss, and even if 9I wished at least one of the other two endings also gave some sort of final fight, the lack of any previous final boss made it even more special and cool, phase 2 particularly was simply unbelievable, and honestly, probably better than Bloodborne’s secret final boss. There’s nothing like seeing an eldritch abomination ride a go kart and running for dear life!

Tho if anything, the controls being so good and the battles being so creative makes the game’s biggest downfalls stick out even more, since it makes it the more noticeable when somethings feel more finnicky or unresponsive, like the weapon lock on or how basically all races become incredibly easy once you gain a bit of an advantage and where only one item can hit you. Plus, the enemy AI are clearly not the best, tho that seems to be something that’s being fixed with each update, and with the last one, 1.08, I’d say bosses like Nicholas that were damn easy or dumb have been given a very welcomed upgrade in that regard, and I can see things getting even better as more patches roll.

And that’s the thing, even more work is being continuously put on this game, more hours on top on an already amazing project and brimming with detail, effort, and even content and secrets. What could have been a one-not fan game resulted in an incredible homage, a game that stands on its two legs and offers a racing experience that it’s everything but monotonous. I really need to try free play with friends one day, ‘cause this is honestly an experience I wouldn’t mind going back to in the slightest, running along the nightmare or dashing through libraries in a wheelchair…

… and now that this isn’t tied to the Bloodborne IP at all, you know what that means? We can have merch of Nicholas and the Bird! Forget Bloodborne for PC, this is the real good ending, it was to happen!

Stumbled upon this when scrolling through Steams discovery queue. It was free and seemed like a perfect Steam Deck game so I figured why not?

I was pleasantly surprised by this experience. Even as someone who’s never played Bloodborne, all the legally distinct references made me a chuckle, and I’m sure there are several that I missed.

The gameplay felt smooth and the graphics were clearly influenced by the old era of PS1 games. I wasn’t expecting to play the entire campaign but I didn’t want to put it down.

I love when solo devs can come out make great little bangers like this.

Me: Mom, can we have Bloodborne on Steam?
Mom: No, we have Bloodborne at home
Me: Bloodborne at Home

Bloodborne Kart is a decent attempt at telling the legally distinct story of Bloodborne while also being an abysmal kart racer. The AI is a complete nonfactor, often running into walls and getting stuck in both battle maps and races, leading to you being able to lap them one to two times each map. The visuals are neat, but the movement is choppy and a quick reminder that this is a free title. The music while pretty exciting in it's own right, doesn't match Bloodborne's aesthetic (which in theory is fine because it's a kart racer) but also doesn't match the racing (because you legitimately never have competition.)

It's jank and ultimately not worth your time. Go play Bloodborne on your PS5 or Steam Account instead... oh wait.

Nightmare Kart is an interesting ride through a legally distinct story mode reminiscent of Bloodborne. Full of a familiar cast of characters that look like they might have been purchased off Wish (non-derogatory) you race, fight and drive through the competition.

A lot more variety than I expected including some cool unlockables and surprisingly deep (at times) boss fights. While I would have loved more of them, I think the game ended up being a good length.

Backed by a nice soundtrack and some lovingly created Playstation-era set pieces (the clock is excellent), Nightmare Kart is worth the time to check out.

Unfortunately, it is also marred by some awful physics and just terrible AI. The computers frequently will and do get stuck and much like other kart racers, once you get enough of a lead you will stay there for the entire race. On the flipside, if you end up with some bad luck and get bumped to the back of the pack catching up becomes difficult if one player gets a large lead. Some vehicles felt much harder to win with than others. It just didn't feel balanced to me.

Only expect the story mode to take you 90-120 minutes, but it is worth seeing. Would recommend if the concept seems interesting.

Nighmare Kart vai muito além de um demake, Nighmare kart é um renascimento necessário para agitar a IP morta da conjunção da Sony com a From.

Um pequeno grupo de pessoas conseguiram fazer um trabalho melhor do que empresas multimilionárias, e um trabalho muito bem feito.

Nighmare Kart coloca em uma direção de arte precisa e esplendorosa o enredo lovecraftiano de Bloodborne, conseguindo transpor pras mecânicas de mario kart a história do jogo abandonado da From. É fascinante, minhas expectativas ao acompanhar o desenvolvimento deste game por quase um ano no twitter eram altas, mas fui completamente surpreendido, a esquipe da LWMedia não traz só a estética, ela traz a alma de Bloodborne pra esse game.

Apesar de curto, cada minuto neste game foi especial.

I feel like, intellectually, I only have nice things to say about Not-Bloodborne Kart. Its got incredible presentation, with a mix of well-planned and well-choreographed cinematics as well as a faithful but lively PS1 user experience. The inclusion of guns and combat in a kart racer feels pretty solid, managing to avoid feeling unintuitive or janky in like 99.9% of situations you can find yourself in. The kart racing itself is mostly competent, I find it difficult to complain about the game itself - and certainly I find this to be a better platform for Liliths creativity than Bloodborne Demake was.

But man…. something about it makes me feel slightly hollow. I guess the best way I could phrase this is: its still not a very exciting use of Bloodborne. Yeah, its Not-Bloodborne now and yeah, its mostly a comedy game, but theres also attempts at staging tension and bravado with Nightmare Karts facsimile of Bloodbornes narrative and..... idk. It just leaves you wondering why some parts were so important and worth being tributized and other parts werent so much. No Yahar’gul? No forest race track? Shadows of Yharnam but no Rom? No Amygdalas? You got Astral Clocktower and Maria but no mfing Fishing Hamlet?? Theres just weird representation choices here - but thankfully the humor takes the opportunity to incorporate quite a few. Church Giants squeezing into a kart or the fact that the Bloated Pig is a vehicle are excellent decisions.

In fact despite some of my reservation I actually have to give it a full star exclusively for the fact that, in addition to Nicolas J Micolash’s kart being just him running like a lunatic on foot, his death scream is also like a 15 second long reverb-laiden howl that can be heard no matter where you are on the track. It just absolutely floors me every single time I hear it like "ooooooooooooyyYYYAAAAARGHAHHHHHHHH"

This was a really ambitious game to make, one filled with love, passion, creativity and a distinct vision and I liked it a lot for that! I might not have played Bloodborne so I couldn't tell you how similar/different everything is, but I love how it was an April Fools joke turned into a full fledged and enjoyable game, and its such a visually distinct game from anything from the kart racer genre (even if the music is still cartoonish, but its still amazing regardless) and unapologetically retro, with some really useful options for customising your experience.
All items are pretty derivative of Mario Kart's items (blood droplets = coins, guns = green shells, etc) but they have a grittier spin on them, like blood increasing max speed, insentivising hunting other players and enemies on the course, as well as being able to collect aether vials while drifting for a little speed boost to your kart.
The diversity of missions in the campaign also made it fresh and like I wasn't just playing Grand Prix again, having some cool boss fights and making battle more than just a side mode, which is great because the weapons are really fun to use. Multiplayer is also really fun, having everything in the campaign (except for bosses) with a lot of customisation options for battle and races. Its a shame that after every round you get kicked out, so you can't select how many you want to do before getting booted to the menu, but its not a major annoyance.

I do have to admit that this game isn't perfect however, and my time on it was filled with a little more frustration than enjoyment since the controls didn't feel as responsive or nice to use as most kart racers; the lack of a more in-depth tutorial meant I was running off previous knowledge and muscle memory, which didn't help the feeling of the controls. The UI isn't the most intuitive it could be, there aren't any way markers for dark/foggy maps, sounds, especially voices, were so extremely quiet when compared to the rest of the SFX (I turned it up to max and I still could barely hear it over the music) and I hated the Nicholas boss for being unintuitive to fight and for being able to double tap with his body and his weapon.

Overall its a fun and promicing game but I probably overhyped myself before launch and subsequently got a little disappointed by it, but its getting updated pretty frequently so I can't complain, especially if my gripes get fixed. Trans rights!!

This is a fun novelty piece of free software from the incredible Lillith Walter, shitpost and programming extraordinaire. Her loves for Bloodbourne and shitposting and game making have resulted in another game that's got everyone talking.

The kart racing in this is as good as you could ask for as for a free game that isn't monetized in any way. There are some rough edges when it comes to drifting on certain tracks and the trick boost isn't as good as I want it to be. The shooting though...why does it work so well?

Like Bloodbourne PS1 demake, the graphics lend themselves to the concept pretty well. It's Bloodbourne meet Nightmare Creatures. The controller controls are crazy good (better than any kart racer on the market, in fact) The music is unbelievable. It is great. You best believe I'm ripping that shit and putting it in a folder.

It's time for Lillith to make a game I can buy.

They finally did it, from the same people that brought us the quite successful demake of Bloodborne we get that same universe as a kart racer.

It may not share the title or character and location names, but we know what this is and it works perfectly fine circling that potential legal issue.
Everything you can imagine from the PS4 classic is here, the characters, the enemies, the weapons, the locations and each of these are fantastically and hilariously realised in a very different genre with a PSX aesthetic that goes hard, although perhaps too much so.

The music for me is stellar, an intersection of a venn diagram that shows the games two main influences in Mario Kart and Bloodborne.
Weapon implementation is great and I was especially impressed with the unique mechanic of killing the jobber enemies to increase your maximum speed in much the way coins do for MK.

The karts themselves are hilarious, there are steam-powered bikes and karts, but also General Grievous-like clock wheels and even the potential to run on foot.
Control wise you’re doing as you’d expect from Mario and friends’ racing times, power sliding to build boosts, little stunts of off jumps to also gain speed and when you can, simply using boost pads.
The feeling however is not to the same quality as Mario Kart, perhaps unfair to expect this. When things are going well it feels close to it, but when things are going wrong - my word, is it much jankier!

I really appreciate that the developers decided to go for more than just straight races, but here things feel even worse, aimlessly sliding around, the AI really not being up to much and more than once in my short time with it I powerslid out-of-bounds and died. Not great.

Graphically I am a fan of the demake look and most item pick-ups and signs are quite clear. The extremely short horizon, the amount of darkness however… not a fan.
It makes falling off tracks, much more unfair feeling, and it felt like I was mostly staring at the map when doing battle arenas.

Nightmare Kart has all the ideas, there is a campaign which was a pleasant surprise but like the rest of the package I just do feel the execution is there.
It’s pay-what-you-like and even with the issues I had, was more fun at the time than many other IP labelled Mario Kart clones I’ve played. A worthwhile experience but not one I can see myself ever returning to.

Sony really are a bunch of nimrods for sending a DMCA to the dev right at the time of its original release. But alas you can't kill the dream and glad under some new tongue and cheek rebranding, Nightmare Kart is here and its a blast with more to its surface then I was anticipating for a game that initially was a April Fools joke. While not as clean and smooth as the kart racers its trying to emulate from the peak hay day of racers in this style from the 5th generation. Seeing one of my favourite games reimagined under this context is equal parts hilarious and surprisingly impressive at many points. The astral clocktower track was probably my favourite. Also a operating table as a kart use lol.

A shitpost taken to its ultimate conclusion, Nightmare Kart attempts to capture the setting and characters of definitely-not-Bloodborne in a kart racer/battler. Nightmare Kart's campaign will take the player loosely through some of the key locations and encounters from Bloodborne. All the maps are very recognizable from their source material, and there's a ton of creativity in giving each character their own cool unique karts as well. The structure of the campaign typically alternates between races and battles, and while the races are a fun enough time the battles feel quite poor after the first boss. Combat often involves guns and if you can imagine Mario Kart battle mode where every player is picking up auto-aim guns and whoever shoots first wins, that's about what you can expect.

My feelings on this game are roughly akin to those of JoJo All-Star Battle. It is an absolute labour of love from someone who very much appreciates Bloodborne, but that faithfulness comes at a cost of a game that could feel and play better than it does. Still, it's a free fan game and I am pretty glad it got made, because it at least looks and sounds great.

Unironically, this is one of the most fun games I've played in a long time. The amount of passion that was put into it to emulate "Bloodborne" into "Mario Kart" is incredible. Going through the campaign with all of the bosses was a very fun experience, and the vibe from the developer's other game, a demake of Bloodborne to feel like a PSX game, comes through even more in this game.

It's fantastic; I enjoyed every second of it. It would've been even better if they could have just plain made it "Bloodborne Kart," but, Sony things is a nimrod of a company and loves killing fan projects.

I believe my only "problem" with the game, which is more of a skill issue on my part, is that some of the maps are just very tight and hard to control, particularly on a keyboard. I haven't tried the game on a controller, so perhaps that would be different, as the game is very clearly built around using a controller.