In Mike Klubnika's growing oeuvre of brilliantly deplorable games, the same elements tend to recur. First, smoking: deep, long drags to make the lungs burn and eyes water. Second, club music: hard and fast, accented with just a faint sense of melancholy. Third, guns: big and loud, usually aimed at you from point-blank range, ready to blow your brains out.
Across three excellent games in almost as many years - 2023's Buckshot Roulette, 2025's S.p.l.i.t, and 2026's Machine Party - Klubnika has remixed each of these elements with design verve and stylistic aplomb. Buckshot Roulette is a gruesome game of chance delivered at the business end of a pump-action shotgun. S.p.l.i.t. is a Matrix-esque hacking game with the gnarliest, most harrowing ending I've played in recent years. Machine Party, meanwhile, delivers a seedy, hyper-violent take on Mario Party: funny, yes; brutal, too.
