Billy’s Nightmare
Abilities & Items, based on child logic
Poison bullies with a pair of Stinky Socks, set creepy toys on fire with a
Magnifying Glass or make them step on some painful Pego Bricks!
And since all abilities use cooldowns instead of ammo, there’s no need
to save them for later.
Tons of unlockable outfits with unique playstyles
Dress up as a Pirate, wielding a flintlock pistol and a cutlass for
close-quarters combat. Or maybe dress up as a Magician and keep your
distance, while your deadly bunnies do the work for you. Every outfit in
Billy’s Nightmare starts with a unique primary ability and a more
powerful secondary ability.
Fast mounts for exploring
Since you can’t run very fast in a nightmare, every outfit in the game
comes with its own mount. As long as no nightmare creatures are around,
Billy can use his mount to travel faster.
Friendly combat pets
Fire-breathing dragons, snowball-throwing yetis and barking dogs. Find
the Pet Shop and adopt a friendly pet that will help Billy in his nightmare.
Steam User 8
Maddmike Steam Curator
Billy’s Nightmare pulls from a wide indie tradition of roguelike bullet hells. Enter a room, use your twin-stick shooting to clear said room of baddies, repeat until you’ve downed all the bosses then go do it again. You’ve definitely played something like Billy’s Nightmare, but probably not something as blisteringly paced.
20 minute run times are the norm in this dream world where childlike whimsy meets comedic turbo violence, but maybe even more defining is a de-emphasis on genre tentpole mechanics like builds and progression. That clears the floor for a fast paced action-focused roguelike whose wins and losses are always determined by how well you’re dodging your enemies bullets and how precisely you’re landing yours.
That also means it’s not going for the same infinite qualities some it’s muses have nor does it boast much run-to-run variety; but what it lacks in random rogue thrills it compensates for with a laser focus on its arcade shooting fundamentals—resulting in a worthy, if lightweight, entry to the genre.
Everything in Billy’s Nightmare can be found in the folds of a seven year olds brain. The bogeyman has taken over your dreams and converted them into nightmares. Defeating his army of rogue action figures, school bullies, and scary movie villains will demand nerf guns and teaming up with Santa Clause. Don’t let all the seemingly cutesy first impressions fool you, the game leaves PG territory the second you start touching the controller. Whether your foes have plastic bodies or not is irrelevant, blood will be flying everywhere and decorating the room with morbid glee.
Edgy flash games are the clear inspiration and it kind of works because of how straight it’s played: Billy isn’t sadistic, the little characterization he gets portrays him as a plain ol’ kid with childish fears and a cozy bedroom complete with interactive train set. He’s a blank-ish slate ready to have a bunch of different styles imposed on him. His abilities are entirely tied to the unlockable costume he has equipped, which can be picked at the start of the run and governs a primary and secondary attack.
Importantly, those attacks are rigid once you’re in a run. You’ll never swap out for a new gun nor will you ever upgrade that gun or your stats. Your average power at the start of a given run is usually pretty close to where it will be at the end. What little powering up you do in between is just a few conditional defense tools and one to two active items.
This seemingly subtle choice makes Billy’s Nightmare play a whole lot differently than its supposed peers. The usual roguelite inter and intra-run ramp up doesn’t really exist because of how close you start to the relative apex of your power. That does rob the game of the usual rogue sensation of escalating strength and the thrill of lucking into an item that totally warps your run, but the flip side is how well it embraces that retro combat simplicity… which pays off because that combat is fun.
Shooting and swinging feels punchy, you get a low cooldown dive move with lots of generous invulnerability frames, there’s plenty of enemy variety with readable movement and intent, and you can weaponize that readability by baiting chargers into environmental hazards or ensuring explosive foes die near their allies. The dozen-ish bosses are a highlight too: each with unique firing patterns that demand you move around the space in different ways.
As you fight through more and more rooms you’ll acquire teeth currency to cash in at the tooth fairy, with her usual rewards of healing or some new abilities. Those abilities vary in strength but they’re always a compliment to your basic shooting powers, never a supplement. Freezes, poisons, summons and more are the actives you’ll be squeezing in between your left clicks and they’re the first of many ways in which Billy’s Nightmare isn’t just non-build focused, but also very fast.
Once you get two abilities you like from a merchant or random event, there’s really no harm in just blazing your way through to each boss. The preceding room always has a free teleport back to the shop, and that’s really all you need. Exhausting all the rooms on a floor usually nets you more options rather than more direct power: your readiness to take on the next boss will be defined by your skill above all, so you don’t feel that pressure to make every run a comprehensive floor-clearing one like you might in say Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon.
There’s more explicit tools that encourage that speed too: every character gets an out-of-combat mount with an instant cast time. After finishing a room you can immediately mount up and sprint over to the next, the time between combat is rarely more than a few seconds. You're immune to environmental hazards while mounted so there’s no risk in just blitzing around from room to room, and your cooldowns refresh at the start of every combat too so you never have to wait—that’s a nice touch.
The result of all these decisions is a roguelike that is both breezy and immediate above all else; once I became accustomed to its rhythm I found myself playing multiple runs in a single session not for the surprise of what came next, but for the consistency. It’s always you, your weapons, and the enemies—everything else is tangential.
There are some meta-progression incentives, but much like the mid-run power ups they’re commonly an expansion of the size of your toolkit—not the strength of it. With some exception, most of your meta-currency will just be spent on new costumes.
Billy’s Nightmare won’t be your next desert island roguelike, but it’s focus on action fundies instead of builds and progression give it a fast-paced and arcadey flow. The few random-run elements at play are always an accessory to the bullet helling and never invalidate the challenge that hell poses. Once you’ve played it for about an hour you can easily see where the next 10 hours are going, but within its predictable framework it executes with grace—and I think it’d be a mistake to sleep on it.
Steam User 6
It's a cool game that feels like a mix of some of my favorite rouge-likes with a breath of fresh air. The enemies and such are pretty nostalgic, pretty fast paced and hard, having hundreds if not a thousand hours in these kind of games. Some parts really had both me and my friend going from full quiet focus to breaking out in laughter. The costumes are really unique and I look forward to unlock and try them all!
Steam User 4
As someone who had a lot of nightmares as a kid I can really relate to the setting and story of Billy's Nightmare. The game takes you on a humorous, dark and gory ride through a variety of nightmare themes full of childhood nostalgia.
I'm quite familiar with the "twin-stick bullet hell roguelike"-genre and enjoy challenging games and was pleased to find that BN offers you a considerable challenge without being over the top Dark Souls difficult. The game offers a lot of weapon, ability and item variety and the different unlockable outfits (essentially various base characters) can really change things up. A subtle but very nice and satisfying detail is the destructible elements in the environment and how absolutely trashed and chaotic a dungeon room can look after a big, messy combat encounter.
I'm looking forward to play more and see where this enjoyable nightmare leads!
Steam User 4
I enjoyed my time with Billy's nightmare.
Just to preface this I did receive the game for free, but that does not change my thoughts or opinions on it.
There are a few things that I wish were a little bit different in the game, not necessarily problems, but preferences.
1. I'd like to be able to use an ability while firing my main gun. Currently abilities go on the primary fire cool down which doesn't allow you to use abilities quite as seamless while firing.
2. I'd like monsters to have a small chance to drop sleeping pills. Probably because I'm bad at the game, but I found myself spending a lot of money just on healing at the tooth fairy instead of getting new items.
3. I'd like to see more passive items, or the chance at getting passive items more often throughout runs. It could allow you to feel stronger and make things a bit more chaotic with stacking passive items. Maybe similar to the way Binding of Isaac does it idk.
The good:
The game was fluid and fun! I love the theme. It was fun using different silly items to mow down nightmares.
The mount was an extremely nice touch to help when you have to navigate back through an entire floor and kept the pacing smooth.
I thought the difficulty was good too, even though I struggled it felt rewarding to finally beat a boss I had been struggling with.
Overall I'd definitely recommend Billy's Nightmare, especially if you enjoyed enter the gungeon or the binding of Isaac.
Can't wait to see what they change/add to the game!
Steam User 2
I'm giving this game a positive review because overall it's fun, but you can't just make the normal enemies somewhat easy then make the bosses extremely difficult. There's gotta be some sort of balance here.