Babushka’s Glitch Dungeon Review | Retro Pixel Art Meets Hag Magic in This Hilarious Indie Must-Play!
Babushka’s Glitch Dungeon is a glitchy puzzle platformer where a grandma sweeps through chaos with hag magic. Explore secrets, unlock abilities, and fight wild bosses in this bold indie gem!
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Game: Babushka’s Glitch Dungeon
Studio: pets club 2
Publisher: pets club 2
Platforms: Steam
Completion Time: 2+ Hours
Price: $5.99
Genre: Puzzle Platformer, Exploration, Metroidvania
❎
Steam Deck Verified
Babushka's Glitch Dungeon, a puzzle platformer with exploration and Metroidvania elements that make for a glitch-filled adventure. Let’s tidy up in my review!
Glitchy First Impressions
Pets Club 2, the studio—or Jake, as I know him—is an indie developer who has made one of the most unique, odd, witty, and fun games of the year. It gets compared to Animal Well very often, and rightfully so. It's a Metroidvania-styled platformer with hidden elements, pixel artwork, and trippy gameplay. The thing that makes it stand out is the truly glitchy premise.
Babushka’s Origin Story
Babushka, which means grandma, is our protagonist. She is doing her chores and sweeping when she encounters these neon glitches and starts to sweep them away. That’s when she falls into her basement that she didn’t know existed, and the hijinks begin. It’s what you discover while down there that makes this a story to remember.
Okay, let’s get back to the gameplay!
Sweep, Fight, Explore
Babushka spends her time tidying up her basement of weird and odd rooms full of glitches. You know the room is clean once you get a notification at the top that everything is tidy, but that comes with a caveat because you are to also rid the area of bosses—five of which you will encounter. But before we talk about the bosses, let’s get into the main gameplay.
What starts as sweeping away glitches becomes an adventure where you acquire unique abilities—or hag magic, as it is described—that add to the madness of this underground world. The first ability lets you jump higher and float across the screen, getting those hard-to-reach glitches cleaned up. The second one you are introduced to is one of my favorites: you are given the ability to walk off the edge of a platform and continue walking as if an invisible platform extends, only dropping when you jump. This gives you a chance to truly find new areas and hidden places across the rooms you explore.
It’s when you are introduced to the fact that you can combine these that movement makes Babushka truly unstoppable. You also get the ability to walk through enemy glitches unharmed, and another great one that lets you walk up walls. You spend time collecting orbs around each room and using all the skills introduced to get to them in hard-to-reach places.
You need to be aware of enemy glitches that can harm you, or these moving squares that will take away all your abilities. Navigating around them or hitting enemies with your broom is your main fighting mechanic. You later unlock the ability to throw your broom out and hit enemies, and even teleport to where the broom flies. This is the coolest grandma you will ever meet—compared to your real-life grandma, who is probably cool as hell or was. Pour one out for the grannies no longer with us.
Which brings me to the fact that you don't really die in the sense that you have to start all over. You get hurt and end up back at a save point or the start of a room, which to be honest is a blessing in disguise—and hilarious to see, having died 180 times at the end of the boss fight.
Glitch Art Vibes
This is where Babushka’s truly stands out from other pixel art games. It's a Glitch Dungeon, so every aspect of the game complements glitches in the design. When picking up new abilities, moving on to new rooms, defeating enemies, turning into a chicken, and more—you’re met with squares of the level design randomizing and moving in odd ways. The errors are not hidden here and are shown in full display.
The short animated intro gives us a preview of the adorable Babushka, even at one point reminding me of Four Swords with the different color clothes she has on.
The boss designs are so rad in the way they behave around the rooms, adding difficulties and being 2D but also 3D in movement. The world comes off dark and spooky, but the colorful characters you meet and glitches add enough of a colorful splash to make them loud and vibrant.
Sounds That Sweep The Leg
Oh boy, the sound design is truly a masterpiece here. Entering rooms, the text scroll, getting hurt, or collecting items have been so carefully crafted that each interaction is a delight. Sound design in gaming is typically great with how games are made nowadays, and when it is presented in Babushka’s Glitch Dungeon it feels perfectly crafted to every piece of the experience.
Sadly, I wanted to share a link to the soundtrack, but Jake is trying to set that up now. He commissioned the soundtrack over three years ago, so with hope the original composer can get back to him—because EVERY SONG SLAPS, as the kids say.
Boss battles have a great faster-paced, odd-sounding track, and the new areas stand out in a new song style. But one in particular is just my jam in the way it starts as a lo-fi beat style but builds into this synth-layered perfection, growing more and more.
Take a listen!
Glitchy Gem
The best part of doing this work is that you can stumble on a solo developer on social media sharing their work, asking for feedback from their community, and giving behind-the-scenes looks at what ultimately becomes one of your favorite games of the year.
It took me roughly two+ hours to complete the main game, with I believe it taking an additional two to three to get close to 100%. You know what's a win for everyone? The community provided feedback about the price possibly being too high, and Jake immediately took that into account and dropped the price to $5.99—a MORE than reasonable price point for such a fantastic experience.
Babushka’s Glitch Dungeon is one of the best collaborative efforts in indie gaming. When the credits roll, Jake has included every single piece of artwork, sound effect, and coding that he has used—borrowing from other creators in the space. It's a who's-who smorgasbord of indie devs and artists that come together in a perfectly glitchy experience. The exploration, the character designs and dialogue are hilarious, the puzzles are fun and inventive in a way that progressively became more difficult but felt so rewarding when solved. The design and premise alone are a standout you must experience to truly understand what Jake has put together.
I didn't experience any bugs, but even if I did I don't think I would have even known. In true glitchy fashion, I lost half the game footage I was recording for the review to some corruption of the video file. This has nothing to do with the game—but perfect timing, I guess, haha. The wild part? I went back into the game just to record the song to show you earlier in the review, and I saw a bunch of updates to the game and ended up playing an additional hour and a half collecting orbs and exploring around.
A Must-Play Game!
Babushka's Glitch Dungeon is inventive, hilarious, and a trippy culmination of a solo dev’s connection to his grandma. My grandma is an OG in that my parents never once played a video game with me, but my Babushka would sit down and shred Super Mario Bros. on NES. She's 80+ now and I would not be surprised if she could still play it and complete a level with ease. She wears her veil the same as the Babushka in the game and legit looks like her, so I felt like I was playing as my own grandma here.
The game's mechanics, design, and glitchy nature make for an experience that is rewarding and puzzling at times. It has many hidden ways and speed running opportunities, so it makes for great replayability.
Babushka’s Glitch Dungeon is a fantastic indie game and a must-play for me—making it one of the best to release in 2025.
Thanks to Jake for providing the key for the review—though I would have gladly paid for a copy. In fact, if you are still reading this far, comment and let me know if you are interested and I'll pick someone at random to give a copy of the game to!
That's so cool that your grandma played games with you!
Games are truly for everyone!!
I absolutely loved my time with the demo of Babushka's Glitch Dungeon! And it sounds like the perfectly contained mini metroidvania platformer. I've definitely valued shorter experiences in the past couple of years! Love to get my hands on a key if it's still available!