It's been months, but I'm finally learning to love The Cringe in Megabonk

It took me a while to jump on the Megabonk train. I don't play a lot of games on my PC and my Steam Deck has been sitting collecting dust for most of the past year since the Switch 2 broke the cover. It became my go-to portable engine, though it wasn't enough to make me go back to Valve's handheld. That has changed over the past few weeks.

Not a day has gone by lately that I haven't hopped on my Steam Deck to play a few rounds of Megabonk or Ball x Pit – both of which are deviously good at killing my time in the blink of an eye. But as much as you love bouncing countless balls at the bottom of many grim pits, there's something about Megabonk that hits a lot harder.

Maybe it's the cute, custom 3D visuals, the pounding chiptune music, or the countless cool abilities and characters I've already unlocked. Heck, maybe it's even the Internet jokes that undermine every single aspect of his identity.

Megabonk understands the beauty of embracing Cringe

I turned thirty this year, so I grew up in the golden age of cringe internet humor and online communities where millennials huddled for warmth during the Obama era. An age defined by rage comics, motivational posters, and “XD's” posted at the end of every message sent on MSN. YouTube was in its infancy while websites like Twitch were almost non-existent, so we got to forums and prehistoric platforms like Skype. What a blast from the past.

While Megabonk doesn't quite reflect this era, it fills me with the same kind of warm but slightly cringe-worthy nostalgia from when I was younger, and actually thought terms like 'monke' and 'a matter of skill' were actually funny. Whenever you die in the game, you're met with phrases like “you're a grandfather – maybe he has an ability problem” without a hint of irony. Phrases that aren't meant to make sense, falling into a thick puddle of quirk chungus sauce that either entices players to enjoy it for hours or leave in frustration.

Megabonk is so unfunny it ends up being hilarious

There were even complaints on the Steam forums asking that Megabonk remove its cringe internet humor, as if indulging in it somehow made the game significantly worse. I was in the same boat at first and found myself quitting the game because at every conceivable turn you were met with a meme-inspired character in the UI or random bits of text reminding you that this developer spent way too much time surfing the internet. But, and hear me out, what if that was the whole point?

The more time I spend with Megabonk, the more convinced I am that it was designed as a love letter to the internet era we've long since left behind, yet we still cling to it because it represents simpler, healthier times. Where humor could be derived from misspellings, speaking in silly voices, or making comics with the same faces over and over again. In 2026, things are darker and more oppressive, and Megabonk seems to act as this wonderful reminder of how things used to be.

Megachad poses in the forest in Megabonk.

His use of cringe-worthy internet humor and over-the-top archaic jokes is so over-the-top throughout his presentation that part of me believes it must be intentional or self-aware. Even if it isn't, drawing one's own retrospective meaning from art is part of what makes it so special. That and watching the numbers go up makes him really good at this thing. I like it.