Sometimes I discover a new game by looking at what’s trending on SteamDB. That’s how I first learned about BRAZILIAN DRUG DEALER 3: I OPENED A PORTAL TO HELL IN THE FAVELA TRYING TO REVIVE MIT AIA I NEED TO CLOSE IT, a game which I will now only refer to as Brazilian Drug Dealer 3 or BDD3 to save us all a lot of time. Of course, the long and wild name caught my eye, but it also has a very high Steam review rating. So I paid $2 and checked it out, and folks, it’s a wild but oddly charming experience.
Brazilian Drug Dealer 3 is best described as a heavily modded and twisted version of Quake. It uses that classic shooter’s engine as its foundation, as well as reskinned enemies and weapons from Id’s fantastic FPS. But while it plays a lot like that classic shooter, this definitely ain’t Quake anymore. At least, I don’t remember Quake containing so many hellish favela levels and evil soccer players.
BDD3 plays, looks, and sounds like a retro fever dream, complete with loud, ear-piercing music, random sound effects, bizarre textures everywhere you look, and oddly shaped levels based on real-life locations, like a grocery store and a soccer stadium. Filling these levels are reskinned Quake enemies, now replaced with demonic soccer fans armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers. Oh, there are also demons and other monsters, too. I’m not sure if they like soccer. To rip through these enemies, you’ll use gold-plated handguns, assault rifles, dual shotguns, a simple sandal, a staff that shoots electrical beams, and other strange stuff I won’t spoil here. Every gun is very loud and feels like it would kill an elephant. And because this is the OG Quake engine, you move fast and hit hard, and it all runs perfectly on a modern, powerful PC. In other words, I had a blast playing BDD3.
As the game’s very long name suggests, Brazilian Drug Dealer 3 (loosely) tells the story of a person who, in trying to revive their favorite musician, accidentally opened a portal to hell and is now desperately fighting back against the demonic invaders while trying to close it and save the world. You know, that ol’ chestnut. Trying to follow the story is tricky, and I’m not even sure the game’s main developer is aiming to provide a coherent narrative. But whatever, the real appeal of BDD3 is its fast-paced action and fever dream vibes. It’s the kind of game in which I was excited to play the next level just to see what nightmarish music or mess of textures awaited me.
©Joeveno / Kotaku
However, to BDD3‘s credit, while it might look like a giant mess of nonsense, there’s actually a well-made shooter under all that chaos. Levels are perfectly paced, providing you with a mixture of big fights and smaller encounters that tend to flow really well together. Though it may look slapdash, I think that aspect was carefully cultivated, and that a lot more thought than you might expect went into crafting every level. For example, each one is filled with strategically placed (and very odd-looking) quick save machines, so even less-experienced FPS players will have no trouble at all progressing.
The other reason I’ve really enjoyed playing Brazilian Drug Dealer 3 is that it’s quite a charming experience. It’s clear that the game’s lead developer, Joeveno, is channeling his experience as a Brazilian gamer and developer to create something that, from the outside, might seem weird for weird’s sake. And to be sure, if you listen to the dev talk about the game, some of what’s in BDD3 is just meant to be odd and make you laugh. But it’s also recreating the kind of bizarre Quake and Doom mods that used to be all over the internet back in the early 2000s, as well as the various foreign bootlegs of popular shooters that were passed around via forums or floppy disks long ago.
On Brazilian Drug Dealer 3‘s Steam page, Joeveno calls the trippy game a “Tribute to the Brazilian mods” and “bootleg games” from that era, and while I might not be as familiar with the source material as the dev is, I can still feel the passion and care that was put into nailing a very specific and chaotic vibe. BDD3 won’t be for everyone, but for players looking for something different that is also well-made and fun, I’d recommend spending $3 to check it out. (The game’s price will jump to $5 on October 1.) And hey, at the very least, in the future, if someone says they own a game on Steam with a long name, you can make a bet with them that you know you’ll likely win.
