Blood Dragon is a retro-futuristic parody of 1980s action films, cartoons and video games, and takes place on an open world island.

Gameplay is largely similar to Far Cry 3, though several systems from the base game were simplified or removed, and it introduces the titular Blood Dragon, a massive dinosaur that fires lasers from its eyes and can be lured to attack enemy garrisons.

In the game, the player controls Rex "Power" Colt, a cyborg military commando stranded on an unnamed island.

[1] Alternatively, they can utilize stealth tactics such as distracting enemies by throwing a die, or performing silent takedowns with a large knife.

[6] Players can hunt wildlife, complete side missions to unlock new weapon upgrades and attachments, and liberate enemy outposts and garrisons.

Ubisoft described the game as "an 80s VHS vision of the future" where the player must "get the girl, kill the bad guys, and save the world".

[13] The player controls an American cybernetic super-soldier named Sergeant Rex "Power" Colt (Michael Biehn).

"Spider" Brown (Phil LaMarr), travel to an unnamed island to investigate Colonel Sloan (Danny Blanco Hall), an elite agent who has gone rogue.

Darling and Spider's memories remind Rex of his humanity, and he impales Sloan with his robotic hand and fires the Killstar, killing him.

Ubisoft welcomed all types of idea for the DLC, and they were approached by Dean Evans, who had previously worked on Assassin's Creed III and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction, about a game that is set in "a 1980s vision of the future".

Franchise director Dan Hay and Ubisoft executives in Paris were pleased with the idea, and gave Evans approximately six months to complete its development.

[14] Since Hay gave the team free rein to create something unexpected, Evans used the opportunity to "resurrect a VHS-era aesthetic he felt was lost to the times".

[15] At the time, the release of nostalgic films such as Manborg and Hobo with a Shotgun made him believe that Blood Dragon would yield similar success, since the genre was underrepresented in the video game industry.

Ubisoft also invited Eisener to visit their Montreal office to brainstorm additional ideas and read the game's script.

Initially, the team planned to include a boss battle in Blood Dragon, which would involve Rex fighting "the Plague", characters from Hobo with a Shotgun.

[15] To ensure that the game captured the aesthetics of the 1980s movie, Evans held weekly "Cyborg Nights", where the development team gathered together to watch films such as RoboCop, Predator, and The Wraith.

[18] Many characters in the game looked like action figures, and the team incorporated found objects into their design that is commonly seen in "B-movie sci-fi".

[15] According to Evans, the team was proud of the script, which was "bad", and boasted about having "predictable and one-dimensional characters", "terrible story" and "minimal emotions" during early preview events.

Evans said the essence of the game is entirely about "running around with very big guns and shooting cyborgs in their faces whilst trying to avoid dragons that fire lasers from their eyes".

[17] To capture the retro vibe, the team also recruited the sound designer of Airwolf to serve as the game's audio director.

[29] The trailer was animated in a 1980s style, including all the tropes of poor voice acting and imperfections designed to make the video look like a VHS tape.

[32] The virtual box art cover for the game was designed by James White, who had previously created artwork for the film Drive.

[34] The remastered version, titled Classic Edition, was released on 16 December 2021 for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, and launched for Google Stadia on 7 July 2022.

According to GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd, Blood Dragon is "fascinatingly entertaining", its writing more clever than most other shooters in the market and that it was "hard not to be charmed from the moment it begins".

[41] Mitch Dyer from IGN liked the 80s influence and described the experience as entering the mind of a nine-year-old kid where action figures come to life.

[42] Sinan Kubba from Joystiq compared Rex Colt to Duke Nukem, and lauded Ubisoft for successfully "combin[ing] crazy ideas with classy writing", a feat that the original game failed to achieve.

[45] Dan Whitehead from Eurogamer agreed that the game was dumb, adding that it "wears its idiocy like a shield", but remarked that some players may not enjoy this kind of humor.

[43][41][44] While several critics were disappointed by the lack of new gameplay additions,[44][39] Arthur Gies from Polygon thought that Blood Dragon was a more manageable game due to its smaller size and simplified systems.

[55] In 2019, it was announced that Ubisoft was collaborating with Adi Shankar to develop an animated series inspired by the game, titled Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix.