Initially was set to produce a video about it but scrapped it for a variety of reasons as it isn't worth making a video about given it's current state. Instead I will talk about the good and bad here.

For context, Refreshed Supply was a follow-up (re-remaster) developed by Nightdive Studios and released on December 4, 2025. It was still in development when the announcement trailer was made public towards the end of September, but it seemed pretty vague with the mentioning of new community content like Marrow and Death Wish (both addons that were being developed and released as free addons for Blood) along with the release coming to consoles, which is something that hadn't been done with the original Fresh Supply previously.

The Buildup

Sometime after the announcement, Kaiser revealed that Refreshed isn't a rebrand of the original Fresh Supply but more so rebuilt from scratch using the original source code. Which seemed like a glimpse of hope to many as Fresh Supply had a mixed reception due to a bucket list of bugs and inaccuracies, making the game less faithful to the original MS-DOS release. It didn't help that Fresh Supply came out around the same year where BloodGDX (BuildGDX) had already come out and saw the recent release of NBlood (based on EDuke32) so if you where to compare the three together in terms of being faithful to the original game then NBlood is the clear winner.

And that's the thing. Yes! I believe in game preservation with the availability to play the game on modern hardware in many ways. From emulators to source ports and at times a remaster. The problem to me is that it seemed like people forget to preserve the core gameplay experience. I feel like Nightdive has done that on a number of occasions and could have been avoided as different toggles and modifiers.

The Good

On the time of it's release, I took the time to inspect what was new. I do think the addition of menu sounds was cool and you can turn them off if you wanted. (I kept it on)

Like with many recent remasters, a Vault was added, revealing behind the scenes photos that were either new or some that were already on the Internet for years. The best part about the vault is access to cut levels found in various pre-release materials (there are more to be found in a archive file found inside the "vault" folder called "level_archive.zip".

These maps inside the archive contains maps dating way back to August 1994 and contains some levels you would recognize from the final game (even with it's original internal names)

My favorite findings from the archive are Showdown.map, which appears to be a very early version of the final boss level dating to February 1996.

The archive also had early versions of Cradle to Grave (JGRAVE.MAP) and Wrong Side of the Tracks (STATION.MAP) which were in development in late 1996 with differences to the layout. The only level I've noticed with minor differences to the final would be Phantom Express (TRAIN.MAP).

I'd say the Vault is worth a look, but I will say that during the build-up towards it's release, it was revealed that pre-release builds would be releasing along with the vault. A similar treatment that the freeware Shadow Warrior received in 2017. (Those were fun to explore)

However it got delayed to a future update (hours before the launch) due to needing more time to get them all setup and working smoothly. The data mining suggest we will see a total of 6 pre-release builds (with 2 being already released to the public many years ago)

Lastly the single player is decent out of the box, but I didn't pre-purchase the game just to playthrough it a hundred times and I'm already satisfied with what NotBlood (fork of NBlood) offers. I only played the first two episodes and that was it.

I will say because the remaster is on consoles, it is a good thing since it allows those stuck on consoles to get a taste of Blood. (and I never understood it myself due to being spoiled with community features and user content, while consoles stayed locked down and restrictive outside of the homebrew scene which is the only interesting aspect of console gaming IMHO)

Despite lack of accessibility towards the handling of custom content, the fact you are able to play custom maps in multiplayer at all (through the addons menu) is atleast better than having to use command-lines and being limited to older formats. (ROTT:LE is an example of that)

The Bad (and Downright Ugly)

To start with the main kicker that came before the game's release. Refreshed was criticized for the base price expanding to $30. Now who is to blame for the price tag is a mixbag and isn't the first time this was pulled off before.

Months after Nightdive got acquired by Atari SA in March 2023, the price hike would begin starting in late 2023 with Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion. This left Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition (July 31, 2023) to be the last remaster with a somewhat reasonable price of $20. I almost wanted to include Quake II into the mix but id Software titles appear to be an exception since the remaster was given out for free to those who already purchased the originals prior.

When I made a video expressing my thoughts on the announcement in October 2025, I did bring up that while new owners were discounted pre-launch for $25, those who owned the original Fresh Supply were discounted to paying $10 (just about the same price albeit a tad bit higher as the original Fresh Supply on launch) and I happened to be one of those people who got lucky with the pre-purchase.

Either way the base price has rubbed people off the wrong way that it gave off the impression that we are paying money for an major update to Fresh Supply. I pre-purchased the game with the mindset of the 50/50 chance of this redeeming Nightdive from the mixed reception over Fresh Supply and we end up with a premium product or it comes out still rough around the edges and likely confirming the suspicions most people had. It ended up being the latter and I will explain my perspective.

Upon trying the multiplayer, it started out decent. No signs of the dreaded fall damage bug of the original Fresh Supply and what not.. Until I started playing it enough to notice something is wrong and this is coming from the background of somebody who has actually played the multiplayer on DOSBox and later NBlood/NotBlood.

Come to find out that since the source code was given out a bit late into development and despite the claim it was rebuilt from scratch. Only portions of the original source code was used and a good chunk of code from Fresh Supply were reused, this meant the collision code and use of AngelScript were kept intact. While the collision code is a debate to some, the fact AngelScript was kept meant it carried over a chunk of issues from Fresh Supply.

The kind of proves that being "rebuilt from scratch using the original code" is practically misleading as it is confirming those suspicions of being a paid major update to Fresh Supply.

The GIF shown above demonstrates this problem and it's more obvious once you played the original multiplayer. In Bloodbath, you can finish off your opponents which enables a more creative aspect of killing your opponents. Which is part of what makes Blood Multiplayer unique at the time. Reports state that the AngelScript functions exist but something isn't triggering it and some reported that the state happens but is near-impossible (I never saw it happen myself)

I went as far as to dig out the scripts inside BloodEX.kpf to show signs that something isn't being called. I even recalled attempting to force the state and it only killed the player anyway (allowed to respawn) while being in a delirious state.

To add insult to injury, more carry overs and new bugs become apparent according to other players who played the multiplayer or the game overall. The audio is muffled like in Fresh Supply, some sounds constantly looping, the red tinting effect when hurt is shown in way it shouldn't (on spawn for like 5 seconds) rendering those in a major disadvantage against those unaffected in such jarring fashion.

And wait there's more! Refreshed Supply in it's current state (the time of writing this) is so exploitable in game logic! It takes having the Napalm Launcher and the Guns Akimbo to outright spam almost half of your ammo in around 5 seconds by tapping the fire button fast enough. (Worse if you macro'ed the fire button or used the scroll wheel)

The worst part is that it was carried over from Fresh Supply and I didn't become aware of it until somebody told me. Even in there were to be any patching that fixes these problems, it's unlikely to fix the issues involving the refactored network code.

The network code while it is made to allow certain features such as joining mid-game, it is plagued with issues involving rubberbanding at pings lower than 100ms (some saying they had better experiences in high ping) and random problematic disconnects to almost everybody except the host just ruins the experience overall. Part of this might be the fault of both network code and the usage of Microsoft's Azure PlayFab which from what I've heard is a pain to work with.

You may get away with leveraging the LAN functionality (and it includes split-screen which is kind of rare for PC titles) to play the multiplayer as long as you have a port forwarded to 5069 (UDP) or with the use of VPN or reverse proxies like Radmin VPN and playit.gg.

However it only reduces those chances of disconnects so I feel like the network code needs polish to prevent the random disconnects.

Now this is where the downright ugly comes around. The remaster has received mixed reviews. Some praised it for being an improvement from Fresh Supply and I will give it that, it is better than Fresh Supply but failed to be on par with the other options especially with the $30 price. The negative reviews however are a mixture of the fact that the price is too high (and only that) while other reviews expand on that and expressing the issues that prevent it from justifying the price tag. Here is one review that says it all.

The top it all off, I believe a good chunk of people from the Blood community had expressed lack of optimism and rightfully so. It was made worse by the handling of bug reports and a showing of miscommunication at display over at there Discord communities.

When I had reported the issue with the player finishing state, the network engineer claimed it's still in the game and doesn't know what to tell me. It seemed like me showing the code out was enough for him to crash out, contemplating of muting the channel a number of times (and this isn't the first time I had to deal with this)

This is the issue here, if you have people trying to bug report and programmers start acting with that "It works on my machine" mentality, then I hate to say, the product isn't going to improve in quality. I think people need to be open-minded with these things. Then I've come to learn that the devs are not paying close attention behind these reports, because it took somebody else to report the Guns Akimbo bug for them to realize it and I was the first to report this problem beforehand.

Then you have the miscommunication about updates, which started when one of the devs at another adjacent server affiliated with Nightdive ranted about there will be only one major update and nothing else.

Of course this had to be corrected sometime by explaining that the major patch was related to the add-on content (like Death Wish) and a series of hotfixes are underway. At that point even with the correction and the recent track record, it continues to put Refreshed Supply in a bad and unoptimistic light. By the time most of this were to be addressed, I feel like it won't recover the already shrinking player base.

Granted it may boost up the activity for a bit but it seems temporary and I've seen it with recent remasters like Quake with that major update adding Threewave CTF and Rise of the Triad : Ludicrous Edition 1.1 patch.

Lastly, it seems unlikely (and a low possibility) that allowing convenient ways of playing custom content would happen. It's a bummer considering that playing the same levels over and over can be tiring and won't help keep the player base's longevity in the long run. Part of this issue may stem from the fact that Nightdive are pushing out recent remasters to consoles and cited putting Blood to consoles being the main reasoning behind why Refreshed Supply happened at all.

To me it's pretty stupid and telling of why crossplay between PC and consoles won't work out. Why? because PC gaming (especially back in the 1990s) had a foundation towards community content whereas console gaming despite being about as simple as pick up and play, is very restrictive in a lot of ways. You can't modify a game without altering the console itself which to the companies is a no no due to being anal towards piracy and later concerns over cheating following the rise of online services such as Xbox Live.

Either way it's so unfortunate because this could've easily been solved with making those features PC-only. I mean sure this will be a trade-off to crossplay but I rather have that than being limited with my experiences.

I miss when remasters were simple with multiplayer support and Steam Workshop. Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition comes to mind despite some shortcomings prior to it's delisting from digital storefronts.

As it currently stands, it is not worth the $30 in it's current state. The best way to play Blood without resorting to emulators is NBlood and it's fork NotBlood.

I can understand the need for money for surviving and feeding families but I stand by what I said on Bluesky previously.

However good luck trying to get the original game for an affordable price because while One Unit While Blood on it's own got delisted and merged as a bonus for Fresh Supply (which was forgiving since the price isn't terrible)..

Fresh Supply got delisted the moment Refreshed Supply was out the door. While the original DOS version was shipped as a bonus for Refreshed Supply, this meant you have to spend $30 to legally obtain the original game data needed to use NBlood or NotBlood unless you want to cave in and sail the seven seas. (I recommend the Internet Archive for that purpose)

But if you don't mind giving Weiner Bros your money (and Netflix too because they won the bid to acquire them) then I'd atleast wait for a game sale where it's reasonable. If you are a console player then you are stuck with the remaster, but you are really missing out on the quality-made source ports and custom content unless for whatever reason WB does a Bethesda and have a mod browser but I highly doubt it.

For multiplayer, I recommend Classic Gaming Arena (DOS) and NukemNet (for NotBlood) for that. It may look dead but they had Discord communities to ask around because at this point, it's better than have a quality multiplayer session than a convenient but outright unstable experience.

That's it for now! This should explain why I chose not to make a video about it because it's still Pink in the Inside. I may revisit it once this major update is out or is in a state where it is improving but I am not too hopeful and will likely stay that way. If anything the only big thing I am more interested in is the pre-release builds but other than that, just play NotBlood.