Brawlhalla is a 2d action brawler game for PC and Mac, that is all about fighting and defeating opponents in multiplayer matches. This is done by knocking them off the screen after a certain amount of hits. Whether 4 player co-op offline or on it is all about getting kills and scoring higher than your opponents. This should seem similar to game known as ‘Smash‘ or ‘Super Smash Bros‘ made by Nintendo, but Brawhalla does have some unique features and ideas.
First Brawhalla characters start out with no weapons, they will be generated as items. During this time you can use fast punch or charge punch along with jumping and dodging. You will be randomly generated one of two weapons unique to your character. Generally a heavy or light variant. It’s unique because you can throw your weapon, also lose your weapons when hit hard enough. You can also switch weapons to light or heavy when more spawn. However the downside is that many characters use the same weapons as of the 15 playable characters as of version 1.17.2. These include ax,spear,guns, hammer, hand blades, and sword. The non item weapons dropped are generally limited to bombs, mines, and spikes.
Another difference is the characters aren’t the memorable ones you are used to in smash. You have you gunners, beastly heavy hitters, short ranged attackers. The combat styles of all the characters is all very similar. For example in Smash if you had Bowser vs Sonic the amount of move variations and creativity is quite interesting. But in Brawlhalla the characters have very limited unique abilities to each individual character. This is unlike a similar Brawler Beta game on Steam called Rivals of Aether, where each character moves and plays very differently and uniquely.
The game is very aerial based, you can jump high and you have 3 jumps. However you can jump off the sides of the wall, and touching the side of any wall will give you all of your jumps back. This makes courses interesting as you can all be playing off of the course fighting each other.
Online multiplayer is quite fun. You have 4 player co-op you can host a game for friends using a 4 digit code, or play ranked 1v1 or 2v2. However ranked 2v2 requires a second person in the room with you. There’s also offline bots with different settings. The game features time, stock, football, and bombsketball. However only stock and time are really playable right now.
For system requirements the game is light weight game and the specs are really low. The game also promises to be free upon release with beta sign up, or steam purchase of the game available now. With optional buyable outfits, weapon skins, and gold coins. But gold coins can be earned by playing online matches. However all characters not in weekly rotation also have to be purchased with gold coins. So chose carefully. Overall it’s a addictive brawler game, especially in online mode. As this ‘Brawler’ genre becomes more common less comparisons to the Nintendo Smash series can be made.