Brawlhalla

Brawlhalla is a free-to-play 2D fighting game developed by Blue Mammoth Games for Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS, with full cross-play across all platforms. The game was shown at PAX East in April 2014, and went into alpha later that month.[1] An open beta became available in November 2015, followed by the game's release in October 2017.[2] As of July 2020, the game features 50 playable characters, called "Legends", as well as numerous crossover "skins" that serve as crossover characters from other franchises.

Brawlhalla
Standard edition box art featuring “legends” Orion with Spear(left) and Hattori with Sword(right)
Developer(s)Blue Mammoth Games
Publisher(s)Ubisoft
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS
ReleaseMicrosoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4
  • WW: October 17, 2017
Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
  • WW: November 6, 2018
Android, iOS
  • WW: August 6, 2020
Genre(s)Fighting
Mode(s)Cooperative
multiplayer 

On March 5, 2018, Brawlhalla developer-publisher Blue Mammoth Games was acquired by video game publisher Ubisoft. As a result of this, Rayman joined as a playable character[lower-alpha 1] on November 6, 2018, the day the game was released for Nintendo Switch and Xbox One.[3][4]

On July 6, 2018, Ars Technica released an article detailing precise player counts for Steam games obtained through a leak as a result of a "hole" in its API. This leak showed Brawlhalla to be ranked 24th in player count on Steam with a total of 8,646,824 players, out of all games featuring the Steam Achievements system.[5] Ubisoft reported more than 20 million players by February 2019.[6]

Gameplay

In most of Brawlhalla's game modes, the goal is to knock one's opponent off the stage, comparable to Super Smash Bros. This can be done by damaging them repeatedly. Damage can be seen on the color display around the opponent's character icon, which goes from white to red to black as the player continues to get hit. The closer the color is to red, the farther the player will be knocked back, until they eventually get knocked out. Getting knocked off the stage will result in the player losing a life. Either the last player standing (the one who still has at least one life) or the player with the most points wins the match.

The game supports both local and online play. Competitive players can compete 1-on-1 to climb through the rankings. They can also find a partner to play against other duos to increase their collaborative rank. Brawlhalla also has several casual modes: Free-For-All, 1v1 Strikeout, Experimental 1v1, and a different featured mode every week. Free-For-All is a chaotic mode where 4 players knock each other out to gain points. In 1v1 Strikeout, players pick 3 characters which they play for 1 stock each. Experimental 1v1 allows players to test out upcoming features against each other. Custom games can be hosted online and locally, and they support up to 8 players per match, experimental maps, and region changing. You may join groups of your friends to create a clan, with multiple ranks within the clans. Clans gain experience from all members.

Brawlhalla features simple controls and one-button special moves. This allows new players to pick up the game quickly. Controls include movement keys and buttons for attacking, performing special moves, picking up or throwing weapons, and dodging. Keys can be rebound for keyboard and a large variety of controllers.

Players can move by running left and right and jumping. Players can perform quick dashes sideways while on the ground, and dodges while in the air or on the ground, either sideways or vertically. It is also possible to dodge right after an attack to keep pressure on the opponent. Once in the air, the player has the option to perform any combination of: three jumps, a directional air-dodge, a grounded move in the air by using a "gravity-cancel", and "fast-falling". It is also possible to hold on to the sides of stages, similar to the style in Mega Man.

During a match, gadgets and weapon drops fall from the sky semi-randomly and can be picked up by the players. Although the weapon drop sprite has the appearance of a sword it turns into a corresponding weapon for the legend that picks it up. All of Brawlhalla's characters can use 2 weapons out of 13 to fight each other. Weapons include blasters, katars, rocket lances, swords, spears, cannons, axes, gauntlets, hammers, bows, scythes, magic orbs, and greatswords. Blasters, lances, bows, and spears perform well at a distance from the opponent, while katars and gauntlets are more effective up close. Rocket lance allows for quick traversal of the stage. Axes, cannons, greatswords, and hammers all do large amounts of damage. Swords, orbs, and scythes are fast and low damaging. All characters have unarmed attacks, should they be disarmed. Gadgets like bombs, mines, and spike balls are also used. Weapons can also be thrown to interrupt the enemy's moves or to make it difficult for them to get back to the stage. Each character has 3 special or "signature" moves per weapon, for a total of 6 per character.

Four stats are assigned to each character: Strength, Dexterity, Defense and Speed. The combination of these stats determines the strengths and weaknesses of a character and affects how they're played, and can be slightly modified using stances- which move a point from one stat to another.

Business model

Brawhalla is free-to-play, based on freemium business model. The game offers 8 selectable characters to use for free from a weekly rotation, making it more accessible for newer players. This number of free rotation characters was increased from 6 in late-2018, likely as a result of how many new characters were added to the game by this time. There are currently 50 player characters, called "Legends" (as of July 2020).[7] New characters generally were released every couple of months but over time the rate of release has slowed to around 2 per year. To fully purchase characters, Brawlhalla offers an in-game shop, giving a chance for players to use the in-game currency earned through matches, daily missions, and level-ups. Alternatively, players can purchase all existing and future characters via a one-time transaction.

Other products are also available to purchase here, using a premium currency called Mammoth Coins. This currency is gained by purchasing them with real money. Mammoth coins can be used for products such as character skins, weapon skins, and taunts that can be used in matches.[8] Since some characters share a weapon type, players are able to customize their characters with weapon skins from skins purchased with other character skins. Also in the shops are skin chests, being updated every few weeks. These chests offer many of the skins purchasable within the shop at a discounted price while offering 2 to 3 skins exclusive to the chest. These chests cost 100 mammoth coins to purchase, and when purchased, the chest will randomly give the purchaser one of the skins offered.

Brawlhalla has also introduced a battle pass system with exclusive skins and colors.

Cross-play

Brawlhalla introduced cross-play across all platforms on October 9, 2019.[9] Cross-play allows players on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android and iOS to queue against each other in online ranked play and to create custom lobbies which a player on any platform can join.

Crossovers

A few characters have skins that serve as crossover characters from other franchises. The franchises and characters are as following:

Franchise Characters
X-Ray and Vav Mogar, The Mad King
Rivals of Aether Ranno
Shovel Knight Shovel Knight, Black Knight, King Knight, Plague Knight, Specter Knight, Enchantress
Rayman Rayman, Globox, Barbara
Hellboy Hellboy, Gruagach, Daimio, Nimue
WWE The Rock, John Cena, Xavier Woods, Becky Lynch, Macho Man, The Undertaker, Asuka, Roman Reigns
Adventure Time Finn, Jake, Princess Bubblegum
Steven Universe Stevonnie, Pearl, Amethyst, Garnet
Tomb Raider Lara Croft
Ben 10 Four Arms, Diamondhead, Heatblast

Professional competition

While minor events have been held by the community since its closed beta launch, Blue Mammoth Games now hosts their own official competitive events.

In May 2016, they led off with the Brawlhalla Championship Series or "BCX". It was a series of 21 weekly online tournaments starting on June 18.[10] The tournaments were held on both North American and European servers, where players competed in 1v1 and 2v2 modes. For each tournament, a prize pool of $1,000 was divided among the top eight players. Placements in each BCS event earned players a ranking which was used at the end of the series to seed them into the World Championship tournament. Additionally, Regional Qualifier 1v1 tournaments were held, where the winner of each regional event earned a plane ticket and hotel room for the World Championship.

In early 2017, Blue Mammoth Games announced the Brawlhalla Circuit, a worldwide circuit of official competitive Brawlhalla tournaments hosted by several organizations sanctioned by Blue Mammoth Games. Players who compete in Brawlhalla Circuit events will be awarded Circuit Points. Players with the highest points from each region at the end of the season will earn a spot in the $100,000 32 player Brawlhalla World Championship in November. A player can also earn a spot in the Brawlhalla World Championship by winning a Regional Qualifier, or placing Top 3 in the BCX Open tournament at BCX.

At the start of 2018, Blue Mammoth Games announced their third year of official tournaments. This included a partnership with DreamHack to host 6 in-person tournaments throughout the year, including (for the first time) official tournaments in Europe. Additionally, over $300,000 in prizes throughout the year were announced. These prizes are earned through several major online tournaments, 4 official online seasonal championships, 5 in-person DreamHack tournaments, and the $100,000 2018 World Championship set to take place at DreamHack Atlanta.[11]

In 2019, Blue Mammoth Games announced the fourth year of official Brawlhalla Esports. Continuing their partnership with DreamHack, they planned to host 5 in-person tournaments at their events throughout the year. In addition to DreamHack events, Brawlhalla also planned to host 4 more tournaments. These were to take place at Final Round 2019, CEO 2019, Low Tier City 7, and Shine 2019. In Brawlhalla Esports, CEO 2019 was dubbed the "Midseason Championship" and had an increased prize pool of $50,000 while other in-person events (aside from the World Championship) had a prize pool of $20,000. The World Championship was set to have a prize pool of $100,000, similar to the previous two years. [12]

In more recent competition the Brawlhalla Pro Series (North America) is a weekly event that started April 9, 2019 and ended May 4, 2019. The competitions held consisted of Crew Battles (every Tuesday) and Rotational 2v2s (every Thursday) these competitions or sets (In Brawlhalla Terminology) are played by 8 color coded teams. These teams are, The Black Team, The White Team, The Orange Team, The Green Team, The Red Team, The Blue Team, The Purple Team and The Pink Team.[13] The Brawlhalla Pro Series (Europe) was announced after the end of the North American Pro Series in the same Twitch stream.

2016 World Championship

The Brawlhalla World Championship is an official $50,000 tournament held by Blue Mammoth Games at their end of the year event, BCX (Brawlhalla Championship Expo). There were over 400 people in attendance. Developers, streaming personalities, community artists, esports fans, and competitors all came together for a weekend of Brawlhalla fun.

The event took place at the Cobb Galleria in Atlanta in the United States. Players from around the world competed locally from November 11–13.[14] The World Championship was separated into two separate open tournaments (1v1 and 2v2), each of which had a prize pool of $25,000, adding up to a grand total of $50,000.

2017 World Championship

The Brawlhalla World Championship became an annual event in 2017, running for its second year. Set up as the finale to the Brawlhalla Circuit, the format was a hybrid invitational/open tournament where 24 of the Top 32 bracket slots were assigned to players around the world that performed the best in official competitions throughout the year, while the remaining 8 slots were up for grabs in the open World Championship tournament.

The prize pool was doubled to a total of $100,000 split evenly between the 1v1 and 2v2 competitions. The event once again took place at the Cobb Galleria in Atlanta in the United States where players from around the world competed locally on November 3–5. Notably, the 2016 1v1 World Champion Zack "LDZ" Janbay won again for the second year in a row, while the 2v2 championship was won by Zack "Boomie" Bielamowicz and Ngwa "Remmy" Nforsi.

2018 World Championship

The 3rd annual Brawlhalla World Championship was announced in the beginning of 2018. It was an open tournament with players being seeded based on official tournament power rankings. It took place on November 16–18 inside DreamHack Atlanta. Similar to the 2017 World Championship, there was once again a prize pool of $100,000 split evenly between 1v1 and 2v2 tournaments. The championship was played alongside tournaments of other popular fighting games, such as Super Smash Bros. Melee, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Tekken 7, and more. The 1v1 World Championship title was claimed by Stephen Myers, known as "Sandstorm" and the 2v2 World Championship title went to Jonatan "Cake" Övragård and Aleksi "Addymestic" Sillanpää of Team PHZ.[15]

2019 World Championship

The 4th annual Brawlhalla World Championship took place at DreamHack Atlanta once again. Similar to 2018, it was a $100,000 open tournament with players being seeded based on official tournament power rankings. The prize pool was split evenly between 1v1 and 2v2, $50,000 each. This tournament had more active entrants than any in-person Brawlhalla tournament before. The 1v1 World Championship was won for a second time by Stephen "Sandstorm" Myers, and for the first time, the 1v1 winner also won the 2v2 World Championship - alongside his teammate Zack "Boomie" Bielamowicz.[16]

Reception

Kotaku summarized that "Brawlhalla is a dynamic take on platform brawler that feels good to play." They said that the best innovations to the platform brawlers before it are its jumps and wall movements. Three jumps and nearly unlimited wall scaling make for fresh strategies and the buff in mobility means a lot of the high-adrenaline action happens off-stage.[17] Push Square stated that while it isn’t quite as tightly designed as the seminal Super Smash Bros., the large roster, wide range of modes, and a reasonable level of depth help it achieve a similar balance of accessibility and challenge, scoring it at 7 out of 10.[18]

Notes
  1. Rayman has been introduced as a playable guest character, and not as a crossover "skin".
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References
  1. "PAX East 2014: Little gems like Brawlhalla make PAX special". Gamezone. 2014-04-12. Archived from the original on 2018-07-07. Retrieved 2018-12-25.
  2. "The gates of Brawlhalla swing wide for open beta November 3". Neoseeker. Archived from the original on 2017-03-27. Retrieved 2018-12-25.
  3. Phillips, Tom (2018-03-02). "Ubisoft just snapped up the Smash Bros-like Brawlhalla". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on 2018-03-04. Retrieved 2018-03-05.
  4. Faller, Patrick. "Brawlhalla Dev Acquired By Ubisoft". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 2018-03-06. Retrieved 2018-03-05.
  5. "Valve leaks Steam game player counts; we have the numbers". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 2018-07-10. Retrieved 2018-10-30.
  6. "Brawlhalla Celebrates 20 Million Players With Fact-Filled Infographic". news.ubisoft.com. Retrieved 2020-06-21.
  7. "Meet the Legends of Brawlhalla". Brawlhalla. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
  8. D'Anastasio, Cecilia. "Brawlhalla: The Kotaku Review". Kotaku. Archived from the original on 2018-10-31. Retrieved 2018-10-30.
  9. "All-Platform Cross-Play is Live in Brawlhalla! - Brawlhalla". Brawlhalla. 2019-10-09. Archived from the original on 2019-12-17. Retrieved 2019-12-17.
  10. "BCS week 1 recap". 2016-06-21. Archived from the original on 2016-12-20. Retrieved 2016-12-15.
  11. "Registration for the 2018 Brawlhalla World Championship is now open! - Brawlhalla". Brawlhalla. 2018-09-25. Archived from the original on 2018-10-30. Retrieved 2018-10-30.
  12. "Brawlhalla Esports Year Four". Archived from the original on 2019-12-18. Retrieved 2019-12-18.
  13. "Brawlhalla Pro Series". Archived from the original on 2019-05-05. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  14. "Brawlhalla World Championship Begins Nov. 11 in Atlanta with $50,000 On The Line". Gamasutra. Archived from the original on 2016-12-21. Retrieved 2016-12-15.
  15. "Addymestic becomes the new Brawlhalla 2v2 World Champion". Team PHZ. 2018-11-19. Archived from the original on 2019-04-23. Retrieved 2019-04-23.
  16. "Brawlhalla World Championship 2019 Results - Brawlhalla". Brawlhalla. 2019-11-19. Archived from the original on 2019-12-22. Retrieved 2019-12-17.
  17. "Brawlhalla: The Kotaku Review". Kotaku. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
  18. Square, Push (2017-10-22). "Review: Brawlhalla (PS4)". Push Square. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
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