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Brawlers's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Graphics | #10 | 2.907 | 3.250 |
Overall | #13 | 2.460 | 2.750 |
User Interface (UI/UX) | #14 | 2.236 | 2.500 |
Audio | #14 | 2.460 | 2.750 |
Fun | #15 | 2.236 | 2.500 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
DevLog Link
https://anomrac21.itch.io/brawlers/devlog/449886/bug-fixes-new-mechanics-and-general-updates
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Comments
First impressions were mixed. The main menu looks good, but the options menu is basically empty, and some of the UI elements are rough. I found the font used throughout most of the game incredibly hard to read. I'm not sure if it would be better or worse on mobile.
I'm always impressed when I see customization options. That's something I love to see in games and would like to try someday if I can ever figure out how to do it without sending my scope to the moon. It definitely felt very WIP, though, with limited options and some buttons appearing to do nothing.
Visually, it's an impressive game. All 3D with some nice environments, good use of effects, and spiffy animations. The character models are kinda uncanny valley, especially the female one which appears to be literally the default one with a bra, but maybe that's the point.
I'm mildly concerned about how performance is going to be on mobile. And a 700MB APK would be absolutely massive. But neither of those things are problems for the game in its current state.
Unfortunately, only the desktop version was available to play, and the controls really don't translate well to a mouse. I can sort of see how they're supposed to work with touch input, but it's incredibly awkward with a mouse. I also sometimes didn't get the prompts, and sometimes didn't throw punches even when the prompts came up. I'm not sure if that's because of some game mechanic, or because it's not registering my inputs.
That, by extension, makes it really hard to evaluate the gameplay on its own merits. There seemed to be some complexity to when I could attack and when that attack would land, but for all I know it could just be totally random with inputs being dropped or attacks not landing because of bugged colliders.
Not that I know much about fighting games. I've played quite a few: various Street Fighters, King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown... I suck at all of them.
I really feel it needs an ingame tutorial of some kind, but maybe that can come later in development.
I'm not really into fighting games, nor have I followed the development of this game, so it's hard to get a feel for where it's coming from, where it is along the journey, and where it's eventually planned to end up. I was impressed by the graphics and overall presentation, but struggled to make sense of its gameplay. It's really a shame the Android version didn't work because it would have been nice to see this on a mobile platform as it's intended to be.
Fun game! When I tried to create my first character, there weren't any customization options and my player didn't generate. I did have the option to choose a body type and skin color for my second character, so I played with that one. Before and after my first fight, I didn't have access to any other customization options or combos (not sure if I should've though).
Some things that weren't super intuitive, holding the timer to pause the game, movement (beyond punching and kicking), and defending. I did figure out how to block eventually but ducking didn't seem to do anything for me in the early rounds. I'm guessing that's more to avoid a roundhouse kick.
Overall good work and the sound effects really elevate the game!
I think the last time I played this game there wasn't even any AI code to allow them to fight back, so this time it was at least challenging lol.
I personally have never been into fighting games, so this already likely wasn't going to be a game I enjoyed that much. Adding onto that its clearly designed for mobile, and playing with the drag controls on PC for me is just too awkward like my brain doesn't even really register that movement should be done that way for this type of game (I don't play mobile games).
Speaking of the controls it did sometimes feel like they weren't responding to my input, like I would click to punch at the opponent and my character wouldn't move and then I'd get hit by the AI. Also I'm not sure if its just the movement or normals scheme I selected but it seemed like in my third match my character couldn't kick at all. Which was frustrating as I couldn't punch far enough to hit the street fight opponent, he kept doing the front flip attack, falling over and then flipping back up out of reach.
Also I'm not sure if the underground was meant to be really tough but if the opponent there hit me once he basically hit me every single other time after. His combos seem to basically just envert let up and juggled me across the ring. Once I did finally manage to block his attack I would only ever be able to get one hit in before I was back to being a punching bag.
On the UI side I did notice a couple glitches, there were a couple dropdown boxes that seemed to have "None" overlap with whatever option I had selected.
Also while I'm sure its more convenient on mobile due to it being a small screen and having both thumbs available, the "back" button being on the other side of the screen from the other settings made navigation a bit tedious on PC. Since I had to move my cursor across most of the screen to go back, a small frustration but if I was doing a bunch of customization it would be annoying.
The combat does seem more impactful and more juicy than what I remember before, so props for continuing to improve!