PC or Mobile, this game is addicting! | Full Review - Brotato (Open Beta)
Popularized by the pioneer game Vampire Survivors, this new sub-genre that it spawned doesn’t even have an official name right now. Some call it action rogue-lite, some call it bullet hell survival — One thing is certain, people can’t get enough of this addicting game genre.
Brotato is essentially one of these Vampire survivors-clones and it’s now out soon on Mobile Phones, currently in beta testing phase. It’s a mobile-port of a PC game still in Early Access on Steam, and is one of the most popular games on the platform with tens of thousands of overwhelmingly positive reviews.
🟩Pros
+Surprisingly addicting gameplay loop
+action-packed and fast paced gameplay
+Mindless fun, can play with just one hand
+One of the best alternatives to Vampire Survivors
🟥Cons
-Some minor missing features (Beta test problems)
For those unfamiliar with the genre, it’s basically a bullet-hell wave roguelite survival game, where you control only the movement of your character, and all the skills and damage dealers just fire automatically. It’s almost an idle game of sorts, but you still have to move the character to avoid the waves of enemies and projectiles that can kill you, or in simpler terms, a moving lone tower defense game.
Gameplay Analysis
In Brotato, you control a character from a selection of five different classes with different starting stats and bonuses. Then, you get to pick your starting weapon and difficulty modifiers (if unlocked, eventually).
There is zero story to this and it‘s just pure mindless fun. There’s not even a tutorial. It's a show don’t tell situation where you really have to stumble your way into the game to try and learn it. It’s simple anyway: Enemies come in waves, you have to move your character around to avoid dangers. The weapons are all auto-targetted and auto-fired based on your attack speed and range stat.
The graphics of Brotato give off an early 2000s Adobe Flash cartoonish vibes, instead of the usual retro or pixel art graphics that other contemporaries have. Yes, it might feel cheap or look like something made for kids, but the amazing gameplay more than makes up for it.
The genre is surprisingly addicting
Each wave requires you to survive a specific amount of seconds before starting the next wave. In between waves, you get to buy randomized weapons and items to shape your build according to your playstyle or experimentation. If you're short on currency, you can lock interesting items so that you can buy them later.
Besides that, you have an EXP bar where you gain experience points upon killing mobs and upon leveling up you get to choose a random stat increase. All random item and stat choices can be rerolled unlimited times as long as you have the currency, which is collected by killing mobs.
There are multiple weapons to equip, up to six at a time --- all simultaneously firing --- ranging from guns like shotguns and pistols to melee and magic weapons like knives and wands. You can upgrade them too, by fusing two weapons of the same quality to upgrade them to the next level of rarity represented by colors, it’s not as deep as the Vampire Survivors system, but it's still a fun and engaging mechanic to play.
This gameplay loop happens every run and always reset after every death, making it a rogue-lite. It’s a fun mechanic for the players to constantly try out other builds and experiment to their liking, ensuring that all runs are not the same.
Compared to Vampire Survivors, the game is more action-packed and fast paced, with a constant barrage of waves of enemies, easily disposable by your powerful guns and weapons.
Only one control, perfect for mobile phones.
The game is simply addicting because of this gameplay loop of trying and trying to beat your previous record and survive into higher waves, and it doesn’t require much brain power to play the game anyway which only requires playing with only one hand to control the movement.
Personally, I find myself leaning towards using guns all the time, as I feel that they are the most powerful, considering the more action-packed and fast paced gameplay nature of the game.
Killing enemies and clearing hordes of enemies is satisfying and it's gratifying to see your current build able to mow down groups of baddies. On the other hand, when things get a bit too hard, narrowly escaping hordes of powerful enemies is extremely satisfying as well. Resulting into an experience that is addicting from start to end.
It’s still in beta
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a way to make it play in portrait mode, despite seemingly supporting it judging from the patch notes I’ve found online. There is also no option to activate the manual aiming option like the PC version, despite being in the Google Play Store game description.
Conclusion:
Brotato is a highly addictive Vampire Survivors-like game that is perfect to play on mobile phones with its mindless one handed controls and simplistic yet addicting gameplay mechanics. Everyone should just try it, whether you are a Vampire Survivors veteran or a newcomer to the genre.
Mentioned games
Comments
Latest
No more comments. Why not add one?
