Developer: Juicy Cupcake
Publisher: Juicy Cupcake
Platform: Xbox One, PS4, PC
Tested on: PC
Brief Battles – Review
Brawler games have been quite popular for a while, with Smash Bros the one people have heard from the most. The brawler mechanics are quite fun to play around with and put your own twist on and this exactly what the developers from Brief Battles did. As you might have guessed from the name of the game, underwear is quite the main theme of the game. While you battle your friends, you will use underwear in all kinds of ways, to get powers or to collect them. Brief Battles has been developed and published by Juicy Cupcake. We got a chance to test the game out and beat our friends with underwear!
Story
Brief Battles is a game with both multiplayer gameplay and challenges, but it doesn’t have a story. You just start up and can immediately jump into the gameplay without a backstory.
Graphics
The art style of Brief Battles is pretty nice and looks like a mix of cartoony with semi-realistic parts. Every character you can select has been nicely designed and clearly has its own quirks. The difference between characters is also really noticeable when they are in the level, which is quite good since you can more easily see who/where you are.
Each level has this 3D theatre effect, where you have stone walls or trees instead of curtains. There are a few different themes for the levels such as a forest themed world or a desert-like level. Each theme can have more than one level, but they appear randomly during the challenges, so you don’t play per theme.
Sound
The music in Brief Battles is very upbeat with a hint of excitement. It seems that if you play one kind of challenge that the same track loops every level. The track does change if you go to a different challenge. It isn’t too noticeable because the challenges don’t take too long however it might have been nice to mix it up a bit more.
Sound effects in Brief Battles are mostly related to the underpants power that you get from certain underwear. The leopard underwear, for example, will have you roaring like a leopard. Each theme for the levels also has some background noises like a “cold wind” for the snowy levels.
Gameplay
Brief Battles is an action indie game where you will be able to battle your friends with underwear powers. When you look at the steam page of Brief Battles it gives a warning that keyboard and mouse aren’t supported, however, you are actually able to play with the keyboard, which might have been a recent update. However even if you can play with a keyboard, the button layout isn’t the most logical and the game is still best played with a controller.
When you start the game you get the choice between immediately jumping into multiplayer battles or to train and do challenges. Brief Battles’ multiplayer is actually local multiplayer so in front of the same PC, which nowadays isn’t as common since people prefer to play online. There are actually also no bots available so if you don’t have anyone to game at home with, you lose the ability to play a lot of Brief Battles’ gameplay. The multiplayer battles are actually quite fun, and the underwear part of the game makes it pretty funny to play with friends. It might be an idea for the developers to think of an online mode for the people that don’t have any family or friends close by but still wants to play.
The parts of the game that you can still play if you are on your own are the training and challenges. You have to first finish the training before you unlock the challenges. Training is basically the tutorial of the game where it gets explained how the mechanics work. Besides the normal movement, jump and double jump, Brief Battles actually also has a super jump and of course attacks. The super jump allows you to jump higher and is also on a different button as the jump/double jump. There is only one issue that you might have with the super jump, it can only be used if you are still on the floor. So, if you would want to for example regularly jump and then do a super jump, you can’t. This makes it, so you often have to wait till you land until you can do the super jump.
You can also smash down in Brief Battles, which allows you to go down faster and attack at the same time. Some underwear, like flaming hot pants, will also add an extra power to that smash. If you accidentally jump instead of doing a super jump, this smash allows you to get down faster. Of course, it could also cause you to fall into a hole faster if you aim badly. The attacks you get depend on what type of underwear you have on. Each underwear will give you a different attack. So for instance, the ice undies give you an icicle attack and the flaming hot pants a fireball.
In multiplayer battle, you have a few different modes that you can choose from. You will have to first play classic battle to be able to unlock the other game modes. There is the classic battle, Knockout, Hold the Gold and underpants collector. In classic battle, you will just regularly try to beat each other. The last player standing will win in Knockout and in Hold the Gold, the player that has the golden underwear the longest will win. You will have to collect as many underwear tokens as you can in underpants collector to try and beat your friends.
The challenges can be done alone but some can also be done with a maximum of two people. There are four kinds of challenges you can do; Underpants Collector, Tighty Whitey Targets, Butt-em-up Battles and Endless Butt-em-up. In Underpants Collector you have to try and collect all the underwear icons as they appear all over the level while a timer ticks down. In Tighty Whitey Targets boards with white underpants will appear that you will have to attack. Fight off enemies in Butt-em-up Battles and endlessly fight enemies in Endless Butt-em-up. Besides Endless Butt-em-up all challenges have a timer, and a bronze, silver and gold goal. Each goal has a certain amount of underwear you collect, or underpants boards you smash or enemies you kill. You can try to get to gold and then try to beat your time once you‘ve finished every challenge.
Tighty Whitey Targets and Underpants Collector both have different difficulties which you unlock after beating the previous difficulty. These difficulties are Trainee, Skilled, Pro and Master. Even though there is quite a lot of gameplay in the challenges it still feels lacking compared to the multiplayer portion of Brief Battles. Even though the challenges are quite fun, Brief Battles main theme is battling your friends.
Conclusion
Brief Battles is a fun multiplayer brawler game where you can beat your friends with your underwear powers. The game is however only local gameplay which isn’t as popular anymore since the internet became a thing, especially when gaming on PC. You can also not battle any bots, so the battle part of the game isn’t available for a single player at all. There are challenges which you can do alone or with a second player and they are quite fun, however, it is clear that this isn’t the main theme of the game. Brief Battles is meant to enjoy playing against your friends and the challenges are there to help you train your skills. So Brief Battles is best only purchased when you have friends or family that you can play with at home.
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