Brotato | a Review
originally published on 18/05/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the mobile potato, G.E.M.Simov, a vegetable so flexible it can walk, and I am here to tell you about “Brotato”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Brotato is a top-down horde-survival game. What that means is that the Player’s Character is dropped in the middle of a 2D plain that features the four cardinal directions - North, South, East and West - and is continuously attacked by nearly ceaseless waves of enemies.
The Player’s Character (PC) has a means of attacking, most often, and does so automatically whenever an enemy is in range. What the Player can do is move around by using the WASD keys, and that’s as much gameplay as this game offers. Naturally, the movement performed by the Player can be offensive and defensive - it could be done with the goal of getting within range of the enemies so that they can be attacked by the PC, or it could be done with the goal of getting away from the enemies so that they can not hit the PC.
In Brotato, the PC starts off with a certain amount of Health Points (HP) that does not regenerate, so the Player’s goal with movement would be to avoid getting hit. Alternatively, it could be done with the goal of getting to a Tree - which is one of the few mechanics that require Player input - so that the PC is in range of the Tree and can hit it. Trees spawn randomly somewhere on the plain that is the playing field, and whenever destroyed (which means they have been dealt a certain amount of damage) they fall apart and produce Materials - the Currency used in Brotato - and Fruits.
Fruits, when walked over, are picked up and restore some of the PC’s HP, meaning that the Player can take some damage, but they would have to then mitigate said damage with the destruction of a Tree and the consumption of a Fruit. Alternatively, the Player can just decide not to do that and avoid enemies, having faith in their abilities to not get hit for the remainder of the wave.
Here’s where some more information comes into play - when the game starts, the Player gets to pick their Character out of a very large pool of (mostly locked at the beginning) options. Then, the Player gets to pick a weapon for said Character, and is dropped onto the plain. The game begins and Wave 1 starts, requiring that the Player survives for 20 seconds. Every subsequent Wave requires that the Player survives for 5 seconds longer than the previous, until Wave 20.
Now, each Wave features different enemies in different quantities and spawning patterns, with the general gist of it being that they grow more difficult as the number of the Wave increases. In addition to that, the amount of HP the enemies have and the amount of damage they deal grows, while their means of doing damage to the PC change - through the introduction of new enemy types. At Wave 20, there is a boss that needs to be defeated, otherwise the Player loses.
During a Wave, enemies get killed, and when they get killed they drop Materials. Additionally, Trees drop Materials. There are also other mechanics that exist for Material generation, but the gist of it is that during the Wave, Materials are generated or collected.
By collecting Materials, the Player’s Character fills up a bar - and upon reaching a certain threshold, the bar empties and the PC gains a level. Between Waves, the Player is presented with an opportunity to pick upgrades off of leveling up. Those upgrades are simple increases in certain stats, varying in intensity. There are white upgrades, blue upgrades, purple upgrades and red upgrades - let’s call them rarities and leave that for a bit later. One thing about them is important, and that is that every level that is divisible by 5 allows the Player to pick upgrades from a certain rarity - all of them are that rarity, not just one or two, which is neat.
The other thing that the Player can do with Materials, aside from using them in the Shop that shows up after getting one’s upgrades from leveling up, is reroll. Rerolling gives the Player a semblance of control over the insane prevalence of random chance in this type of game, and the things that can be rerolled are the upgrades provided upon leveling up OR the offering in the Shop.
Now, about that Shop - in it the Player can spend their Materials to purchase Items or Weapons. The Player can have an infinite number of Items, but only 6 Weapons. Items provide passive bonuses, such as increases to HP, passive HP regeneration, increased Damage of a certain variety, increased Attack Speed, increased Armor, increased quantity of enemies that spawn, decreases to the prices of items in the Shop, increase in the likelihood of finding items outside the shop, and so on and so forth.
The amount of stuff done by items is incredible, and it is almost always beneficial. However, it is important to note that a large number of the Items are double-edged swords. They do provide something helpful to the Player, but they also take away in another regard. Most often it is done in a manner that weakens another possible play style - such as most items that provide benefits for Ranged Weapons also providing negatives for Melee Weapons, or items that provide Harvesting will take away Luck and so on.
This provides the Player with the incentive to focus on one specific set of bonuses, constituting a build, essentially, so that the Player may be able to make it through Wave 20. These builds are so plentiful and so varied, with pretty much every Character having at least one approach to being played, and some having more than that, that the game becomes incredibly replayable. That replayability is further enhanced by the random nature of the Shop, as well as the fact that many items are unlocked through progression with particular Characters.
In addition to all of that, there are different rarities of items, which are affected by both the number of the Wave and the Luck stat the Player’s Character has, with higher rarity items being a lot more expensive, but also being a lot more impactful, potentially even build defining. In the case of Weapons, there are also different rarities, but the highest can be achieved by combining two of the previous rarity, all the way down to the most common one, thus allowing for improvements that are not as dependent on Random Number Generation (RNG) as they would be otherwise.
So, the Player uses Materials to buy Items and Weapons and to make it to Wave 20, where one of a small selection of bosses appears and is fought. If the Player wins, the next difficulty level for that Character is unlocked - up to difficulty level 5 - alongside Endless mode. Endless mode is pretty much what it says on the tin, with the exception that any Harvesting the Player Character has will start decreasing at a rapid pace after Wave 20… Supposedly as a means of making things challenging.
In regards to difficulty levels, those simply make enemies tougher, more plentiful and also introduce new enemy types that are harder to deal with. Fortunately, some of those new baddies give the Player rewards - special Red Boxes. What are those? Well, they are like Green Boxes, which can drop off of any enemy, if the Player is lucky, or drop off of special enemies that appear rarely and run away from the Player.
In a Green Box, the Player finds an Item - which is incredibly beneficial by itself, but also because if the Player does not want the Item, they can recycle it, gaining some extra Materials. In Red Boxes, the Player finds… The highest rarity items. It’s simple really.
With all that said, it is difficult to say that Brotato has a lackluster amount of systems or mechanics. In fact, this game has a lot of stuff working to provide the Player with a largely unique experience every time, perhaps only dependent on the Character and Weapons they have chosen.
Great amounts of replayability, incredible complexity, the potential to almost break the game through utilization of things that are in the game and are freely accessible to all Players - those are good things. Allowing the Player to grow so powerful that they can just stand in one spot and wait for the enemies to run at them, only for the enemies to die - that’s good. Allowing the Player to grow so powerful that they kill bosses in a single hit - that’s good. Games should not be afraid of allowing the Player to break them, because that is how they prove to that Player that the experience and the enjoyment derived from it are what comes first.
And that’s why even though I have some things I disagree with from a design standpoint, such as the fact that there are diminishing returns for Armor or the fact that there is a hard limit to Dodge, I can’t not give Brotato the highest score possible! 3/3
Presentation
Brotato looks decent. It features an art-style that is evocative of those funky old-time Newgrounds flash games, with thick black outlines and stuff on the inside. Not only that, but the approach the game has to the appearances of its items, the naming conventions and the way the different Characters look - it is very reminiscent of that thing of the past I mentioned.
It is 2D, featuring 2D sprites on a 2D plain. One of those sprites is the Player Character, a potato, who progressively gets more and more stuff thrown on top of it - goggles, horns, scars, suits - everything. The more Items the Player buys, the more things are going to be put on the potato. Then there are the Weapons - those are always the same, floating next to the potato and getting used whenever available. Then there are turrets and farms, some of which resemble something, others which somewhat look like what they’re supposedly representing.
Lastly, there are the enemies, who have been very well done. The most basic enemy is reminiscent of a purple slug. Then, upgraded versions of that enemy look somewhat like that enemy, but have helmets on. Then, other types of enemies look remarkably different from the basic one, though they retain some features - being purple and being a slug - but they get new things added to them, such as a big set of arms and broad shoulders, or a weird brown hat, or a mushroom-esque hat, or they look like they’ve visited the Chernobyl exclusion zone recently.
The best thing about them is that some of those enemies have upgraded versions, and the upgraded versions resemble the weaker versions - visually it’s not hard to guess that the guy with a brown hat that has horns on it is a tougher version of the guy with a brown hat that does not have horns on it.
The visual design of enemies is very good in this, and I am very pleased by that. In addition to that, the game tries very hard to make projectiles stick out - there is almost nothing else that is red in this game, aside from the projectiles AND a special effect that makes enemies a lot stronger and faster and should also require the Player’s attention - which is commendable.
In regards to music, there is no great variety, but that, which is present, fits quite well with what happens on screen, so it works. Sound effects are also passable, with no great exceptions in regards to badness, and a very special shout-out for the one played whenever a Material is picked up - it is a very specific, pleasant sound that makes one’s Dopamine levels surge whenever heard in great quantities.
Lastly, information - Brotato also does well when it comes to conveying that stuff. It is clear what items do, and it is also relatively clear what comes later. The tutorial is very limited, but due to the fact the gameplay itself is also very rudimentary, it works. There are some oddities, with buttons for navigating menus being absent, or the placement of the “Wave 20” and the “Endless” button being very improper, because it allows for miss-inputs that might be a bit bothersome.
However, it is not that troublesome. Overall, the game is very well presented, though in many areas it simply performs decently, rather than being incredible. As a result of that… 2/3
Story
There is no story. There are certain things that could, potentially, be construed as being somewhat related to a story, of sorts, but there is no story. There might be room for some emergent story-telling, but the game has no story for its Player. 0/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? I feel as though I could say that it does, but in truth I could never. This game is dreadfully simple in the Gameplay department and it always bothered me that it was such. With the only thing I, as a Player, am doing being walking around, it does not feel right.
Something very fundamental to games is missing here, and Brotato does manage to emulate its presence very well, but it is not present, it is absent, and that absence makes me incapable of giving this game the Legendary Point. So no, Brotato does not get the point. 0/1
Conclusion
5/10. A very neat game that has the basics down very right, allowing for great enjoyment to be derived from playing it. Fans of horde-survival games should definitely take a look at it, as should anyone out there who likes Flash (may it Rest in Peace).
I’ll gingerly place it in the bag of mediocrity, for it lacks some goodness, but it will be very near the top there.