What is Brawl Stars?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVl-sJfsgBk
What's up guys, welcome to Supercell's brand new game Brawl Stars. What is Brawl Stars exactly? It's Supercell's take on a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, Commonly referred to as a MOBA.
Now, I like to look at this as more of a third person shooter where your camera view is behind the character that you happen to be playing. And you're trying to take out a variety of opponents.
This game was played in portrait mode which is quite different than landscape mode which is the typical mode you'll find in other MOBA's. The control's in Brawl Stars are truly special, in the settings of the game you'll find two different control modes.
One is tap to move and the other is joystick move, these settings are pretty elaborate and allow the most customizable experience out there in mobile games. Players are likely to prefer one control mode over the other, but it will not surprise me to see some players prefer a certain control mode based on the character they happen to be playing.
In joystick mode you seem to sacrifice a little bit of agility and the ability to move around quick. In exchange for a very high degree of accuracy with your primary attack.
When using the tap to move controls it can be a little difficult to fire accurately over long distances, but moving around is a breeze. Now that we know what Brawl Stars is, let's find out what Brawlers actually are.
What are Brawlers?
One ability that all Brawler's bring to the battlefield is the ability to go invisible when they hide in bushes. With the exception of if you happen to bump into someone who happens to be in the same bush.
What Type of Game Modes does the Game Offer?
One of the things that make Brawl Star's so unique is the various amounts of game modes. You've got a Bot Brawl, a Traditional Brawl, Co-Op Brawls.
Now what are the differences between these modes? A Bot Brawl is where you take your character who ever you happen to choose as a Brawler and you go into whatever game type you prefer and brawl against Bots.
Bots are actually pretty decent as well so make sure you guys bring your A-game cause you'll need it to defeat the computer A.I. The Brawl Mode is where you take your Brawler up against other players.
Bot Brawl
In real time PvP, you'll battle it out in which ever game type you select. The Co-Op brawl mode is where you team up with your friends and you guys go to battle against bots.
Again, one thing about Brawl Stars is that bots aren't actually super terrible nor do they seem like they're wall hacking. There's a fine line between to easy and to hard and Brawl Stars falls somewhere in the middle with regards to their bot A.I.
In Brawl Stars there's a variety of game types available as well. You can play a bounty mode where you go in a free for all style team vs team with each successive kill that you gain you're able to add another star over your head.
For each star that appears on top of your head you are worth that many points to the enemy if they happen to take you out. So your most valuable players you also wanna make sure that you protect as its very likely that the enemies will start gunning for whoever is worth the most.
Stars max out and you become Most Wanted when there are 7 stars above your head.
Bounty
Bounty is a 3 vs 3 game mode where kills are what matters. No objectives, aside from having more points than your opponent when the 2 minute 30 second round timer runs out. Points are obtained by killing enemy brawlers.
As you rack up the kills, your Brawler becomes more and more wanted, earning an additional star for each kill obtained without dying. Brawlers become “Most Wanted” at 7 stars. When a brawler dies, however many stars he is worth will be awarded in points to the team that kills him.
Don’t get too confident if you’re in the lead, because quite often a team may dominate for the majority of the round. A key kill or two on high value targets can quickly even the score.
Smash and Grab
The next game types and one of my favorites is Smash and Grab.
Each team will try to hustle in and collect the gem and then you will have control of that for your team. Be careful though, because if you die all of your gems will spill out onto the battlefield at your place of death and they are fair game for anyone to pick up.
Whichever team is able to collect 10 gems and hold onto them for a period of 16 seconds at the end of the round will be declared the winner. There are a couple of caveats this game mode though.
If one team actually collects more gems than the other team while the countdown is active a new countdown will start and the team with the most gems will have a countdown start in their favor. If the player holding gems for the winning team is taken out during a countdown and they spill onto the battlefield the countdown will reset.
This makes for some exciting back and forth action, super suspenseful where you just don't know who the winner is going to be. Often times a game that is dominated entirely by one team can have one key death where all of the gems pour out onto the battlefield and the tide can turn to the other teams favor.
Be careful about having too few players collect the majority of the gems because they become high-value targets for the enemy team. If you only have one player carrying all of your gems It's very easy to gang up on that player, take them out and collect the gems, and restart any timer that has been set.
Showdown
It is 10 Brawlers in an arena all to themselves so select your Brawler, take them to the arena, and collect power-ups that you can get out of both TnT boxes as well as collecting them from other Brawlers. With each power up your Brawler will gain 100 hit points as well as 7% attack power.
So obtaining and collecting these power-ups is crucial to your success. In order to tell how strong an opponent is simply looking above their head for the number that indicates how many power-ups they have.
As expected, the last Brawler standing in that particular showdown will be crowned the champion. But to throw in a wrinkle, to keep the game moving along at a good pace and to make it so that the Brawlers can't avoid each other the whole time there is gas that introduced collapsing on the outside of the battle arena and it will continue to move inward until only a small space is available to fight in.
That gas will do damage over time 250 hit points per tick of damage, that is going to hurt. So you can't hang out in the gas too long. You can enter it for a second or to pick up a power up but it is not a place you want to stay too long as you will be dead within a matter of seconds. As the gas closes into the center often times you'll see a very narrow circle around the center of the map where the final 1v1 battle will take place.
Heist
This game type has 3 Vs. 3. You are on a team trying to either defend or open a safe that is guarded in one of the teams spawns.
The team that is defending will have a safe with roughly 5500 hit points that is in their spawn and they are to defend it at all costs. Many obstacles are placed in the battlefield, one team that is attacking the safe will spawn on the far side of the map and their job is to progress all the way through and do enough damage to that safe in order to open it before the timer expires.
This game mode is pretty straight forward, if the timer expires and the safe is unopened the defending team will be crowned the champions. If the attacking team is able to open the safe before the timer expires they will win the battle.
In its current state you will only play offense or defense in Heist and it appears to be random for which side you're chosen for. These game types all rotate on a regular basis.
Game Mode Availability
They're available between 12 and 24 hours at a time and after their time expires they will rotate in the next game type. There are 4 slots for each game type.
Now those 4 available slots can each have a different type of game involved in them and they do rotate every 12 to 24 hours. There is a timer for each game type and after that timer expires the next one will be rotated in.