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Brawl Stars

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Brawl Stars
Logo
Developer(s)Supercell
Publisher(s)Supercell
Platform(s)Android, iOS
Release
  • WW: 12 December 2018
Genre(s)MOBA, hero shooter
Mode(s)Multiplayer

Brawl Stars is a multiplayer online battle arena[1] and third-person hero shooter[2] video game developed and published by Finnish video game company Supercell.[3] The game was released worldwide on 12 December 2018, on iOS and Android platforms.[4] The game features a variety of game modes, each with a distinctive objective. Players are able to choose from a large selection of unlockable characters, called "Brawlers," whom each have different abilities and playstyles.[5][6]

Setting

Brawl Stars takes place in a fictional abandoned amusement park named Starr Park. Initially introduced in a live-action short film,[7] in-game surveillance footage showed that Starr Park closed in 1995 due to magic crystals that granted several staff, visitors, and inanimate objects in Starr Park immortality, but also madness.[8]

Gameplay

Screenshot of gameplay from the map "Snake Prairie" on the game mode "Bounty"

In Brawl Stars, players battle against other players or AI opponents in multiple game modes. Players can choose between different Brawlers, who can be unlocked through the Starr Road or purchased through the Shop to use in battles.[9] In December 2022, a new progressive unlock system called the "Starr Road" replaced Boxes as the main method to unlock Brawlers.[10] The cost to unlock each Brawler on the Starr Road depends on its rarity.[11]

During a match, players can use their Brawler's normal attack or their Super, a special attack that charges up when damaging an opponent, or in some cases through additional means. Players can also equip their Brawlers with power-ups known as Gadgets, Star Powers, Gears, and Hypercharges; Gadgets and Hypercharges can be activated during a match, while Star Powers and Gears are passive abilities.

Game Modes

Brawl Stars has a variety of different game modes that players can choose from, each having a different objective. Players can invite friends to play with them up to the maximum team size of a game mode.[12][13]

  • Showdown: A battle royale-style game mode involving one, two, or three Brawlers per team. Ten (twelve in Trio Showdown) players battle for survival, with Power Cube boxes scattered across the map providing attack and life boosts.
  • Brawl Ball: A soccer game mode where two teams of three Brawlers score points by shooting a ball into the opponents' goal. The game ends if one team scores two points, or if one team has a point advantage after two minutes. A variation with five Brawlers, as well as Basketball and volleyball varieties, were added later.
  • Gem Grab: Gems spawn in the middle of the map, and two teams of three Brawlers must collect the highest number of Gems possible. A team wins if it accumulates more than ten Gems for 15 seconds. A variation with five Brawlers was added later.
  • Wipeout and Bounty: Deathmatch game modes. In Wipeout, two teams of either three or five must defeat 10 enemy Brawlers. In Bounty, teams must earn 20 points by defeating Brawlers, who become worth more points for each kill.
  • Heist: Two teams of three Brawlers have must destroy the opponents' highly durable safe located near their spawn point, before the enemy team can destroy their own safe.
  • Hot Zone: A king of the hill game mode. Two teams of three Brawlers each must stay in all Hot Zones for 100 seconds. The match ends if this requirement is met or one team had stayed in the Hot Zones longer than the other.
  • Knockout: A deathmatch game mode where players cannot respawn and rounds are won by defeating the entire enemy team. The first team to win two rounds wins the game. A variation with five Brawlers is unique in that each elimination causes the remaining teammates to gain extra damage and health.
  • Duels: A game mode involving two players playing against each other. Each player assembles a team of three Brawlers; after one of the players' Brawlers is defeated, the player plays the next. The goal is to defeat all three of the opponents' Brawlers. [14]
  • Ranked: In Ranked, a random 3v3 game mode and map are chosen with a chance for a modifier. Winning a game increases Points, and Point thresholds increase a player's rank. As a player breaks through certain Point thresholds, Ranked Starr Drops are obtained, which can give the player select cosmetic items. It was formerly called Power League.
  • Mega Pig: Players can join clubs or create them[15] to participate in Mega Pig, an event that occurs once a month over a weekend. Each win adds to a club's points, which increases the Starr Drops they get at the end of the event.[16]
  • Map Maker A mode where players can freely create maps and may apply custom modifiers to various modes in the game. Players can submit their maps into candidates of the day, allowing for a selection of random player-submitted maps to be played by other players, who can give the map a like or dislike, increasing or decreasing their chance of being selected. The map with the most likes becomes the winner of the day, which becomes available for everyone in a second Map Maker slot.[17][18]

Brawl Pass

On May 14, 2020, a game update added a new reward system called the “Brawl Pass”.[19] The Brawl Pass is the game's version of a battle pass. When players compete in battles, they earn XP (formerly known as Tokens) to progress along the Brawl Pass and unlock tiers with various rewards. All players have the free Brawl Pass by default. Players could purchase the premium Brawl Pass with Gems, until January 4, 2024, where the pass and its newly introduced Brawl Pass Plus variant could only be bought with real money.[20][21]

Resources

Players can upgrade Brawlers' stats using Coins and Power Points. Coins are additionally used for buying Brawler-specific upgrades such as Gadgets or Star Powers. Credits are used to unlock Brawlers, XP Doublers (formerly Token Doublers) are used to speed up progress through the Brawl Pass, and Bling is used to buy most cosmetics, which was added on April 2023, replacing Star Points.

Gems are used to top off any currency that the player does not have enough of, as well as certain cosmetics exclusively available for gems.[22] Winning matches with Brawlers progresses their mastery, which can unlock Brawler cosmetics and progression items (Power Points, Coins and Credits).[23]

Starr Road

The Starr Road was introduced as the method of unlocking Brawlers, after the removal of Boxes in December 2022.[10] Players can select a Brawler from a selection of up to four from the same rarity (from a choice of either Rare, Super Rare, Epic, Mythic, or Legendary) to initiate the unlocking process. Progress is made through Credits, a currency obtained in the Trophy Road, Mastery paths, Starr Drops and Brawl Pass. Players can switch to a different Brawler they wish to unlock at any time, with the accumulated credits transitioning to the new selection.

Once a Brawler is unlocked, it becomes a permanent addition to the player's collection. The Starr Road then presents a new selection of Brawlers from the next rarity tier to unlock. Alternatively, players have the option to acquire Brawlers from the Starr Road using Gems.

Until February 29, 2024, the Chromatic Shop allowed players to unlock certain Brawlers through Chroma Credits, a currency obtainable through the Brawl Pass and used exclusively for unlocking Brawlers who debuted as part of a Brawl Pass. Alternatively, Gems could be used to purchase the Chromatics.[24]

Cosmetics

Brawl Stars has a variety of cosmetics. Skins change a brawler's model and animations,[25] and may come with pins for in-game communication, player icons (profile pictures) and sprays.[26] Some cosmetic items are exclusive or limited edition.

Brawl Stars Championship

The Brawl Stars Championship is an annual tournament, composed of a qualifying stage, available in-game, another Monthly Qualifier stage, a Regional Monthly Finals stage, and finally a World Finals stage, in which the best teams compete to win the Championship. The first in-game challenge is similar to other challenges: the players must win 15 matches in the in-game challenge without losing three times. After 15 wins, a regional Monthly Qualifier stage is created, giving access to the regional Monthly Finals.[27] These events lead to the World Finals.[28][29]

The first edition, known as the Brawl Stars World Championship, was held on November 15 and 16, 2019, at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center in South Korea. The first-place winner was Nova Esports with a 3–0 victory. Other competing participants included Animal Chanpuru, Tribe Gaming, 3Bears, Spacestation Gaming, and PSG Esports. With a $250,000 prize pool, it was the first international event for the game and had teams from North America, Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Japan, and South Korea.[28]

In 2020, the World Finals were held between November 21 and 22 with a base $1,000,000 prize pool. Half of the amount was raised using the profits from an in-game championship package. Eight teams participated in the World Finals, which were originally to take place in Katowice, Poland, but were moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. PSG Esports was the winner of that year's championship with a prize of $200,000. The other monetary prizes were split between the teams which won second to eighth place.[30]

In 2021, the Brawl Stars Championship started on February 20. There are eight seasons for the championship that occur once per month, from February to September. The Championship Challenges and Monthly Qualifiers are each live for two days per season. The top eight teams from the regional Monthly Qualifiers go to the regional Monthly Finals. Sixteen teams from the Monthly Finals from all seven regions come together to participate in the World Finals, which took place in that year's edition from November 26 to 28 in-person in Bucharest, Romania. The prizes for 2021 were $600,000 in the Monthly Finals, and a minimum of $500,000 in the World Finals with opportunities to increase this amount through in-game offers.[29]

Development and release

Supercell set out to develop a team-based game similar to League of Legends and Overwatch. The team wanted to create such a game that was designed with mobile devices in mind first. According to Frank Keienburg, General Manager of Supercell, "Our focus was on retaining a lot of depth while stripping away all the fluff."[31] Although the game contains some elements of the battle royale genre, these were implemented before the genre as a whole took off and the team did not set out to make a game with those elements.[32]

The game is notable for its long soft launch period during which virtually every aspect of the game changed.[33] Supercell officially announced the game via a livestream video on 14 June 2017.[34] It received an iOS soft launch in Canada the following day.[35] The soft launch would last a total of 522 days, during which internally it was doubted whether or not the game would ever actually see a general release.[32][31] Initially, the game was played in portrait mode and the movement controls were controlled by tapping on the screen. Eventually, landscape mode and joysticks were implemented.[32][31] Other changes include changing the UI, changing the metagame and transitioning the game from 2D to 3D.[31] Frank Keienburg attributes the difficult beta period to the developers working in a new genre where they "weren't sure how to interpret its success."[32] The game soft-launched in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macao and Malaysia for iOS on January 19, 2018.

Brawl Stars was made globally and officially available on December 12, 2018.[4][1] It made more than US$63 million in its first month.[36] On June 9, 2020, Brawl Stars was released in mainland China, with the corresponding changes to accommodate to Chinese regulations by Tencent Games.[37]

Partnerships

The game has a partnership with Line Friends to create official merchandise, new skins for Brawlers that are based on Line Friends characters, sticker packs on Line Messenger, and new content. A pop-up store was opened in January 2020 in South Korea to sell the merchandise from the partnership. Merchandise is also available at major Line Friends retail stores and online.[38] In September 2022, Brawl Stars also partnered with BT21, featuring new skins and Pins in-game.[39]

The game partnered up with Paris Saint-Germain FC (PSG), a French professional soccer club, in 2019 to host Brawl Stars Ball Cup organized by PSG's esports division. There were three online qualifier events and an online playoff event. The top two teams travelled to Paris for the finals. The finals were played live at PSG's home stadium, Parc des Princes. All matches took place in Brawl Ball, a football-like game mode.[40] The skins PSG Dynamike and PSG Shelly where also released as part of the promotion.

The game partnered up with PSG again in 2020 and 2021. During the partnerships, the game launched the Paris Saint-Germain Challenge. The challenges are similar to the championship challenges, but all matches are based in the Brawl Ball game mode. In 2020, the game offered a PSG skin for Shelly for players who won nine matches and lost four or fewer times. PSG's esports division also has a team that competed in the 2020 championship challenge.[41] In 2021, the game offered a PSG Mike skin for Dynamike.[42]

The game partnered up with Godzilla in 2024 to create official merchandise, new skins and pins for Brawlers based on various kaiju, and a new game mode named Godzilla City Smash.[43] The game partnered up with DragonForce where they made an song named "A Draco Tale",[44] a new environment and some DragonForce instrumentals in-game.

The game partnered up with SpongeBob SquarePants and John Cena in 2024 to create official merchandise, new skins and pins for Brawlers based on various SpongeBob characters, new game modes named Jellyfishing and Trio Showdown, and a John Cena event.[45]

Reception

Awards

The game was nominated for "Mobile Game" and "EE Mobile Game of the Year" at the 15th British Academy Games Awards.[49]

Critical reception

Brawl Stars received "mixed or average" reviews or 72 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic.[46]

Pocket Gamer's Harry Slater scored the game 3 out of 5. Reviewing the game immediately after global release, he praised that game's progression. He criticized Showdown, the game's battle royale mode, for being the weakest of all the game modes that were in the game. He said that Showdown "doesn't capture the real madness of the genre, and there's a distinct lack of tension since you can pretty much see everyone on the map and what they're up to". He mentioned that something felt "missing in Brawl Stars. You'll play, you'll get new characters, you'll unlock new modes, but you're never having quite as much fun as you feel you should be doing." He continued on to say that "the action is relatively flat - in the team matches you know within the first few seconds which way the game is going." He concluded in disappointment because the game did not seem like "the huge step forward for multiplayer mobile action that a lot of us were hoping for."[47]

148 Apps' Campbell Bird scored the game 3.5 out of 5. She started with mentioning that the game felt "like a combination of Arena of Valor and Overwatch." She praised the game's graphics and the developer's implementation of the progression system to encourage players to play again, as well as the quick matchmaking. However, she criticized the game's controls for feeling "oddly loose and muddy". the characters falling "into pretty predictable hero shooter archetypes", as well as claiming that "every mode in the game is some variation on something you’ve seen before in other, better multiplayer shooters." She also highlighted that the frequent connection issues and unbalanced teams made the experience of playing the game less enjoyable.[48]

Commercial reception

Brawl Stars has been downloaded over 400 million times. In 2020, Brawl Stars had the second highest gross of any mobile game in Europe.[50] It grossed US$526 million in total in 2020, which accounted for more than half its life time revenue. It was also the fourth game by Supercell to surpass US$1 billion in lifetime revenue.[51]

References

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