75/100
Players107 ratings

Where to get it

2018 · Supercell · Action · MMO

Brawl Stars

Brawl Stars is a multiplayer online battle arena and hero shooter designed for mobile devices. Players choose from over 100 unlockable characters called Brawlers, each with unique abilities and playstyles, and compete in various objective-based game modes including team deathmatch, gem collection, soccer-inspired ball games, battle royale, and a MOBA-style lane mode. Matches are short, typically lasting under three minutes. The game also features a ranked competitive mode and a map editor that lets players create and share custom arenas.

Released: 18 June 2018
Platforms: Android iOS
Genres: Action MMO MOBA Shooter Strategy
Developers: Supercell
Publishers: Supercell
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Action
Country: Finland
Age ratings: PEGI 7 ESRB E10+
Languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, English, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish (Spain) and 1 more
Time to beat: 342hmain story511hwith extras767hcompletionist

About

Brawl Stars is a multiplayer online battle arena and hero shooter video game developed and published by Finnish video game company Supercell. The game was released worldwide on 12 December 2018, on iOS and Android platforms. The game features a variety of game modes, each with a distinctive objective. Players are able to choose from over 100 unlockable characters, called "Brawlers", who each have different abilities and playstyles.

›Story

The events of Brawl Stars unfold within Starr Park, a fictional amusement park that was abandoned in 1995 after a catastrophic incident. Mysterious purple gems discovered at the site granted immortality to several staff members and visitors, but the resulting chaos also brought inanimate objects to life and mutated the local plant life and animals. The park's former inhabitants, now transformed into superpowered Brawlers, continue to clash within the ruins of the once-cheerful attraction.

Keywords

competitive
brawler
twin stick

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

In Brawl Stars, players battle against other players, AI opponents, or PvE bosses 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. Brawl Stars was described by contemporary reviewers as a multiplayer action game with a range of distinct modes and characters. In December 2022, a new progressive unlock system called the "Starr Road" replaced Boxes as the main method to unlock Brawlers.

During a match, players can use their Brawler's normal attack or their Super, a special attack that charges up through damaging opponents or in some cases through additional means. Players can also equip their Brawlers with power-ups known as Gadgets, Star Powers, Gears, Hypercharges, and Buffies; Gadgets and Hypercharges can be activated during a match, Star Powers and Gears are passive abilities. With the exceptions of Gears, each of these upgrades are specific to each Brawler and can be upgraded with Buffies, which are obtained from Claw Machines.

Story

Brawl Stars takes place in a fictional abandoned amusement park named Starr Park. Initially introduced in a live-action short film, in-game surveillance footage showed that Starr Park closed in 1995 due to magic purple gems that granted several staff and visitors in Starr Park immortality, but in the ensuing chaos, gave life to inanimate objects and mutated plant life and animals.

Development

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, Brawl Stars' General Manager (i.e. project lead), "Our focus was on retaining a lot of depth while stripping away all the fluff". 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.

The game is notable for its long soft launch period during which virtually every aspect of the game changed. Supercell officially announced the game via a livestream video on 14 June 2017. It received an iOS soft launch in Canada the following day. 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.