Many games have tried to capture the magic of Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Putting beloved characters into button mashing battles with friends on the couch has become something well associated with Nintendo leaving little room for competitors. French studio Dark Screen Games simply got tired of waiting for their favorite indie game characters to make their way to Smash in Bounty Battle.
Bounty Battle
Developed by: Dark Screen Games
Published by: Merge Games
Available For: PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC
Bounty Battle is a new multiplayer 2D fighter, where you can indie game characters from various games against each other. You’ll find characters from such games as Guacamelee, Darkest Dungeon, and Dead Cells. Thirty characters in all with a handful of different modes.
The game is Staples, because when it comes to the basics…yeah it’s got that. Tutorials and training modes along with versus and a kind of single-player tournament mode. The tournament mode is a bit unbalanced, in that the second fight you’re in goes straight into a 3vs1 beat down you have to endure. Once you build enough skill to get past it the following rounds while challenging, don’t bother you as much.
What Bounty Battle excels at is incorporating a mix of characters that have a very thin connecting thread. Embracing these differences, the studio creates a good fight balance between characters. Juan from Guacamelee feels like a bruiser but not powerless against ranged characters such as the archer Azell. Every character plays truly unique from one another and yet the balance is near perfectly leveled. Each character also gets a companion which adds the same dimension of challenge you’d find in the first Marvel v Capcom game. I rarely encountered a moment where one character had some kind of overpowered move over everyone.
That imagination also extends to a fantastic metling pot art style. Stages based on Steamworld, Dead Cells, and Axiom Verge to name a few have such fan touches that make them a real love letter to the source. Players will get to change character skins to create even more unique designs.
Bounty Battle does have some weaknesses to address. The speed of the action could use some ratcheting up. Battles can feel too methodically paced if you’re accustomed to the on-screen chaos of a game like Smash Bros. The other problem is while the game uses licenses from other games very well, Bounty Battle does have its own created characters with a minimal story behind them they come off as generic. I found it hard to pull myself away from the characters licensed from games I’ve previously played and when I did there wasn’t much to talk about.
Bounty Battle is a solid title for anyone who hates the Nintendo monopoly on 2D fighters. Considering its low price point in comparison it’s worth adding to your party library on any available platform.
