Who doesn’t love potatoes? Really, they are the back bone of human society, chipped, fried, baked, mashed, boiled, wedged, Hasselbacked, crisped, croquetted, raw and even turned into Vodka… the spud is truly king. So, it’s no surprise the starch loaded hero was the inspiration for French independent developer Thomas Gervraud’s latest title Brotato. A very simple game at first glance, as it’s a top-down arena-based roguelike, where you can take one of the 44 – yes 44! – potato-based characters in the gauntlet to battle waves of aliens. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find there is more to this tattie-fest.
Once you pick what hero you want to play as, the job is simple… blast everything that moves, bag as much of the upgrade currency as you can and upgrade/buff yourself ready for the next round.
Waves go to level 20 where you can choose to stop your run after defeating a boss, or you can go all out and play it in endless mode. However, if you bail odds are high you’ll unlock a new hero to play as, or some new upgrades and power-ups for your next run. Each spud has a host of different starting attributes, some are good… others not so good. For example some can do more damage or collect more credit, whereas others have zero accuracy or can’t heal during a wave. It’s here where you start to see the depth and challenge of each run, plus there are 5 different levels of difficulty to tackle, which really adds a bit of spice to things.
Have no fear though… you can wield 6 different weapons over time ranging from a rock, to a mini-nuke launcher and everything in-between. You can set aiming to manual, but for the best results its miles better to have shooting set to automatically be handled by the game, leaving it up to you to dodge and grab the loot. And that’s it honestly, a quick pick-up and play title that does what a roguelike needs to, all while dishing out little hits of dopamine as you unlock new stuff and eggs you on, to try a new run with a whole new build.
Visually the game has an almost child-like drawing vibe to it, looking a lot like the sort of doodles you would do back in the day on your school jotters. Each Brotato also has a lot of character and is always evolving as the buffs you grab will change their look as well over your run. Brotato is what I like to call virtual popcorn – it’s easy to pick up and play, doesn’t need your full attention and hits you with those good vibes often and a lot. If you have played the likes of Vampire Survivors, you’ll have a good idea about what I mean and what you’ll find here. And at just £4.19 it’s as cheap as chips too.
An Xbox review copy of Brotato was provided by Thomas Gervraud’s PR team, and the game is out now on PC, Xbox, Switch and PlayStation for about the same price as a sack of spuds.
The Verdict
Stuart Cullen
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