What do you get when you mix handball with nutty weapons and lots of neon? You get Hyperbrawl Tournament, an indie sports game from the minds over at Milky Tea Studios. Hyperbrawl was one of the first hundred games first launched on Apple Arcade and sports some wacky fun. But just how good it is? Let’s find out.
The concept of Hyperbrawl is simple. Get the ball and put it in the net. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins. Pretty simple right? Well, not quite. Each player also has their own weapon and the ability to go into overdrive where they can knock out an opponent in one hit. Each weapon has their own unique skill. The Turbo Thruster gives you a huge burst of speed so you can gain ground on the ball or take out an opponent. The Sentry Shield can be placed anywhere in the arena to disrupt passes or shots among other power-ups. There are solid amounts of diverse weapons and that gives the game some variety in how to play. The biggest mechanic in Hyperbrawl is mastering the curve. Curving the ball takes some getting used, but once you have it down, you will be bending your shots around everything. It is pretty fun to be across the arena, shoot, curve your ball around an opponent and score. I really enjoy that aspect of the game.
The basic flow of the game goes as such: Ball enters arena, everyone goes after the ball, chaos ensues. You will punch, kick and fight your way through your opponents to get the ball and bury it in the net. The gameplay is fine and was pretty fun in my experience. Knocking out enemies, activating my abilities, and shooting the ball all feel pretty good. I never felt like the game was getting in the way of me having fun. Along with multiple weapons, you can choose from several heroes differing in attributes and there are multiple arenas to choose from. Some characters are faster than others while some hit harder than others. Pretty straight forward in that regard. The arenas add another layer of variation with their environments. Some arenas have obstacles that get in the way and others have things like portals where you can throw the ball and have it pop out at another portal across the arena. All of these things give the game a solid level of replayability, allowing for lots of experimenting.
After the tutorial, you can do just a couple of things. Play an offline campaign mode against bots, play with a local friend, or play a quick match against bots. I spent most of my time in the campaign mode against bots, which was pretty fun. You pick a character, pick a teammate and play for the cup. There are a couple of cups to play for so there is some content with the season mode. The quick match mode against bots is a good way to experiment with different characters and weapons. You choose your set up then just fill in the remaining spots on your team and the opponent’s team with bots. Oh, and there is an online mode called Blitz, but after sitting in queue collectively for about an hour, I never found a match. There seems to be no one playing online, and part of me thinks that could change with the console release. As you play Hyperbrawl you will collect credits where you can then purchase Artifacts to unlock cosmetics. Some of the cosmetics are pretty cool and it doesn’t take too long to unlock a good bulk of stuff.
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