Brotato is what happens when you take something like Vampire Survivors and turn it into something much easier to digest. This highly addicting roguelike puts forth a more minimalistic take on the reverse bullet hell genre, as it features simple fast-paced combat within a single square arena where you face an endless horde of alien foes.
(Updated 10/27/2024)
Deceptively Diverse
In spite of the game’s simplicity, there is a lot of diversity when it comes to its cast of characters, which caters to all sorts of playstyles. From the soldier who gains buffs while standing still but can’t attack while moving to the pacifist who earns bonus EXP and materials for every enemy left alive, there’s no shortage of creative ways to play through the game.
My personal favorite is the engineer, as their playstyle revolves around hunkering down and placing turrets and other structures to effortlessly clear the screen. It essentially allows one to play the game without actually moving, at least in lower difficulties.
Of course, later waves will start throwing curveballs at you that will force you to reposition. This ensures that you can’t fully AFK in the game, unless you manage to set up a hilariously broken build.
High-Octane Chaos
Unless you turn on endless mode, each run lasts for up to 20 waves. It ramps up in difficulty quite quickly, and the final wave features a boss (or two, depending on your selected difficulty level). Enemies start off as plain drones that walk towards you, but you’ll eventually encounter aliens that either fire varying projectiles or charge right in your face.
The duration of waves increases over time until it reaches about a minute each, and your only breaks are the occasional visits to the shop, where you can purchase weapons and other useful items. Apart from surviving until the end, the main goal is to gather materials and increase your stats to consistently plow through the increasingly difficult and near endless hordes of aliens.
At the shop, you can see all of your stats, such as your damage, life regeneration, and harvesting skill (which grants you bonus materials at the end of each wave). Here, you are given a choice of four random items that you can reroll, for a price.
In between the frantic running and gunning, there’s also a bit of planning involved in each run, as the type of items that you can or should use depends on your character. The various items in the game may also come with certain debuffs that balance out how much power you can accumulate.
For example, the Doctor attacks hilariously slowly when using weapons that don’t have the “Medical” tag (e.g. the circular saw and scissors). They regenerate twice as much HP too, so you may want to focus on buying items that can boost that even further while avoiding non-medical weapons as much as possible.
This is in direct contrast to the “Sick” character, who takes damage every second and can only effectively heal themselves through life steal. These guys need to consistently deal a load of damage as quickly as they possibly can.
In Conclusion…
Brotato is a simple yet adrenaline-pumping roguelike that fans of the genre will likely spend dozens of hours on, as there is a large cast of wildly varying characters to unlock. When this was originally written, the game had just exited early access and introduced a lot of new content.
Now, in late 2024, they have recently released their first DLC featuring local co-op and a lot of fresh new characters, items, and more. It’s an inexpensive title that’s absolutely worth every penny, and it’s a worthy contender to something like Vampire Survivors, which essentially pioneered this particular genre.