E3 2015 – Super Dungeon Bros Hands-On Preview: Got Your Back, Bro

If you’re into social gaming with anyone you might call a bro, and you like action RPGs, you will probably like Super Dungeon Bros. It’s a rogue-like dungeon brawler with randomly generated levels, meaning you’ll never play the same dungeon twice. The “bro” part of the game is the best part, with heavy emphasis on cooperation — both online and local — to make this game one of substance.

You can choose to play as one of four Bros — Axl, Freddie, Lars, and Ozzie. Pursue the promise of epic loot as you battle your way through hellish Rökheim. Puzzles challenge your ability to play well with others and get stuff done. Unlike some other co-op games, Super Dungeon Bros gives you the ability to play cross-platform. For PS4 players, you can hop on and play with your friends playing from PC or Mac. This means even more fun is to be had, because if your friends don’t want to use their console, or just don’t have one, you can still enjoy this fun co-op experience.

Solo Bro or Multi-Bro

You can play solo, but the fun is in the co-op. When you’re playing with your bros and you want to communicate, you can use the in-game banter system to tell your bros what’s what. The unique part about this system is it’s all contextual. For example, if Axl says, “Hey, go this way, dudes!” and Lars has just pressed the “go this way” button, he will say something like, “Yeah, what he said!” or the like. It’s really fun and I wanted to sit there and try out every combination to see what funny thing would be said during my hands-on demo.

If you’re in a tight spot and you’re being backed up into each other like a scene from some action movie, you can create a “Bro Nado,” a “whirling totem pole of death!” This stems from the ability to pick each other (or enemies) up, and create a stack of four bros, called a “Bro Stack.” The Bro Stack is needed to reach tall places to solve puzzles or reach loot, and it’s really fun to throw your friends around too. The randomly generated worlds adjust based on the number of bros present, so a two-player team won’t get stuck at a four-player puzzle.

The RPG side of the game has you collecting and crafting crazy weapons like the Seismic Totem wand, an earth wand that moves slow but has powerful attacks that knock back enemies. Or the Death’s Fist hammer, that slows enemies on impact, which is very useful in this frantic dungeon brawler. Swords and hammers make up the other two weapon classes, making an equal amount of melee and ranged weapons. You can also level up your character and buy upgrades with the coins you all collect.

In the hands-on demo, I only got to see one world, Cryptheim, the place where the dead are recieved and processed. Two other worlds are available to explore — Chillheim and Bogheim. Chillheim is a huge brewery, ruled by the Brew Queen, located on a natural brew geyser. Bogheim is a sprawling land filled with plants and animals that can poison any who pass by. The story is not the focus of the game, but there’s a little something to lead you along and entertain you, and it seemed to be witty and rock-n-roll/Bro-tastic.

Endless Bro Battles

This game has a lot of content to keep you playing with your friends, and there will even be daily and weekly challenges in single and multiplayer modes to reach top spots on global leaderboards. React Games understands that your bros may not always be available to play locally, so you can form a mixed party of local and online bros. Super Dungeon Bros is a huge win for those long distance bro-mantics.

With Super Dungeon Bros, React Games wants to give you an experience where co-op is more than just being on the same screen together. The shared lives, shared coin collecting, and bro-op mechanics make this a game every bro should be looking forward to (and non-bros too).