Splody
Classic couch competitive bomb-dropping action gameplay brought into the modern era. Place bombs, get out of the way, destroy your friends, collect power-ups, 'splode your way to victory in a variety of game modes adapted for smooth multiplayer. FEATURES • Local and Online multiplayer, allowing up to 4 local players to join online games together • Ranking and Leaderboards • Play against bots to practice or fill in a game • Level editor, customize level design, power-ups, and play your custom levels online • Various game modes: Free-for-all or teams, traditional “Last Man Standing”, “Humans vs Bots” (with up to 64 bot opponents), or “Capture the Dino” – Fight over control for a mount in this game mode which keeps all players respawning and in the action until the end of the match • With post-mortem “ghost bombers”, players can affect the game after they are defeated, so no one gets bored between rounds • Music by The Hamster Alliance
Steam User 31
I'm an expert in Bomberman but I have only tested this game for an half hour to check the game mechanics. Here are my impressions.
TL;DR:
++ Competitive online gameplay with ranking.
-- No controls configuration (for now). The developers don't seem to think this feature is useful since there are only 2 buttons.
My general impression: I recommend this game for couch gaming but this game is not tight enough for competitive Bomberman players so I won't recommend it for competitive.
In details:
Pros:
++ First and most important point: competitive online game play. I have only a bunch of friends who likes Bomberman and among them only 3 who are really good at it. Bringing online game play with competitive rank is the major and most important feature that no other Bomberman did outside Japan. Unfortunately I haven't tested it so I can't say if it's any good but I do believe this is the most important feature for a Bomberman game.
++ There are 2 kind of Bombermans in my opinion: classic ones (Bomberman 93', 94, Mega Bomberman, Saturn Bomberman) and the Super Nintendo ones. This game is clearly a classic one. I personally dislike the SNES-like ones so this is an important point for me.
+ Almost all you need to know is in the doc on their website:
+ Up to 128 players. This is the kind of game that is fun to play with 10 people on the same screen. Very cool feature for local multiplayer but I believe this is not suitable for competitive (2, 4 or 5 players are the good numbers (3 is unbalanced, more than 5 is messy)).
+ The screenshots look bad but I must say the graphics are actually quite nice. Especially the forest style and the classic green background with bricks.
+ Character customization. You can pick one of the 6 skins and select 2 colors of your choice to customize it.
+ King of the hill mode (not tested)
Deal breaker:
- No controls configuration (for now)
I'm not sure what is the intention of the developers exactly because they did add a control configuration menu to the game but apparently it does nothing (at least for the gamepad configuration) and on the website they seems to think it is not useful: "There is no in-game controller configuration, as there are only two main actions ("primary" - drop bomb, and "secondary" for pinging and powerups) and all face buttons should automatically be assigned alternatingly to those two actions."
Their argument sounds okay but in my personal opinion this makes the game unsuitable for competitive game. Imagine any other game you play competitive without being able to adapt the controls. I'm very used to the Saturn Bomberman controls so any other configuration makes me lose a little bit.
Cons:
- No kangaroo/dino ability (no need for a third button)
- Remote control. It uses the same button to detonate it than to stop a bomb in movement. By default the item behave differently: only the next bomb you drop will be remote and then it's like you lose the item. I personally don't see the point of having one remote controlled bomb that you can't choose when you want to start using it. This item seems also useless in the beginning of the game. It also reduces the probability to get one of the other items. The original remote control item is quite unsuitable for multiplayer gameplay (you just kill basically whoever you want). I don't know how it works in competitive, I haven't tested. But if you can customize it then I would say playing a game on different rules on every game is not good for competitive.
- Taunt (a third button). You can taunt the other players during the game. This feature blocks your controls for more than a full second while your character is saying something provocative. This is a completely useless feature that has negative impact on the game play. Fortunately I think I saw a switch to turn it off. I don't know how it works in competitive.
- Not square shaped maps. One of the principle of Bomberman is to have everybody at equal distance. Rectangular maps break this rule. This can be useful for 6-players gameplay though.
- No power glove. No ability to kick bombs over blocks. Screen wrapping is so much fun in Bomberman but here I didn't see trampolines nor power gloves nor blue kangaroos that can kick a bomb at the other side of the screen.
- Choosing the player color. You can pick 2 colors and one of the 6 skins. This is very cool but you have to do it every time you start the game on a menu screen that is actually a map where you're going to move your character. Selecting the character and the number of bot there feels very awkward. I don't know how it works in competitive but you can't configure a default skin so I expect you have to do it at least one time when you start the game but I suspect you have to do it at every game. Also everybody picks their color of their choice so you may end up changing color at every game. This is not good for competitive.
Possible fixes:
- Replace remote control by mines like in Saturn Bomberman in the Jungle stage
- Enforce competitive rules if it's not already the case: pick one rule for everybody, no customization
- Enforce 2, 4 or 5 players in a map at equal distance in competitive
- Add "aura" to characters: enemies in red, allies in blue (= everybody is red except your own character)
- Customize your online skin in the configuration menu so people won't have to select it again
- Add power glove because it doesn't require a third button and it's fun
- Add trampolines
- Remove "open space" in competitive (4 walkable tiles in square). It feels awkward in a Bomberman because the bombs explodes only in the lines of the four directions of a bomb.
- Remove taunts or at least remove the time where the controls are blocked. This feature shouldn't have impact on the game
- If you're not afraid to introduce a third button, add dino's/kangaroo's abilities
Steam User 6
There are very few games that support more than 4 controllers at once. Of those, this is the only one that seems to do it automatically without some kind of special setup. I was able to plug in 4 xbox one controllers, 2 of my generic SNES controllers, and an additional emulated bluetooth controller and all of them worked correctly the first try. That alone is amazing to me. I don't know what kind of wizardry the dev coded to make this work but I wish all games had this kind of controller support.
Otherwise the game itself is a pretty straight-forward bomberman clone. It is priced fairly and is a nice addition to a couch gaming collection for those times when you have a large crowd. You can go up to 64 players in one game, but the AI is much better at handling the chaos than you will and it will get old quick.
By the way, I see that the last update in the news was almost 1 year ago, but the other day I saw an update download which fixed an issue that I had with my TV. There may be more update activity than it appears. Thanks to the dev for fixing this problem!
Steam User 6
Perhaps the best Bomberman clone on Steam.
+Cheap (Goes on discount sale often)
+ Has AI bots (Very hard for beginners but its a good challenge)
+Has 3 official servers. Has LAN play If you ever have friends you can enjoy this with one Keyboard and Many controllers
+ Many unique modifiers ,powers, mechanics and maps
- Dead playerbase. I searched for people to play Splody couldnt find one. ;(
Aside from its looking cheap ass mobile port. Its actually really good game. There are many Bomberman clones on Steam and all other gaming platforms. But i like splody. I really do. Give this gem a chance.
Steam User 10
If you love blowing up your friends in giant battles you will love this game. If you die a lot (like me) you will enjoy being able to drop bombs after you're dead to show those other players you can still cause some damage! This game tracks your stats and I keep playing just to try to keep my kills in the positive (meaning more kills than suicides) which is harder than it sounds! The avatars are really cute (catgirl ftw!) and you can make yourself unique with the cool color picker at the start of a match. I can't wait to play online with more people because that's when it gets really crazy. :D
Steam User 4
God DAMN! this game takes me back!! just played 4 player with the wife and kids reminds me of the good ol days of bomberman on the SNES. The visuals put me off a little, but the content..... AWWWW YEH, FRANTIC, CHAOTIC MAYHEM. Immense fun for the whole family!
We have only touched the surface of the options in this game, this will keep us going for ages!
Steam User 3
I was looking for a modern bomberman-style game that supports multiplayer and local solo play with bots and this is the game I was looking for. The gameplay is fine and the features are impressive. There is even an editor to create your own levels. Furthermore, I love the character customization possibilities. Thank you for this great game!
Steam User 0
This game does exactly what you would expect. It provides a fun, fast multiplayer-focused Bomberman experience. There are lots options and lots of maps. The AI is competent if you want to play alone. The ability to add a seemingly infinite number of players is pretty astounding, and the game works with just about any controller.