Brotato

A Podcast Review of Brotato: This week we cover our first survivors-like, the 2022 game Brotato, and add it to the tier list. We got sucked in, but are survivors-likes good roguelites?

On this episode we read through the developer's blog posts which were regular up until "May 02: My new game: Brotato". Blobfish's approach to game design was much more practical than a lot of developers we encounter here; he was in pursuit of making games quickly and cheaply enough to bring in enough money to justify doing game development full time. Brotato was put out in the spirit of that project - a relatively simple game that has the potential for a ton of replayability - and ended up being a megahit.

We talk through where Brotato differentiates itself from other survivors-likes (more heavy shop focus, round structure) and have a good discussion on where to put a game on the tier list if it was fun but does not necessarily embody the ideals of roguelites that we are after. This episode established the oft-referenced on later shows "Brotato-model" of run-to-run variance where the only run variance comes from pre-run character selection. Otherwise there's virtually no procedural generation here, so that played a big role int our tier list placement.

Developer's blog: https://www.blobfish.dev/