Imagine crushing all of your favorite action movie heroes into one crazy video game, full of insanely overpowered weapons, destructible environments, ultraviolence, boss battles, mech suits, oh … and the devil.
That’s Broforce (PC, Mac) in a nutshell — the only game that can contain the combined might of Rambo, Blade, The Terminator, Conan the Barbarian, and Ellen Ripley (and the rest). When it launched on Steam Early Access in April, some critics compared it to The Expendables movie franchise. In a wonderful twist, the Broforce team has now brought its destructive magic to The Expendables 3 cast of many with a completely free — and completely official — Broforce instalment called The Expendabros. You can download it from Steam now.
GamesBeat caught up with Evan Greenwood, the game director for Broforce and founder of independent developer Free Lives, to find out about teaming up with The Expendables guys, balancing an insanely hectic game, and the identity of his favorite bro.
The Expendabros
Broforce was born out of a Ludum Dare Game Jam project called Rambros, created in just 48 hours back in 2012. The South Africa-based studio Free Lives won first prize for “fun,” which was enough to encourage the team to take the concept further.
Rambros started off with just one hero — no prizes for guessing who — but pretty soon, it gained a second, and the idea of the bros took form. Released first as a free prototype, Broforce is now a fully featured game, and at the last count it had 23 bros running around its levels, including two female characters.
Now, Free Lives has brought the cast of The Expendables 3 to its standalone project after movie studio Lionsgate provided an “amazing opportunity” to work with the IP. For Greenwood, this was a career highlight.
“It was kind of the greatest moment of developing Broforce — possibly my career — when I heard Dolph Lundgren utter the word ‘Broforce’,” he told me via email.
Above: Dolph Lundgren’s character in The Expendabros.
Greenwood took inspiration for Broforce from the action movies he watched and loved back in the ’80s and ’90s, before the birth of YouTube, Netflix, and social media like Twitter and Facebook. Back then, times were simpler, and the movie heroes of the day brought us some unforgettable, and often ridiculous, moments.
“I think the times we had before the internet, and before hard drives filled with movies, made it a uniquely corny time in cinema history,” said Greenwood. “Today’s blockbusters have become a far more streamlined and market-driven art form, and while we get more consistently enjoyable films, a bit of that spastic magic is lost.”
“If we ever see another Speedo-wearing muscle-man movie star, he probably won’t be speaking in broken English,” he added.
I asked Greenwood if any of the stars of Broforce — who all have slightly altered names from their real-life counterparts — were aware of their gaming fame.
“We’re pretty certain that the stars of Expendables are aware of Broforce,” said Greenwood. “And if not them, definitely their lawyers.”
Balancing the chaos
Broforce is a unique game. It combines platforming, fast-paced slapstick action, gunplay, and destructibility in a delightful retro-looking package. Some levels last as little as 20 seconds, and others take a lot more time and patience to complete, especially as one bullet can kill you.
Unusually, your character is constantly switching out, meaning that one minute you’re playing as ’80s TV hero MacGuyver (MacBrover), flinging TNT around like confetti at a wedding, and the next you’re Ash Williams from The Evil Dead (Ash Brolliams), slicing your way through hordes of mooks — the bad guys — with a chain saw.
I wondered how Free Lives managed to keep these diverse characters in check and stop any from being ridiculously over- or underpowered.
“The lucky packet nature of Broforce minimizes the need for balance,” said Greenwood. “When you randomly get the exact best bro for the task at hand that can be a lot of fun, but you can also get the exact worst bro for the current task. When that happens it adds to the challenge, and you might just figure out something you didn’t know about that bro.”
The same goes for the game’s multiplayer Deathmatch mode. “We do put in effort to make sure the different bros in Deathmatch are somewhat balanced,” said Greenwood, “but even there we feel the power discrepancies create more diverse situations.”
One problem I found with the bros being so powerful is that it’s easy to paint yourself into a corner. Blasting away at bad guys, I would suddenly realize that I’d destroyed my route forward. This isn’t something that Free Lives intends to change.
“We try not to put anything in the game that forces players to play the level in a certain way,” said Greenwood. “Destroying a level to the point of being incomplete-able isn’t in their interest, so we’d rather they learn that for themselves than have us hold their hand and reduce their agency.”
Above: Bronan the Brobarian slices his way through the mooks.
Everyone hated Indy
Broforce is in Steam Early Access, meaning it’s still at a developmental stage, and this enables the community to feed back on what they do and don’t like about the game.
Something everyone agreed on was the character based on Indiana Jones — Indianna Brones.
Above: Indy tried to be brave, but deep down, he knew everyone hated him.
“Indianna Brones was universally despised in his first iteration,” said Greenwood, “and we probably disliked him just as much as the community!”
Hearing the vocal complaints of Broforce players spurred Free Lives into changing the character up completely, and he’s now much more useful (if still a bit underpowered when facing a boss).
Despite new bros joining the game on a regular basis — most recently Cherry Broling, based on Cherry Darling from the movie Planet Terror — Free Lives constantly reviews what it’s already got in place.
“Every now and then we revisit old bros to keep them relevant in the game,” said Greenwood. “But quite often ideas come out of random conversations where the idea is just too good not to implement. Like MacBrover’s TNT that now sticks to terrorists faces.”
So, which Bro is best?
With so many bros available to play, and the roster constantly expanding, it’s difficult to pick a favorite. Right now, Ash is my bro of choice. I just dig the noise his chain saw makes as you fire it up and go on a rampage.
Above: MacBrover throws TNT and exploding turkeys around like a madman.
I asked Greenwood which Bro he would pick if he could only use one in the game. His answer was … noncommittal:
“Toll Bro’s very satisfying.”
“Dolph’s pretty bad ass.”
“MacBrover.”
“Neo, I might choose Neo.”
“I actually like the new Indie.”
That clears that up, then.
Readying for launch
Broforce in its Early Access state already packs in a great deal of content. It has a campaign that you can play solo or in local co-op, plus some online co-op, a level designer, custom levels, a multiplayer race mode, the kind-of-nuts explosion run, and local deathmatch.
But the studio has more to come before the game leaves Early Access and gets a full release.
“We hope to launch early next year,” said Greenwood. “There’s a lot of content we still want to add to the game before we could consider it ‘finished’.”
And even when the game does make final release, it’s likely we’ll see more from the bros. “There’s a good chance we’ll be adding content after release date,” said Greenwood.
Think you know your action heroes?
Now you’re in the mood, test your own knowledge of ’80s and ’90s action stars with the 10 Broforce mug shots below. Can you recognize them all?
No answers. Answers are for wimps.
Above: Can you pick out the 10 action heroes from their Broforce mug shots? You don’t get a prize for winning, though.