There’ll be no hesitation from me to recommend Cannon Brawl on the Switch. It’s fun, addictive, and has more unlockables than you can shake a stick at or blast a cannon at. Temple Gate Games and Blitworks, have taken a classic series (Worms and Kingdom Rush), and put their own spin on it.
There are ranked matches, unranked, challenges your friends, if you have them, and for those who fancy a skirmish that isn’t mission-based, battles against the AI. This review is predominantly based on the solo experience, a.k.a, the adventure. You play as the Princess, and the King’s evil brother, simply ‘Uncle’, has kidnapped him and sent his Minion, singular, to thwart your progress.
Between each battle is a dialogue scene of banter that introduces new units for each match, taking you up to level 20. At the start of each match, you get to choose a pilot, unlocking more as you progress or unlock. For each battle and challenge you complete in Cannon Brawl – i.e. do X damage to buildings, win X battles with Y – you earn XP that can be used to purchase new towers and pilots.
Each pilot has a perk such as reduced cooldowns, damage dealing and shields. Once I unlocked the Prince (he repairs towers by hovering on them), I was set. You’re free to control the airship and move anywhere you like without suffering any damage or respawns. Your job is to build the towers that will defend your castle, mine the lands of gold and gems to build said towers, but ultimately destroy your opponent’s castle.
Mines can only be built on designated spots, and more importantly, you can only build within your territories. These are represented by blue (in solo mode), and you expand your network by building balloons. You can’t build within an enemy’s space and vice versa, so a lot of the time, like in love and war, it’s about fighting for the land early on.
With your offensive line-up, you plot a trajectory for an attack in the same way as in Worms; only there are no weather elements. Towers can shoot missiles, lasers, freeze enemy towers and more. For me, it was predominantly an offensive game, but when you play the Nightmare mode, deploying shields is a must.
While a lot is going on, it never feels overly hectic, but manually flying over to each tower can be a bit like walking through mud, and your buildings are as thick as paint; they have no AI, so a repair tower will happily stay dormant while its neighbour is ravaged by lasers. Unless you intervene and give a command.
Nightmare mode is unlocked after finishing the adventure, which I was initially dismissive of, thinking it would be harder versions of the existing levels. Instead, it’s a whole new map. You can’t unlock new stuff, but earn XP to buy new stuff. The first half a dozen levels are easy peasy; then it’s just brutal. I lost one single game in the whole of the adventure mode, but by about level six of Nightmare, I’d restarted about 20+ times.
Forget about Cannon Brawl being a clone of well-known titles; it takes some of the best bits and creates something different. Not wholly innovative, but enough where I’m going to bed in the early hours, saying ‘just one game of Cannon Brawl‘. Brilliant, and well worth it if you like the games I’ve suggested.
