Brief Battles, An Ass Game

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Their marketing. Not mine.

So I ask fellow KoopaTV staffer Rawk what I should write about today, and he said he doesn't know what happened today in news. As if KoopaTV can only publish about what happened on just that very day. I can go on and on about timeless game development philosophies and very thinly-veiled uncompensated Ace Attorney advertisements.

But then Rawk remembered this weird indie game called Brief Battles from Australian developer Juicy Cupcake that released today and he told me to write about it. It's an underwear-based 2.5D arena party fighter where you collect underpants to gain powers. I'll try to let this launch trailer explain it:

This is the kind of indie game that I wouldn't buy unless I was drunk. Which I happen to be right now as of writing. Very uncharacteristic, but life circumstances lead me to this. Anyway, fortunately, I can't go make a drunken $15 purchase tonight because...

...Brief Battles isn't on the Nintendo Switch! (Though they're supposedly working on it.)
(I also don't save my bank info on my Switch anyway, for this reason and not wanting my financials hacked.)

Besides having all of the characters have visible underwear (most of them are wearing clothes covering their top half, and their bottom half is just super-deformed so it might as well be stylised normal pants?), the couch co-op (and/or single player) game features other indie crossovers. No, not Shovel “I'm in every indie crossover” Knight, but Yooka and Laylee from Yooka-Laylee are there. These crossovers come in the form of special transformative underwear that transforms an original character from the game (there are six) into a crossover guy. There's six characters, and six crossovers. Makes sense.

The developers certainly get points for playfulness, both in game theme and gameplay pacing. I have no idea why Rawk wants me to write about this. He's either fascinated with underpants and Juicy Cupcake's strange theme marketing worked, or he's fascinated with Playtonic allowing Yooka-Laylee representation and that's about it. Rawk did eventually write a Yooka-Laylee review, after all.

Right: Violet, one of six playable characters in Brief Battles.
Characterised as a punk. Their art depicts a censored gesture.
Left: Yooka-Laylee Violet, which features Violet with Yooka-Laylee transformative underwear.
Similar fashion sense, but with creepy stares.

In case you're wondering, the other non-Yooka crossovers that Juicy Cupcake managed to snag are...

1. CommanderVideo from Bit.Trip.Runner (paired up with Chad the Beach Bum)
2. Machinarium from Machinarium (paired up with Professor Tubbins the mustache-twirling professor)
3. Goo from World of Goo (paired up with Kevin the caped hero)
4. Stumpy from Stumpt Gamers (paired up with Kevin... again? Huh, guess that doesn't make sense. And Stumpt Gamers isn't even a game but a YouTube channel that plays games)
5. A totem symbol from indie studio Juicy Beast's (supposedly no relation to the indie studio behind Brief Battles, Juicy Cupcake) Toto Temple Deluxe (paired up with Sparrow the aviator)

This apparently leaves Betty the Buccaneer without a crossover. Weird.


Ludwig wants to pass out already and his Juicy Nose started bleeding while writing this article. He doesn't wear underwear because, as a Koopaling, he usually doesn't wear human clothing. Couch co-op doesn't help him since he lacks local friends, and if he did, they'd rather play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate than an underwear-themed game.