Big Helmet Heroes

My first thought loading up Big Helmet Heroes was: someone at Exalted Studio has a Castle Crashers poster somewhere in their office, and they are not ashamed of it. That honesty about the inspiration is actually one of the game's most endearing qualities. This is a side-scrolling 3D brawler built out of affection for a genre that could really use more entries, and for the most part that affection shows up in the right places. The roster spans 29 playable characters split across four classes: Warrior (sword and shield, balanced all-arounder), Brute (slow, hits like a collapsing cathedral), Rogue (dual weapons, combo-focused, built for speed), and Monk (staff-swinger with generous i-frames on dodge). You pick two characters per stage and swap between them freely, which means a solo run is more than viable - your bench heals while you're out fighting, so swapping is a tactical tool rather than a panic button. The real bread and butter of combat is the mix of light attacks, heavy attacks, dodge-rolls, and fully charged special abilities, each unique to its hero. A character called Ray fires a repositionable laser beam that makes him essentially unkillable for its duration; a lesser-used Monk character feels noticeably underpowered by comparison. The balance across the roster is uneven, and you will likely settle on your two favourites early and rarely look back. Weapons scattered across levels - frying pans, plunger guns, electric fly-swatters, crossbows - add welcome texture to the combat and honestly have more tactile satisfaction than the base attacks, which reviewers have consistently noted feel a little soft on feedback. The twenty levels are the game's genuine high point. Exalted Studio clearly put thought into not letting things go flat: the perspective shifts between side-scrolling brawl sections, top-down maze segments, and arena wave-clears, and the settings run from grassy medieval fields to lava-filled labyrinths, neon arcades, kraken-infested seas, and a stage set atop an enormous electric guitar. The hand-drawn comic-book cutscenes that stitch everything together have a children's picture-book quality that suits the tone perfectly. The story is a knights-save-the-princess setup that takes a few goofy left turns, and the finale boss delivers a proper payoff. The audio backs all of this up with a medieval-flavoured soundtrack that keeps the adventure feeling light on its feet. Now, the caveats. The co-op, which is the game's core pitch, is local-only - no native online. You can work around this with Steam Remote Play, but it is a friction point. The camera misbehaves in busier fights, occasionally drifting to show you an empty backdrop while your character fights somewhere off-screen. Some boss encounters were criticized at launch for the camera failing to track the action entirely. Early post-launch reports flagged bugs and stun-lock frustrations, and the AI for standard enemies is unimpressive - enemies get stuck on obstacles with some regularity. Steam user reception settled around "Mostly Positive" at roughly 78%, which feels accurate: there is real fun here, particularly in short-burst sessions with another person on the couch, but the edges are rough enough to feel like a game that shipped just before it was fully ready. For families, for anyone who played Castle Crashers and has been waiting for something in that neighbourhood, or for two friends who want something they can clear over a weekend without reading a manual - this is a genuinely pleasant time. It knows exactly what it wants to be, and it hits that target more often than it misses. Solo players will get through the campaign, but the warmth of the game really does live in co-op.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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