Extremely Powerful Capybaras

I want to root for Extremely Powerful Capybaras the way I root for every small studio swinging above its weight class, and honestly, when the conditions are right, I get to. Studio Bravarda built this around a disarmingly simple hook: the Vampire Survivors auto-attacking formula, compressed into tight arenas, played with up to four friends online or locally. That compression is both its sharpest trick and its most honest limitation. The four starting classes each bring a distinct feel to the chaos. The Warrior is your beefy frontliner who absorbs hits; the Druid scatters flower projectiles diagonally; the Assassin darts around with shuriken; and the Bard, my personal favourite on paper, weaponises music. Two additional classes unlock after clearing the early arenas, which gives the roster just enough breathing room. Each class ties to a hidden synergy: max out your base skill and the matching passive and your capybara transforms into something considerably more fearsome. Finding that synergy combination is the game's best discovery moment, even if luck plays a bigger hand than skill in whether you stumble across it in any given run. Active and passive slots cap at eight total, four each, with five upgrade tiers per ability, and three re-rolls per run to nudge your build toward something intentional. The three arenas, Fishy Swamp, River Rat's City, and Volcanic Springs, escalate in star difficulty, and once you clear all three, Frenzy modifiers unlock, letting you crank enemy speed and toughness for better coin rewards. Capy-Coins fund permanent upgrades back in the hub village, where NPCs themselves can be upgraded to expand your baseline damage and options. That meta-progression loop is approachable enough that failure never stings for long, and the fifteen-minute run structure means you are always just one more attempt away from something. The problem that critics and players have broadly agreed on is that this loop feels noticeably thinner without company. The arenas are deliberately small, which turns co-op into a wonderfully frantic scramble where four builds collide, a shared upgrade pool creates genuine argument over who takes what, and fallen players must be revived by teammates holding a circle under pressure. Strip that away and you have a competent but sparse solo experience where the limited build variety and the absence of a strong audio hook make repetition surface faster than you would like. Visually the game earns its goodwill. Animations run smoothly even when the screen fills with hundreds of enemies, and the cartoony storybook aesthetic suits the absurd premise without overselling it. The soundtrack is upbeat and keeps runs feeling energetic, though it lands closer to pleasant background music than the kind of soundscape that pulls you into a world. The sound design overall is functional rather than expressive, which is a mild disappointment for a game this willing to be weird about its own identity. If you have a regular co-op group hunting for something low-friction and joyfully silly to share a couch or a Discord call over, Extremely Powerful Capybaras earns that slot without much argument. If you are coming alone and you have already put real hours into Vampire Survivors or Brotato, the shallower build variety will likely show its ceiling within a couple of evenings. The capybara internet moment that gave this game its cultural tailwind has faded, but the game underneath it was always more about the co-op energy than the meme. Catch it at the right price with the right people and it rewards you warmly.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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