“BOPL Battle” is a multiplayer game available on Steam for ten dollars. In it, players compete to squish, slice, and shock each other. This game can be played on the same device with friends using multiple controllers or with friends online. There are 26 abilities available in the full game, and even the free demo has over a dozen available for use.
There are multiple categories of abilities to choose from, with each having their own uses. The first category of abilities are the movement abilities, which help players to maneuver the geometric mish-mash of levels. These abilities include dash, thruster, platform, pull, teleport and grappling hook. It is typically useful to have one of these in a moveset, as they can be life-saving, pulling players just barely away from the lethal water.
The second category of abilities are the attacking abilities, which are usually used in combination with movement to take down opponents efficiently. These abilities are grenade, bow, rock, rocket, spin, crash, macho slime, mine and drill. Now, taking any damage in “BOPL Battle” will result in death, so all of these are lethal. Abilities like grenade and bow will launch a projectile at opponents, which they will need to dodge, while abilities like rock and drill turn players into weapons themselves, encouraging them to rush down foes.
The general-use abilities can be used in pretty much any moveset, and are generally just useful to have, as they can cover for weaknesses. General-use abilities include blink ray, gust, growth ray, spike, shrink ray and shock pylon. All of the ray gun abilities do exactly what they sound like, with the growth and shrink ray growing or shrinking players respectively, and the blink ray making an object temporarily snap out of reality. On the other hand, gust will blow away any projectile, platform or player which is near the user.
The final category of abilities are the technical abilities, which require a bit of a specific moveset to be very useful, and typically fill a smaller niche than the others. There are time stop, smoke, revive, black hole and invisibility. Time stop is pretty self-explanatory, it stops time for everyone except the user after it is activated, but requires a hefty amount of prep time to activate. Smoke throws a smoke bomb wherever it is aimed, which explodes when it ignites. Revive does exactly that, it revives a player when they die, but has another niche use, cloning. If a player brings revive in two of their slots and black hole in one of their slots, they can clone themself, and create infinite black holes. It sounds funny, but the gimmick wears off really fast, and it is tedious to play against. Black hole acts like a black hole, sucking in nearby objects and growing larger. Finally, invisibility makes the user invisible, except for when they activate another ability; however, they can still be tracked by the slime trails they leave when walking. With that being said, here are the highs and lows of “BOPL Battle.”
There are over 10,000 different possible movesets to use in this game, and players can fill each slot with the random
ability to mix things up. Some of the ability combinations that my friends and I have come up with are:
- Big Flying Boulder (growth ray + dash + rock) This combination utilizes growing with the ray, then dashing into a foe and activating the rock ability to crush them. In addition, players who are two sizes larger than a foe can just eat them by running into them, which is just another upside to this moveset.
- Taser UFO (shock pylon + shrink ray + pull) This moveset requires placing two shock pylons onto a platform, then shrinking it to pull it faster, and rushing down foes with it.
- Bomberman (smoke + smoke + grenade) Since smoke explodes when ignited, covering the map with it and then blowing it all up is hilarious when it works out.
- Sonic (pull + spin + growth ray) Spin sends the user rolling around connected platforms at super high speeds, killing anyone who touches them. Growth ray and pull synergize really well with it, allowing players to connect the platforms themselves, and then spin out to destroy opponents.
The maps in “BOPL Battle” have three different settings: island, Arctic and space. They used geometric platforms of rectangles and circles to form these maps, with some having moving parts. The island maps are the most basic ones, they have water that ray guns reflect off of and players drown in. The Arctic maps have slippery ice, which can make movement a bit more chaotic, and water, which it shares with the island maps. Now, the space maps are interesting, they have low gravity and no water, which heavily restricts movesets that rely on the ray guns. The space maps also often have asteroids that will fly around, acting as moving platforms for players to dodge or move on. The maps are fun, but I would like to get a new theme or two in the future.
The last major aspect of “BOPL Battle” is of course the multiplayer. Up to four friends can play together at once, in free-for-all battling or in teams. Friendly fire is a thing in this game, so teammates need to be careful not to hurt their allies. While it is fun, unfortunately online multiplayer experiences frequent lag, which can be funny sometimes, like when it freezes on a kill, but usually it just interrupts gameplay, and can even result in players dying to mistimed inputs. It is not exactly a deal breaker, but it is definitely the biggest downside this game has.
In the few weeks I have had this game, I have really enjoyed playing it with my friends. Those looking for a fun multiplayer game to check out, I would suggest trying the demo at least once, since it is free and has a surprising amount of content in it.
