In today's sweaty ranked and live service filled multiplayer gaming landscape, Friends vs. Friends is truly a breath of fresh air.

It's a very fun and original idea. Matches are quick, there are no microtransactions (will have some cosmetic dlc packs in the future) and the devs are very cool. They always add new stuff and listen to feedback.

Please don't give up on the game just because your first few matches are againts opponents who seem to have better cards than you and you keep on losing.

Only had fun with this with friends (believe it or not). I like the art design and really like the main game-mechanic. Despite that and the game being relatively new, it just really lacks in content in which honestly I feel should've had more on release. The map count is tiny, and there's very noticeable balancing issues. The online multiplayer leaves a lot to be desired, but for what reason there needed to be skill-based matchmaking? I never dabbled with it since I only ever played with friends, but I heard it's not good and apparently lacks anticheat. And even if I avoided playing with strangers, the game's netcode is awful. I lost count of how many times I got shot despite seeming like I just escaped last-second. And even if I played with bots, there's still a lot of bugs, including a game crash that messed up my monitor. How? I don't know. Double negative in that if a single player disconnects in a 2v2, everyone is booted out of the match.

This game has a lot of potential. I wanna see more out of it but there's just too many glaring problems right now for me to consider playing it again. It's also the reason why I have a very low play time, only 30 minutes.

Also I bought this game because of my ex told me to, only for him to ditch the game immediately after noticing the flaws, leaving me with a game I just wasted $10 on with no way to refund it.

11/12/2023 EDIT: Apparently back in September they added one new free map, which is great! And then replied to their own post complaining about how it's a missed sales opportunity! ??? dropping half a star.


Sold over 100k in barely a month on aesthetics alone, now struggles to break 300 concurrent players in a 24hr peak. You wouldn't think this is an issue, but I promise you it is, because most of these people are playing private lobby and the few who venture out into randoms will soon be blasted by the remaining 10% of the playerbase that has already grinded out the card/character unlocks and leveled up their decks. Median playtime: 8hrs. Median playtime among my Steam friends that own it: 2-2.5hrs, excluding the half who still haven't launched the game. What's with that, huh?

Did you know the game only has like 2 songs when you're not standing by the jukebox? Most of my friends have already muted the in-game music because they play this one song on loop whenever you're not in-game; thankfully when you're in-match the music stops. Uh, it just stops. There is no music at all in-match. What's really bizarre to me given that they tweet out other artists' songs overlapped with the game but afaik they literally only play if you go to the jukebox. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this. EDIT: OST has 6 songs, no idea what the other 4 would even be unless they're tucked in the jukebox.

Held back by a lot of really basic things, ordered by most important imo:
- Card unlocks are all generally more powerful than the base kit.
- Repeat card drops are fed to existing cards to level them up.
- Only 1v1 or 2v2 modes, no FFA and nothing higher even though maps can support it easily.
- Tiny map pool. The demo in February had 2 maps, the game launched with 4; none on the roadmap unless some offhand tweet mentioned it that I can't find.
- Can't rotate teams in private lobby without recreating lobby every time.
- Default/extremely basic Unity movement, no sense of weight or momentum which makes tracking anyone feel awful. (Feels extremely similar to Gunfire Reborn in this regard)
- Other characters need to be grinded out to even play as, really frustrating vibing with a design and being met with "erm, grind pls?" like uhhh okay then.
- Most of the guns feel bad imo, I feel like I'm actively downgrading myself when I swap to anything other than the default pistol besides the sniper (which might be a good thing given the card situation tbh)

Of all of the things to "go back to form" on with your FPS, including a gameplay-affecting battlepass/XP grind is not one of them. This was always one of the worst parts of playing CoD post-3 or any of the clones, like oh yeah sure just give the already experienced player mindless proximity mines and an auto shotty while the n00b gets a sawed-off. Lmfao get real.

The B-line to selling an expansion pass instead of reconsidering the unlocks at all or adding any new maps or modes is extremely disheartening, but it makes that "crazy good" 2/3 launch sale make a little more sense now I guess! Maybe I'm reading into that one too much but then there's this tweet which is uhhh??

I don't know, in a word I'd say "vapid" but that feels overly mean, but it's all I can really think of. Would love to see this get more gamemodes (FFA, KOTH, CTF) and a much higher player cap and absolutely desperately needs more maps. As it stands now? I don't know how you're supposed to get much out of this unless you love spinning a roulette endlessly while vaguely pointing in someone's direction.

Eh...esse jogo é meio chatinho. Não é tão divertido, tem muito pouca variedade de modos e mapas e é pay to win.

Ele também é meio bugado, principalmente com modelos passando por paredes.

Mas sei la, se vc não tem nada melhor pra fazer pode ser legal jogar 1x1 eu imagino. Mas tem tanta opção melhor no mercado que sei la

edit: I must amend this review and score in light of updates the game has received since writing it, my original review is intact below the line.
the game is torn between a casual and competitive experience and struggles to find a cohesive identity between the two. I have seen games fail this way in the past, and the only difference here is that this game did not have a sizable playerbase to begin with before its identity crisis, and has suffered as a result. personally, I would have greatly favored a focus on casual play given the almost smash-bros-y party-game feel. balance changes have been all over the place to the point where i'd almost believe they're being done nearly at random. i understand it's a small team and it's a shame because I do enjoy the concept and art style, but the gameplay experience just isn't cutting it for me unfortunately

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Still early in its lifespan but I feel it has potential. The core gameplay is fun, the art style is cute. Feels a bit like smash bros (with items on) in the sense that it's in a middle ground between competition and party game. The progression is.. questionable. I've played about 43 hours of it and am still missing a couple of important cards; all cards can only be obtained from card packs so it's pure luck whether you get what you don't have or get duplicate cards that give you a really low amount of money to compensate. If they clean up the progression and the new player grind experience I feel like this could be a classic.

complaints about balancing here seem silly since this, to me, perfectly fills the role of an FPS Mario Kart/Party. it's not a very competitive game, it heavily relies on random chance and goofy shit, and that's good!!!!! it's just a fun lil 1v1 (or 2v2) shooter i can play with my wife and i love it for that. it does sorely lack in map variety, and i don't think its dialogue/characters match the charm of its aesthetics, but this is an adorable time with friends or wives.

also the devs could easily fix the dialogue/character issues by adding an opossum girl. then it'd basically be fuckin perfect.

Very fun game to play with friends... probably. (Daxxurus pls come back)

Has a very cool art style and presentation overall however the gameplay lacks in depth and it often feels like it's just another FPS where the person with more shooter game practice wins it all. Even when the matchmaking is fair in terms of skill, it comes down to who has better RNG since some cards are clearly way better than others.

I can do with a lack of tutorial but at least make the "tutorial" slides a pop-up when a new player first boots up the game. I didn't see them until I already played 3 matches.

Overall even though I would recommend this game to play with people that you know for short while, I cannot give you any advice on how you can convince them to buy it (or even buy it yourself for that matter, I played it on a free weekend after all(Okay it's actually not bad for £4 or so when it's on sale, but not worth the full price of £9))

Also the devs giving a big middle finger to P2W games of this nature has not gone unappreciated :)

Played this during the free weekend with 3 other friends and we all had a blast. Extremely engaging and addictive shooter, genuinely the only game ever to get me engaged with deck building. The concept of using cards while in an fps gameplay environment is so unique and versatile and the developers clearly put a lot of time and effort into making the game very tightly balanced. Not to mention the 1v1 or 2v2 format and the fact that the game advertises itself as more of a game to play with friends rather than an online experience that depends on servers staying up as long as possible, it doesn't run into the future proofing issue a lot of other multi-player games run into. When I saw the trailers for it I was a little skeptical since it reminded me a lot of csgo or valorant and I really don't enjoy the positioning focused game play experience those games provide, however if you go into this expecting that kind of game that is absolutely not what you will get, friends vs friends is mostly about hectic and often chaotic close quarters combat encounters that focus far more on using your cards at the best times and your ability to track a target. It's certainly a gameplay experience that resonates with an old tf2 player like me more than walking around an empty map for most of the game until I turn a corner and get one shot through a wall 50 yards away.

Friends Vs. Friends is easily one of the most fun online shooters of this year with a bright, cartoon art-style and a unique twist on the arena shooter genre, but it absolutely has its downsides.

You'll often see others complaining about the balancing of the game, and while there is definitely an aspect of "skill issue", the balancing does kind of get thrown out the window after a certain point. Certain cards like Titan require players to build around them in their own decks, leaving less room for experimentation and for-fun cards.

Some of the levels also reward certain playstyles that many would not find fun to play against, but usually there is a nice flow to evenly-matched battles.

Friends vs Friends is a unique take on the arena shooter, where you build a deck of cards with various effects such as equipping more powerful weapons, increasing the size of your enemy's heads, or even completely changing the map. Each card's effect lasts for the round, and you draw more cards each round, so you need to be smart about which cards you use and make sure you keep some around so that you have more options next round. Before the match starts, you can also select a character that will have a unique passive effect, I liked playing Moose because of her passive double jump ability!

The game has a charming visual style with low-poly 3D models and crisp pixel art textures. The hub world you explore while matchmaking is charming and full of details, making it fun to look around while waiting for a match. Speaking of which, while playing I never had a hard time finding a match, even though that seems like a challenge for many indie multiplayer games. This is probably helped by the game's format of 1v1 or 2v2 duels, though there were often times where matchmaking felt unbalanced, where my opponent either had lots of powerful rare cards that were hard to work around, or had clearly just started and barely had a chance against my deck.

That leads me to my main gripe with the game, the card system is fun and is what gives the game its unique twist on the genre, but many of the cards are very strong and are very difficult to work around without having a direct counter in your own deck. This comes with the territory of card games, so I'm mostly fine with this, but newer players will not be prepared for dealing with the more powerful cards like Vampire Bullets, Katana, Heartless, Titan, and Mind Blowing, and could cause them to bounce off the game if it feels like their own arena shooter fundamentals are not able to keep pace with the cards.

There's plenty of moments where the cards shine as a strategic layer on top of the gunplay, and coming up with different card combos or ways to counter a strong combo you saw gives you a lot to consider when building your deck. Swapping weapons with your opponent after they equip a powerful weapon, or preventing your opponent from jumping while they're on the subway tracks and leaving them helpless to get run over, there's lots of clever ways to use the cards that kept me coming back and rethinking my deck.