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.
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.