The Batomon Showdown demo has done pretty well for itself. Since arriving on Steam in April, more than 550 players have left a review, 94% of them positive, and plenty of teams have been put together during its first season. Yesterday, Season 0 officially came to an end. Thankfully, that’s because something considerably bigger is taking its place.
Batomon Showdown launches in full today, bringing more than 50 Batomon to collect alongside new trainers, trinkets, events, and plenty more ways to put together a team capable of making someone else’s day considerably worse.
Meet the New Batomon
Developed by solo developer berrymint, Batomon Showdown is a creature-collecting roguelike auto battler where each run sees you building a team of up to six Batomon.
You’ll buy new creatures from the shop, merge matching Batomon to make them stronger, and gradually work out which combinations play nicely together. Items and trinkets can change things further, and almost any Batomon has the potential to become the strongest member of your team with the right setup.
That’s useful, because you’re not building your squad purely to admire it. Once battle begins, your Batomon take over and fight automatically against teams created by other players. The multiplayer is asynchronous, so nobody needs to be waiting on the other side for you to finish rearranging everything for the fifteenth time.
There aren’t any timers between battles either so you can take your time. That terrible decision will still be there when you’re ready.
Your Trainer Has a Few Ideas Too
The creatures are only one part of each build. You’ll also choose a trainer, and their abilities can change how you approach a run. The current line-up includes everything from bug catchers to dragon whisperers, giving you different options to build around depending on who you pick.
Then there’s the chef. Rather than simply standing around cheering everyone on, they can cook new types onto your Batomon, opening up even more combinations to experiment with. Trinkets, items, and random events add more possibilities as a run develops, so a team that starts out looking fairly ordinary can become something very different by the time you’re chasing your final few victories, and you’ll need 10 of those victories to win a run.
Lose all your lives before reaching them and it’s time to start putting another team together.
Things Can Get a Little Ridiculous
Finding combinations that probably shouldn’t work quite as well as they do is a big part of Batomon Showdown. The Steam page isn’t exactly shy about encouraging players to break the game, with all those Batomon, trainer abilities, items, and trinkets giving you plenty of opportunities to create some ridiculous synergies.
Of course, the teams you’re fighting were built by other players doing exactly the same thing. You may think you’ve created an unstoppable monster right up until somebody else’s six Batomon arrive and demonstrate that you haven’t.
Season 1 Starts Here
Today’s launch also marks the beginning of a fresh season for players who have already spent time with the demo. The full release introduces a new set of more than 50 Batomon along with additional trainers, trinkets, and events to discover. That should give returning players plenty of new combinations to figure out while everyone else learns which innocent-looking creature they should probably be afraid of.
Batomon Showdown launches today on Steam, with an Android version also planned. An iOS release is on the way too, although berrymint previously warned that the approval process could mean it arrives a little later. For now, there’s a fresh season to get started on and a lot of new Batomon to experiment with.