The Brawls ‘n Bosses of ReadySet Heroes, Out October 1

Hey PlayStation fans. I’m Kyle, the lead designer on ReadySet Heroes from Robot Entertainment. With our October 1 launch quickly approaching, I got a chance to hang out with the PS Underground crew for a play session and an introduction to “Walrus Hockey.”

In our last blog post, Elyse introduced some of the enemies you’ll encounter while crawling through the dungeons. This time I’d like to show you some of what you’ll see at the end of the dungeon and after the crawl by detailing some of our brawls and bosses.

The Brawls

After the dungeon crawl, a round of ReadySet Heroes concludes with an all-out brawl. The brawl brings together all players, decked-out with their gear from the crawl, to compete in one of five objectives. Here I want to go over a couple of my favorites.

Snail Race

Snails usually aren’t the ideal creatures for a race, but these big guys have a need for speed. Each team has their own snail, and the snail that travels the furthest by the end of the brawl wins.

You’ll need to speed up your snail to win. Smack berry bushes scattered around the level with your weapon to grab berries. Throw the red berries into your team’s flower cannon to launch the berry to your snail. When your snail takes a bite, it’ll give him a boost.

You can also sabotage your opponents by throwing the poison berries into their flower cannons. These berries slow snails down by making them a little queasy.

Finally, keep an eye out for golden berries. These berries give your snail a huge speed boost. They’re great for catching up to the pack or securing the lead.

Walrus Hockey

Walrus hockey is all about trying to feed sushi to giant walruses. Each team has their own walrus rotating around the ice rink. Players use their weapons to send sushi flying across the ice and into the mouths of their walruses. The team that consumes the most sushi wins.

Much like in snail race, you can sabotage your opponents. This time, you’ll need to hit the stinky fish heads into their walrus. This subtracts a point and causes their walrus to duck under the water for a few seconds. This leaves your opponents unable to score.

Walrus hockey also has a golden sushi. The golden sushi is worth five points. It’s often a game changer.

In snail race and walrus hockey, you still have to manage fighting the opponent players while trying to complete the objective. Finding the right balance between combat and feeding the snails and walruses is the key to victory.

The Bosses

The dungeon crawl in ReadySet Heroes is on a timer. You have less than ten minutes to defeat enemies, navigate through traps, and find loot. But if you’re quick enough, you’ll have a chance to take on a boss. The bosses are difficult battles, but defeating them gives you the best chance of finding epic and legendary items. Here are two of the bosses you’ll encounter.

The Mischievous Warden of the Dead – The Nekomancer

The Nekomancer is the boss you’ll find haunting the graveyards. To halt your loot-gathering, she wields a giant scythe, creates ghostly firewalls, and summons skeleton minions.

When the Nekomancer first spawns, she shuffles her coffins and you’ll want to find which one she’s hiding in. Guess the wrong coffin and you lose precious time.

After the coffin sequence, the Nekomancer goes into her ghost form and can’t be damaged. You’ll need to use the flaming skulls from defeating her skeleton minions to light the level’s pyres. When the colors of the pyres match the color of the Nekomancer’s eyes, she will exit her ghost form, giving you a chance to deal damage.

Here’s a little Easter egg: the sounds you’ll hear the Nekomancer making are actually the voice of my cat, Karma. I used a handheld recorder to capture her performance and then our audio director, Rodney, modulated and implemented it.

The Stone Guardian of the Forest – Olek

You’ll find Olek watching over the woodlands and quickly discover that he was not created to politely greet intruders.

Olek has two attacks. He begins by spinning around the level, pulverizing anything that gets in his path. During his spin, you won’t want to try to hit him with melee attacks. Try attacking from range, or wait until he gets dizzy and falls. When Olek recovers, he’ll activate his arm cannons and blasts energy shots.

When Olek reaches half health, he removes his head, which becomes another obstacle to overcome. The head continuously spins around the room shooting energy shots while Olek performs his other attacks.

Defeat these bosses for your best chance at a legendary drop. And remember, the Nekomancer and Olek are just two of the bosses you’ll be up against.