How to Play Brawlhalla

Brawlhalla may be similar to Smash Bros in many ways, but it's different enough to be its own beast. If you played Smash Brothers a lot, you'll find that a lot of the specialized techniques in that game doesn't apply here. Take a look at this guide so you can figure out what the simple controls along with some more advanced techniques are.

1. The Basics

If you've played platform fighters before, you can skip this section mostly. 

Brawlhalla is different from most other platform fighters in many ways. For instance, instead of the four directional system most of them use, this game has an 8 directional system like traditional fighting games such as Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. If you're using a stick, it translates the input into the closest of the 8 directions.

Unlike Smash Bros, Brawlhalla doesn't take into account how fast or far you flick your stick. That means that "tilts" don't exist in this game - they're simply just directional attacks. You don't have to worry about accidentally inputting a smash attack when you wanted to do a tilt like in smash bros.

There are three directions for each attack - neutral, down, and side attacks. There are also two types of attacks in those directions - light and heavy/signature, and these apply whether you're grounded or in the air. There is no up attack - that will just be a neutral attack. Here's a visual representation.

One more basic technique to go over - if you press jump and attack at the same time, you will instantly throw out an aerial attack.  This is very useful for starting combos.

Now that the controls are over with, we can talk about the actual gameplay. Every character has two weapons, and while they're holding them, they'll have some special signature moves. The inputs for these signature moves are different per character. These weapons tend to significantly increase your fighting capabilities, so you should try to acquire them and prevent your opponents from getting them as well.

Advanced Techniques

Every technique here will be using diagonal inputs. While you can use the normal four directional inputs for them, it's much faster to just go diagonal.

• Walk Forward Neutral Attack - Side -> Top Side Diagonal -> Light Attack. If you do this fast enough, you'll walk forward while throwing out attacks in front of you. This is a fantastic way to defend yourself while advancing.
• Walk Forward Down Attack - Side -> Bottom Side Diagonal -> light attack. Same concept as walk forward Neutral, and is very powerful with certain weapons.
• Turn Around Neutral - Side -> Opposite Top Side Diagonal -> light attack. This lets you turn around instantly and throw out a neutral attack. This can be the difference between getting hit and hitting.
• Turn Around Down - Side -> Opposite Bottom Side Diagonal -> light attack. Same exact concept as turn around Neutral. Great for spacing if you use guns.
• Walk Forward Instant Ground Pound - side -> Bottom Side Diagonal -> jump+heavy attack. This lets you walk forward and instantly do your downward heavy aerial attack, which translates to a ground pound attack. If you do it at the ledge, your opponent will find it very difficult to react in time.
• Turn Around Instant Recovery - Side -> Opposite Top Side Diagonal -> jump+heavy attack. This is a fantastic anti-air option for some weapons, namely the katar. This also lets you mix up your offstage game as well, as you could drift far away enough to dodge an enemy's attempted of stage attack and instantly retaliate.

And that's it! As you can see, Brawhalla has a lot of depth under its simplistic look. If you put the time in, you'll find plenty to like.