izigame.me

THE STORY:
BHH's a 2 player co-op cartoony hack'n'slash, very familiar to games like "Castle Crashers" where your primary objective is to go the end of the level while clearing any goblins, pirates, mummies or any other enemy daring to stop you from saving the princess while saving any fellow knights caged by them.

THE GAMEPLAY:
You start the game by choosing the difficulty (easy, normal, hard) and then it boots you into the tutorial, that's where it teaches you the basics; your primary and secondary attack, jumping and double-jumping, dashing, heart and flower pickups, fun weapons, ranged weapons, throwables, your individual superpowers and some basic enemies to try it all in combat. So let me explain all of this in the next section.

ARSENAL (starting off with):
1. The Knights Themselfs:
There are 28 avaible knights (with 1 random option) and 2 avaible knights on the start of the level each equiped with a set of melee weapons each distinctive to the knight's class, which being split into 4 categories:

- Sword and Shield*
- Double Daggers*
- Big Hammer*
- Two-handed Staff*

*Sword and Shield knights ~ "The Warriors", are the ones with an average swing speed, damage and range sword along side a shield that they can either charge with a secondary button to... Well, charge into enemies (varying distance based on time charging up); in general The Warriors are the jack of all trades, no big upsides or downsides; good all around, they also do a basic roll as their dash (EVERY DASH MAKES YOU INVINCIBLE THROUGHOUT THE DURATION). The Warriors have a blue background card.

*Double Daggers knights ~ "The Rogue", wielding 2 small, but quick swinging daggers that deal low damage and have short range, with the secondary attack making a spin around with his daggers, while charging making the spin wider and last longer; The Rogues are the weakest health wise but it checks out by allowing the user at the right distance to insta-dash to any enemy the knight is facing and having the fastest dash in a form of an almost like teleport, traveling the most distance the fastest out of the 4 types, making them the high risk options for people being able to "swing-dash-repeat" across all enemies in battle. The Rogues have a purple background card.

*Big Hammer knights ~ "The Brutes" wielding the high damage, slow swinging hammers, having a small AoE splash on contact and the secondary attack making the brute hit the ground at such force making a crack in the ground damaging enemies along on it, charging makes the crack longer and a bit wider; The Brutes are by far my favourite, usually a safe option to choose in the beggining of the level with their good damage, AoE and health. Their dash is a slow charge while also dealing a bit of damage during charging as well, very good against riding enemies. The Brutes have a red background card.

*Lastly, the Two-handed Staff knights ~ "The Monks", wielding a staff having average damage, swing speed, with a bit longer and wider range along having a fluid movement while attacking, the secondary attack is a swipe around the knight in a circle shape knocking the enemies by a bit, charging makes the swipe wider and while also dealing a bit more damage; what can I say, I like them a lot as well and usually being my 2nd pick for the start of the level, because of the combo opportunities and having a really good dash, which instead of moving you in the direct youre facing, instead just makes you do movements capable of completely negating damage while performing it making a dense groups of enemies very easy to dodge. Easily the best dash in terms of controlling itself. Their background card is yellow.

2. FUN WEAPONS:
Fun weapons (as you can quess) are weapons found around the world with limited durabilities to spice up your combat and make the game a little more fun by either giving you:
- "Melee weapons" from any class category (with a drawback of not allowing you to use said weapon's secondary attack),
- "Rarer melee weapons" with additional on hit effects such as burning, poison, electricity and so on,
- "Ranged weapons" with the same chance of having a rare version with effects mentioned before,
- And "Throwables" like bombs, molotovs, anvils and other types of grenades with the same effects mentioned before

3. SUPER POWERS:
Each knight has it's own special super power which they can you once their blue bar fills out, by either attacking enemies or by picking up blue power pickups which you can find around the world, by defeating strong enemies or by a flower present. Once the bar is full, press your binded button to iniciate your super power, the default 4 making you call a horde of damaging sheep attacking everything in it's path, spewing a big and long laser, making you an invincible giant stomping on enemies, or slowing down time.

4. FLOWER PRESENTS:
Lastly there are flower presents. I've mentioned those flower presents a second ago and in short: You collect pink flowers around the world or as a reward for killing most enemies with each filling your pink bar, and once it's full a small box falls from the sky giving you a health pickup, a power pickup and a random fun weapon. Flowers also have a fun mechanic which I will not spoil so you can enjoy it blindly.

REPLAYABILITY:
BHH has a big chunk of stuff to do, I've already mentioned saving caged knights later used as playable characters but there's also beating all levels with hard and then later unlocked 4th difficulty "exalted" while achieving higher and higher scores by performing combos with taking as little damage as possible. There isn't a reward for getting a certain score from what I've experienced, but it's nice to have in your game revolved about all combo opportunities. There are also ways you can choose which knight you want to play on what stage, since most levels allow you to only pick 2 knights, and in the exalted difficulty, only 1 with a caveat of not allowing you to get more knights from cages, simply turning them into more powerful health pickups.

DOWNSIDES:
One big issue I've had while playing the game on hard and exalted are certain enemies and enemy variants, one example being a big horse enemies with double handed spears having a poison effect with all of their attacks, on easier difficulties getting hit once deals some parts of your healthbar and little chip damage with poison, not too bad. But on harder difficulties a single attack with poison can remove over half of your healthbar and in rogues situation sometimes kill you entirely even while on max hp. So with their deadly attacks, wide spin swings and very little windup or action telling you when they are going to strike makes them infuriating to fight against since most of the time you will be just spamming attacks with dash everytime which may appear not fun if not straight up stupid to people not familirized with this genre. While I can understand it being "Hard Difficulty" I think there should be a small lesson from dying to enemies like "oh I died to a guy that attacks at ranged distances so I should prioritize him first" than "This guy can 1 to 2 shot me if I don't spam my dash so I should probably spam my dash". There are also a few bugs which from my time with the game aren't gamebreaking, but can get pretty annoying. Luckily the developers are very active on their official discord, so any mentions of bugs will definitely not go unnoticed.

FINAL VERDICT:
I'll keep this brief since I've spent 3 days writing all of this. So in short Big Helmet Heroes is a very good game, even if youre not keen on beat em ups you will not have a bad time trying this out. People behind this "Exalted Studio" made a phenomenal job despite it's small group with their first ever indie title and a great start for the year. A solid 9/10. Play if you can, you'll not regret it.