It seems that this past year has been a hotbed for Smash clones to appear, with not only Nickelodeon putting their hat into the ring, but most recently Warner Bros. with their newly announced title Multiversus. 

The gameplay for Nick All-Star Brawl is considered well done, but many key features that should have been included are nowhere to be seen. Slated to come out sometime next year, this free-to-play fighter will have players taking on one another with a cast of well-known characters, from Tom & Jerry to Batman. However, Nickelodeon’s Smash Clone, while closely resembling smash brothers, isn’t doing so well. With the title not including voices for the characters, as well as alternate costumes. 

This was even something mentioned in the trailer for Multiversus. The spokesperson stated that both of these things that haven’t been put in Nick All-Star Brawl would be included in the lineup for Multiversus, showing off voice lines for characters like Shaggy and Batman. 

With this in mind, it seems that there’s going to be some major competition between these two titles. While Nick All-Star Brawl is already out, they’re going to have to make some changes to ensure that players will want to come back by the time Multiversus comes out. 

The official Nick All-Star Brawl account posted that the game will start adding alternate costumes for characters soon. As of now, there have been two tweets. The first tweet announcing the costumes for the characters is Spongebob, who’s wearing the drinking hat from the episode “One Krabs Trash.” The next costume to be revealed is Michelangelo’s comic form from the original TMNT comics. 

While alternate Nick All-Star Brawl costumes are going to be added, some questions remain. How many costumes will each character get? If only one or two costumes are coming, what’s the point of adding in the costumes when Multiversus will contain many? When is the game going to include voice lines for all the characters? If Multiversus can get the voice actors behind characters like Batman and Shaggy, how hard is it for Nickelodeon to add voices into their own game?

One tweet in response to the Michelangelo costume sums it up well. “Game had a good idea going, but the lack of voice acting and the limitless speed of the game is a turn-off for me. A lot of tweaks need be made for me to redownload.”

However, while players may be calling the game “dead,” there may be a reason that the game has launched in such a state it’s in. And the answer doesn’t lie within the developers of the game Ludosity. It lies within the people commissioning them to make the game.

With Viacom owning Nickelodeon, it’s fair to assume that they would be apprehensive about letting a random indie developer work on the game. Since Ludosity doesn’t seem like the company to make half-baked titles, it could be that they weren’t able to do whatever they wanted with the game due to influence from the higher-ups and Nickelodeon and Viacom. 

Perhaps the reasoning behind the lack of alternate Nick All-Star Brawl costumes and voice acting for the characters is that Viacom is letting Ludosity test the waters to see if the game sells well. If the reception with the title is positive, they would be willing to let them add in the content to complete the game and fulfill the vision of a title that they intended.

This can be the case. However, if this is the truth, this has seriously hurt the game’s standing with fans. Now, they’re always going to see the game as what it is, a buggy mess that they don’t have any interest in. It’s going to take a lot of work from Ludosity to keep fans in their good graces as they fix issues with the game and make it more appealing to players, letting them redownload it when the time comes. However, the two things they’re going to do to convince players to come back are the inclusion of voice lines for the characters and the addition of new characters into the game, which will seriously help them in the long run. 

There are still some characters and movesets hidden in the game files, and players know who to expect. Currently, the one character who is all but complete is Garfield, the comic book character. With a complete stage for the character and working moves, all the character needs is a model and proper animations for the game. Once Garfield is added, players might come back, but one character is one thing. They’re going to need more characters added into the game if they’re expecting to start bringing back more players. 

Some of the top characters that players want are Timmy Turner from Fairly Odd Parents and Jimmy Neutron. With characters like that, they will need to work to make them fit into the game. For one, many players are pointing to Multiversus, who managed to make their game’s art style work for any character included. This means that characters like Aria Stark can fit in and pummel Tom & Jerry without looking weird, which Nick All-Star Brawl suffers from. 

However, as time goes on, Ludosity will still work on their game. They still have some time to spruce up Nick All-Star Brawl before the launch of Multiversus, but their time is starting to run out, and the major problems with their game are yet to be fixed. On the bright side, it’s good that the developer hasn’t stopped supporting the game, even with the massive odds the company is facing. Perhaps there’s still a chance that these two massive companies and their titles will be able to go toe to toe when it comes time for the launch of Multiversus.