Batomon Showdown Is The Hottest New Auto Battler On The Block

I will be the first to admit that the auto battler genre is not everyone’s jam, but for those who enjoy the mix between econ management, team building and tactical positioning, Baton Showdown hits hard.

The game came out about two weeks ago and I’ve been completely hooked ever since. It’s available on both mobile ($6 on Android) and PC ($15 on Steam), it’s super affordable and it has that addictive quality you get from great roguelikes: At the end of one run, all you want to do is start another.

The gameplay can largely be summed up as the Pokémon encounter Great car pets. Every day you get some money that you can spend by buying monsters or items. Individual creatures are spread over a range of rarities (common, uncommon, legendary, etc.) and belong to one or more types – such as fire, poisonous, flying and rock. If you construct a team with multiple monsters of the same faction, they can synergize with each other to boost their attacks (or defense in some cases). And if you buy three copies of the same creature, they will merge together, level up and give you a trinket to strengthen your squad even more.

Meanwhile, items can increase your squad by doing things like reducing cooldowns, giving you trinkets (aka powerups), generating money and more. And if you are not satisfied with the current selection in your store, you can spend a little money and reroll it. For anyone who has played other games in the genre like Teamfight Tactics, Hearthstone Battlegrounds in the DOTA autochessthe general setup of Baton Showdown feels instantly familiar.

Where things get really interesting are all the little twists that developer Berrymint has thrown into the format. Baton Showdown Features cute modern pixel graphics with cute sprites for each monster along with a rotating list of trainers. At the start of each run you can choose from one of three characters who will then lend a passive character to your squad.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

However, just like in Pokemon, the real stars of the game are the monsters themselves. Each type has its own style of play. Poisonous creatures rely on poison to deal damage, while water types often try to outheal the opponent’s attacks. But many individual monsters can be winning conditions in their own right if properly supported.

Take Pipskull for example. It is a common cheap creature that reminds me of a cross between a rattata and a cubone. At first it doesn’t do much. But after you hit it a few times, which is the core mechanic for ghost-type creatures, it evolves and gains multicast, allowing it to fire off a barrage of attacks when cast. The best part is that after the development, every subsequent knockout there is permanent additional multicast. While it might only do 25 to 50 damage each hit, if its multicast goes up to 30x, 40x, or even 50x, the little ghost rat becomes a real machine gun.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Alternatively, another one of my go-to strategies is if I get an early upgrade for a Bonshell, which reminds me a lot of a Torterra, it gets both damage and shield every time it hits for the rest of the battle. Then I just try to survive long enough to pair it with other rock types, including a Rhizuka. That monster has a really fun ability that triggers its attack when anyone a sign applies to your other monsters, and from there I think you can see where things can get a little crazy, but in a super fun way. Your other rock types apply shields, slow or even completely wall incoming damage, while Rhizuka sits in the back and rains mortars behind shields that just keep getting bigger and bigger. If you can pull it off, it’s like having an immovable object and an unstoppable force on the same team.

Sam Rutherford

I appreciate that too batons Monsters are divided into different regions. This not only gives the developer the freedom to expand the roster later (and the updates will be free), there are also some characters that allow some creatures from other regions to visit, which opens up even more team building strategies when it happens.

So far I only have a few minor criticisms. In the beginning, monsters from the Jinto region were significantly stronger than the others. But Berrymint is well aware of this and has already set up a balance patch to address it. My other gripe is that sometimes I feel like a run is over a little too soon. Even if you survive long enough to earn a full 10 badges (you get a badge for winning each face against another trainer), I find myself running into situations where my team strategy only starts to pay off when a run is done. I would really like some sort of infinite mode as you enter Balatro or other roguelikes where you can keep playing after you “win” while the difficulty continues to increase until even the most overpowered comps struggle. But with the pace of Berrymint’s recent updates, I wouldn’t be surprised if that gets added in the not-too-distant future.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

All said, Baton Showdown may not be completely unprecedented in the genre, but it is a really solid car battler in its own right. For a game type that is still growing in popularity, I appreciate any well-made new entries into the format. And for as little as $6 for the mobile version, it delivers a ton of fun for not much money.