7 Brotato tips for avoiding becoming a French Fry
Stop yourself from getting skinned in the bullet heaven game Brotato, use these tips to save your skin.
Want to get good at the new bullet heaven game Brotato? Then read on for our 7 tips to avoid getting french fried, mashed, or whatever other potato pun jumps to mind.
The bullet heaven genre has been an increasingly popular niche for mobile developers to tackle. Based on the original concept of a bullet hell game, where you have to dodge dozens if not hundreds of projectiles in a fast-paced shooter, bullet heaven games instead let you be the one blasting hundreds to thousands of enemies while collecting increasingly powerful weapons.
While the best-known (and arguably the best) in the genre is Vampire Survivors, we’ve seen many games crib elements of that game to make a splash on mobile. Survivor.io was the first to land on handheld, outpacing even its predecessor, and now the new and kooky Brotato is what’s top of the charts.
Brotato comes in two versions, one premium and one featuring in-app purchases. These tips will focus mainly on the latter version, but there should be a great deal of crossover for any version of Brotato that you play. We’re not going to give a rundown of bullet heaven games, as we assume you’re at least partially familiar with them to be interested in Brotato. So instead, let’s get started with tip number one:
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Tip #1 - The Basics of Brotato
Again, we aren’t going to give a rundown of what bullet heaven games are, as we’ll assume you’re already familiar. However, we will note some differences with Brotato. For one, characters are more important as they have unique stats, but what upgrades and weapons you take to create a specific build will be much more important.
Brotato is also wave-based rather than timer-based. This means that you have a set objective for each level. Naturally, like other bullet heaven games you need to complete runs to advance, and completing each wave is vital to get upgrades, drops and more.
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Tip #2 - Always be Moving
One of the most important aspects of any bullet heaven, or bullet hell for that matter, game is movement. While in the latter you’re juking and dodging to avoid being hit, in the former the opposite is true, you’re actively trying to maximise your damage against enemies.
Movement is also important because it means you can gather more Materials and Gold. While we initially thought this loot was lost, you’ll be glad to know that at the end of a wave, any ungathered loot is automatically grabbed. However, killing more enemies necessitates you to move more to get near them.
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Tip #3 - Know your Loot
Speaking of comparisons to Vampire Survivors, unlike in that game, loot in Brotato can be a bit less self-explanatory. For example, what are those green coins?! They’re called Materials and are used to level up and earn Gold which can actually be used to buy upgrades.
Trees are neutral enemies that will also drop Fruit to heal you, or Crates which come in the normal (green) and legendary (red) varieties. Again, unlike Vampire Survivors you won't get a super-fancy screen to show when you're grabbing a crate, so keep your eyes open to know when you've got new stuff, and prioritise trees to destroy for health and loot.
Again, unlike the other game (which we’ll try not to mention too much more) you don’t gain upgrades when you level up, rather you need to buy them at the end of each wave. You’ll get a number of options, but generally getting more weapons should be your preference.
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Tip #4 - Know what to Upgrade
In Brotato, your upgrades correspond to your body parts. Ironic, we know, since potatoes don’t actually have bodies. Things like the eyes will increase the range of your attacks, increase overall damage and so forth. These upgrades all have tooltips and you’ll have a limited choice of what to upgrade whenever you finish a wave.
These upgrades can be a doozy to understand, fortunately, fan resources like the Brotato wiki are invaluable in breaking down all of these and the incremental changes that they make. They also offer detailed breakdowns on a variety of mechanics in-game.
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Tip #5 - Get Ready to Go Do Something Else
Now the less savoury aspect of the game is that, by virtue of being a free-to-play title you’ll have both ads and in-app purchases. We always advocate for minimising your spending, preferably negating it, as much as possible. So if you do find yourself in need of a revive, and the ad is on offer for that, just put down your phone and go do something else for 30 seconds until you’re back in the game.
Now again, we should point out that the FTP version of Brotato may not be the intended experience. And if you enjoy it we do highly recommend you at least give some consideration to the premium version without these aspects. But if you can't or won't, just be ready to wait if you want to minimise spend.
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Tip #6 - Play as Many Characters as Possible
As we noted above, characters are important in-game as they all have unique stats that can point you to one build or another. But they also correspond to unique unlockable items. These items can only be unlocked by completing a run (a given number of waves) with said character.
So, as you go on and unlock characters, even if you’re not interested in playing them, you’ll at least want to check the conditions for unlocking new items associated with them. Even if the character is lacklustre, playing them unlocks might be great for building a real game-killer of a build.
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Tip #7 - Experiment with your characters (Or just look it up)
Certain games naturally attract min-maxers. Brotato is one of them, but the benefit is that you have a variety of ways to find your perfect build. As noted before the Brotato Wiki on Spells & Guns offers some great basic rundowns, and forums like Reddit and Steam will also almost certainly offer detailed beginner guides including basic builds. And we just might have something in the works to offer our suggestion.
But the most important way you can get these is by experimenting yourself. As if you just try and drive towards the ultimate game-ending build you’re more than likely going to blow a blood vessel from frustration as you try and plough through lower tiers. So go incrementally, and select builds for the challenges you face while working towards the highest difficulties.
