BigHead Bash

BigHead Bash is a new free-to-play game from Spicy Horse and helmed by American McGee, the creator of American McGee’s Alice and Alice: Madness Returns.

McGee’s latest creation is a multiplayer side-scrolling shooter boasting a colorful cast of toys with an arsenal ranging from the mundane shotgun to the powerful rooster launcher. The gameplay borrows a lot from classic games Soldat and Worms. The controls are fairly simple: your mouse serves as your aiming reticle, you fire your weapon by left-clicking, right-clicking switches your weapon, and movement is controlled using the W, A, S, and D keys. To score critical hits on your opponents you must have your aiming reticle directly on their head, which is harder than it sounds. If you manage to get on a kill streak, a small bar will begin to fill in the bottom left of the screen. Fill it all the way up and you can hit Shift to "bash," which greatly empowers your toy. Be warned, the larger your kill streak, the larger your toy’s head becomes – making it easier for your opponents to land critical hits.

BigHead Bash is set within a toy store, which serves as the main hub between games. You can go there to buy new weapons, unlock new toys, and choose new maps on which to play.  Locations include a jungle, a robot factory, a toy store, and a smaller factory. Matches usually consist of between six and twelve players divided into two teams in a classic deathmatch. Each side vies to reach the kill limit first and claim the victory. There does not appear to be any other modes. Hopefully, with Spicy Horse promising a deluge of updates, more game modes will be forthcoming.

Since BigHead Bash is a free-to-play game, it has its own method of charming dollars out of your wallet. By playing the game, you level up and earn tickets. Reaching higher levels gives you access to new weapons. The catch is that you can only unlock them for a limited amount of time with tickets earned in-game. If you want better weapons permanently, you are going to have to use real money. While about half of the toys can be unlocked with game tickets, the rest must be purchased. Some toys and weapons go for as much as 99 tokens, which is about $10.

A few improvements I am hoping to see implemented are a diversification of the music, a smoother experience without significant lag spikes or many technical glitches, and a slightly more reasonable pricing system.

In my time with BigHead Bash I glimpsed a game that could really appeal to young gamers. It is bright, colorful, free-to-play, and is hosted solely on Kongregate as a browser-based game, meaning no messy downloads. The combat is a good mixture of competition and reward. While it is not perfect, BigHead Bash has the potential to turn into something unique.

If you want to try out the game for yourself, go here.