‘Friends vs Friends’ is a Card-Based Arena Shooter

Friends vs Friends is a chaotic shooter that introduces cards into the mix, creating custom decks to blast your enemies (and probably a few friends).

Friends vs Friends is an action paced, quick-paced game that has a real “one more round” feel to it. In the game, you get to pick which of the six playable characters you want to play as. These characters are quirky-looking animals, each with their own abilities. Some start off running faster than others, some have a better health, and some come with special cards to add to your gunfighting deck.

This is a useful skill, as cards are how you are able to fight in the arena. You get a limited deck of cards which you can then use all at once or spread out through a few different rounds. The abilities on the cards only last the one round, so it’s really dependent on if you are currently winning or what is in your deck. Some of the cards have a clear arena that they are best in as well. When I played Friends vs Friends, there was this underground train station level that required jumping to get from one side to the other easily. Using the No Jump card on my enemy when they were on the tracks made it so that they couldn’t leave the tracks. This made them get hit by a train and lose.

There are a lot of cards which you can mix and match before the round, creating your own custom deck. Some are weapons, some are single-use items, and some are abilities for yourself or punishments for your enemy. It’s a big balance of playing cards at the right time and ensuring that you have some cards saved for later, while also paying attention to what is going on in the arena around you as your enemy could be coming towards you!

With so much going on, Friends vs Friends becomes chaotic, and not just because you can nuke the entire playing field! There is a balance between introducing new cards to your hand and not spending too much time looking at the cards themselves. The design of the game, visually, is also really well polished and enticing! Friends vs Friends will definitely be fun for those that like a lot of shooting chaos.

Friends vs Friends will be available tomorrow on Steam.

Jupiter Hadley

Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist, writing for Metro UK, Big Boss Battle, AlphaBetaGamer, and many more, all with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, judges many jams and events. Jupiter is also the Adept Games Wizard at Armor Games.