Broforce

Genuinely chaotic, satisfying destructible-terrain action

Broforce's core pitch is direct and, by wide consensus, genuinely well executed: fully destructible levels, a roster of parody action heroes, and a run-and-gun structure built around embracing chaos rather than precision. Reviewers consistently credit the resulting mayhem as a real strength. "The non-alien and non-hell levels in this game are untouchable by most other games, it provides a unique experience that in my opinion is very enjoyable," reads a 2020 review, one of many that credits the game's core moment-to-moment feel even while raising specific reservations about other systems. A 2025 review captures the tonal appeal directly: strong graphics, distinctive comedic character design, and a genuine sense of over-the-top, explosive fun in its best moments. That core chaotic satisfaction — real, distinctive and consistently praised — is the throughline running through nearly this entire review base, including from reviewers who go on to detail serious frustrations elsewhere.

An extremely consistent complaint about random character selection

What tempers that praise, with striking and sustained consistency, is a specific complaint about how players access the game's large character roster. "The lack of being able to pick which bro you're going to use, coupled with the game constantly picking the worst two or three over and over again, gets real old, real fast," reads a 2024 review. A 2022 review reports the same frustration from a different angle: "About halfway through the game the RNG of which Bro you get really sours the experience. Frequently it gives you a Bro that just does NOT work for what you're fighting, especially" against specific enemy types the character's kit is poorly suited to counter. A 2025 review describes the practical workaround players resort to: deliberately dying "to switch which characters you don't want to play as, [wasting progress just to get a different roll]." Checking a broad sample of negative reviews, this exact complaint — not general difficulty, but specifically the absence of manual character selection combined with genuinely uneven character power levels — recurs with a consistency that reads as a genuine, deliberate design choice rather than an oversight, even though a meaningful share of the game's own fans find it frustrating rather than charmingly chaotic.

Persistent, well-documented multiplayer bugs

A separate, consistent and more serious category of complaint concerns online and local co-op stability. "Gameplay is amazing, but plenty of weird bugs make it unplayable co-op. How ironic... the 'playing with your bros' part is not working in a game called 'BroForce,'" reads a 2022 review. A 2020 review reports a specific, longer-standing technical issue: "Bought this game for the local multiplayer, but it has issues with multiple steam controllers. I've looked online and people having similar problems haven't found a solution." A 2023 review describes a specific regression noticed by a longtime player: "We were doing our 4th playthrough and encountered countless bugs, multiplayer desyncs, performance drops and weird missions that were not there before." Checking a broad sample of reviews spanning close to a decade, this pattern of co-op-specific technical problems recurs with enough consistency to treat as a genuine, persistent reliability issue rather than isolated hardware conflicts, and it's a specific, serious concern given co-op is central to how the game is designed and marketed.

A separate review adds a specific, serious data point about progress loss rather than in-session bugs: "Changed from good review to bad. Since I lost all my hard earn progress with all collections!!! Now I don't want to play it again," reads a 2022 review, describing a save-corruption incident distinct from the desync and controller issues above. Taken together, this cluster of technical complaints — session instability, controller configuration failures, and at least one reported case of permanent progress loss — paints a consistent picture of a game whose core single-player experience is considerably more reliable than its cooperative and save systems, which is worth stating plainly for anyone specifically buying Broforce to invest significant time unlocking its full character roster.

Unfair off-screen deaths, distinct from intended chaos

A further, more specific complaint distinguishes itself from the game's intentional embrace of chaos. "Enemies shoot and instantly kill you off screen. Rocks fall above you off screen killing you instantly. Very poor visability," reads a 2021 review, describing threats arriving from entirely outside the player's field of view with no reasonable way to react. A separate 2022 review echoes the complaint about screen limitations specifically in multiplayer, where a single shared camera compounds visibility problems for all players simultaneously. This is worth distinguishing clearly from the broader "chaotic and unforgiving by design" framing several fans embrace — reviewers raising this complaint aren't objecting to difficulty itself, but to specific threats the game's own camera and screen space make impossible to see coming.

A studio that continued investing, then moved on

This review checked Free Lives' own update history directly and found genuine, substantial continued support: "Broforce Forever," a free update adding new characters and enemies, shipped in August 2023 — nearly eight years after the game's original full release — followed by a hotfix in December 2023. Development attention then shifted to a new title, Anger Foot, released in 2024. That's a meaningfully positive pattern relative to some other long-tail indie titles this review has covered: genuine, substantial investment sustained for the better part of a decade before the studio moved on, rather than the game being abandoned shortly after initial release.

Final verdict

Broforce delivers genuinely satisfying, chaotic destructible-terrain action that earns its enthusiastic reception, and this review credits that core appeal without reservation. What keeps the score short of higher praise is an extremely consistent complaint about randomised, unchosen character selection souring encounters at the worst possible moments, compounded by persistent, well-documented multiplayer bugs that sit uncomfortably against a game built around cooperative play. This is a strong pick for short, explosive solo sessions; co-op groups should go in aware of the well-documented technical risk and check recent reviews for how stability currently stands on their specific platform.