Summary
- Brawlhalla is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
- Players should check out the BCX event for exciting new announcements, as well as play the free in-game anniversary event.
- Managing Director Zeke Sparkes reflects on the early days of the game, how it’s grown to a community over 125 million players strong, and keeping the community at the core of the game’s vision.
Brawlhalla, the free-to-play platform fighting game, is celebrating its 10th anniversary since launching its open beta in 2015. What started as an indie game with five playable Legends has grown into a pillar of the fighting game community, with 67 playable Legends; a plethora of maps and biomes; crossovers with popular IP such as Star Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Halo, among many others; and over 125 million lifetime players.
Each year, around its anniversary, Brawlhalla celebrates in two ways: an in-game anniversary celebration, and the in-person Brawlhalla World Championship Expo (BCX). BCX 2025 is taking place at the Gateway Center in Atlanta, GA from November 21-23, and will feature world-class competitive Brawlhalla, announcements of what’s coming in 2026, and an expo packed with dev panels, cosplay, and more.
The in-game anniversary event runs now through December 3: a month-long celebration of Brawlhalla featuring new content, community events, rewards, and surprises. The festival introduces a new Legend – a cleric named Lady Vera – as well as the long-awaited Guild feature, which allows players to build community in new and exciting ways. Whether you’re a seasoned competitor or a new player, Brawlhalla’s 10th anniversary is the perfect time to log in, join a Guild, and brawl it out in the arena.
Zeke Sparkes is Brawlhalla’s managing director, and he’s been a developer on the game since its inception. We spoke to him to learn more about Brawlhalla’s beginning, how it’s continued to grow over the past decade, and how the team kept the player community at the core of the game’s vision.
What can you tell us about Brawlhalla’s early days of development and the vision for the game?
It was exciting because we realized pretty early on that we had something that had legs, but we didn’t know how far it could go. So, we poured our hearts into it and built really strong ties with the community early on. We knew, especially being free to play, that we had to be talking and listening and adapting based on what the community was saying. And so, we put ourselves out there and it’s been a wild ride seeing how far we can go.
Has the approach to development changed in the last decade?
I’d say the mentality is still the same. It’s a team that loves the game – everybody is here because they want to be working on Brawlhalla, and we are connected to the community. We’re constantly finding new ways to listen to the community and figure out what we can do to tweak the game, keep people interested and excited, see what things we’re doing that are working well, and what things we’re doing that aren’t working so well that we need to update. We’ve had a constant commitment to that.
Over the years, we’ve gone from launching just on Steam, where we could patch two, three, four, five times a week – really, really fast – to being on every major platform. That adds a layer of logistics we didn’t have early on; we have to plan a bit further ahead. So, the processes changed a little bit, but the heart and mentality are still the same.
As you’ve mentioned, community is a huge part of Brawlhalla, and being connected to the community has been the plan since day one. How did you build that community relationship? Was there any surprising feedback?
One of the first things we did was stream the game on Twitch, even before we really understood what Twitch was or how to do a good stream. We knew that it was going to be important, and it was one of the first times you could get real-time feedback from players as a developer, which was really exciting.
Because of that connection, we had a really big change early on. Originally, the game wasn’t character-focused; you would build an avatar and then spec out exactly how you wanted your character to be based on the weapons we dropped for you during gameplay. The early feedback told us the prototype was cool, the combat’s fun, but characters were missing. That’s when we started to think about pivoting to a character-centric game and started figuring out what archetypes we could add based on what we had made. We started with five Legends and released the 67th this month.
Now, we’ve got a full-on livestream studio with a set and awesome production values and motion graphics, but the core of the experience is still there, where it’s us talking to the community about what we’re doing, what’s going on, seeing how they react to stuff, and listening to the things they want to see in the game. That’s how we keep Brawlhalla moving forward.
Brawlhalla’s World Championship Expo (BCX) is taking place November 21-23 in Atlanta. What can fans expect this year?
That is the place to tune into. You get the best Brawlhalla gameplay in the entire world, and it just gets better every year. It’s incredible – the atmosphere is amazing, and it’s where we make some of our biggest announcements and reveals. We’ve got some really good ones lined up this year (I’m thinking of a couple now that are going to make people go crazy), so make sure you tune in on twitch.tv/Brawlhalla.
Any reflections on the past decade you’d like to share? What’s up next for Brawlhalla?
Lady Vera, our 67th Legend, is out now. She’s a cleric with some really interesting signature moves, and you can do some pretty fun stuff with her. She has a lot of radial skills, so depending on where you are when you do the move, the direction that your opponent goes can change pretty dramatically. So, if you’re creative, this really is a character for you. We’ve also just released phase one of our Guilds feature, which is a long-time player request. You’ll be able to build your community of players around a Guild that works across all different platforms, and that’s just phase one. We’ll continue to add cool, new, engaging mechanisms to Guilds as we move forward. Tune into BCX 2025 for more specifics of what’s to come!
I’d also like to say that building Brawlhalla with this team and with the community has been amazing. Over the past decade, players have shaped this game’s direction, fueled its esports scene, and fostered a welcoming space for brawlers of all backgrounds. The Anniversary Event is as much a celebration of the community as it is of the game itself. It’s exactly what we love to do and we’re so thankful for everybody that’s been on this journey with us whether you’re brand new today or you’ve been playing Brawlhalla since the closed alpha. We’re super excited that there’s a community of people that love the game and love what we’re doing.
Brawlhalla is free to play on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.
Brawlhalla
Ubisoft
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The Legend Rotation of nine free to play characters changes every week, and you can earn gold to unlock more Legends by playing any online game mode. _x000d_
Includes: Orion Legend unlock, Dark Age Orion Skin, Thumb’s Up Emote, Trident Weapon Skin._x000d_
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Brawhalla will always be 100% free to play with no pay-to-win advantages.
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