You know where to find me, this is Friends vs Friends!
Let me tell you 'bout the friends
that invested all they had
on a shady site that looked like a scam
it said: buy these magic cards
to play the coolest game
and fight against your friends
with no consequence...
that invested all they had
on a shady site that looked like a scam
it said: buy these magic cards
to play the coolest game
and fight against your friends
with no consequence...
— Theme Song
Friends vs Friends is an online First-Person Shooter Deckbuilding Game developed by Brainwash Gang and published by Raw Fury. It was released on May 30th, 2023 for PC via Steam.
You play as one of many characters, each with their own unique traits, and build a deck of cards you earn by levelling up or buying card packs with the money you earn from matches to use in battle against other players where the first person to kill their opponent in three rounds wins. The game can be played in 1v1 or 2v2 modes.
Friends vs Friends provides examples of the following tropes:
- Action Bomb: The "Self Destruct Device" trap card makes you explode on death, encouraging you to get killed near your enemy to take them down with you.
- All There in the Manual: All of the character lore is found in supplementary material outside the game.
- Deck Clogger: The Garbage Day card puts 6 useless cards into the opponent's hand. Besides being rude, it combos well with Barbed Cards and Hot Potato.
- Demolitions Expert: Little Lars. Their idle animation shows them with the Punch-R, and their personality card grants them a massive resistance to explosives.
- Destructible Projectiles: Most thrown items such as bombs can be shot out of the air if you are quick and precise enough, which can be used to your advantage if you are the one throwing it to quickly blow up an opponent.
- Double Jump: One of the buff cards grants you a double jump for a short duration when used. Moose has this by default as their personality card.
- Excuse Plot: As said in the theme song, some friends buy a magical card game that lets them fight each other with crazy weaponry and powers with no consequences once the bullets are done flying.
- Expository Theme Song: As quoted above. It then goes on to list off several of the cards you can use in a match.
- Guns Akimbo:
- Spike Remington's idle pose in the menu even has him twirling a pair of Laika revolvers.
- The Akimbo card was added in Baba's Laundromat expansion and basically allows you to duplicate your current weapon to increase firepower.
- Invincibility Power-Up: The Tin Man buff card temporarily makes you completely invincible from any damage bar environmental hazards.
- Katanas Are Just Better: One weapon you can unlock is the Katana, which also serves as Sable's starting weapon. It can be used to slice up opponents and parry bullets to reduce incoming damage significantly, but it does need to be reloaded by replacing the blade after a few swings or parrying bullets.
- Life Drain: The Vampire Bullets card allows you (and your teammate in 2v2) to replenish HP when dealing damage to your opponent.
- The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: A shady website selling magical playing cards. Weirdly, a physical shop seems to move into the back of the local diner.
- Molotov Cocktail: The Karrotov, a throwable that sets a chunk of the surrounding area it lands in on fire for a period of time.
- Non-Human Non-Binary: All of the playable characters are referred to with they/them pronouns in their short character descriptions, and are all Funny Animals.
- Pixellation: Can be used to your advantage/disadvantage, as one debuff card allows a player to temporarily pixelate the enemy's screen, making it harder to see.
- Play Every Day: The game has both daily and weekly quests, which reward you with more XP to level up. Completing all three during the timeframe they're available in will also reward Tokens for the PalPrize machines.
- Shout-Out:
- Little Lars' name and species seems to be one to Lars, the protagonist of The Little Polar Bear
. - One of Lar's victory lines has them singing "Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down!".
- A random Spike Remington voiceline will have him chant: "Fight fight fight, bite bite bite!" A cheeky little nod to a certain Show Within a Show involving a fellow black cat and also having lots of bloody cartoon-ish ultraviolence.
- The Island map has graffiti of Wiggle Fox, a fox marionette an attendee brought to AnthroCon 2023 that went viral around the time the map was added to the game.
- One of the cars parked in the main hub area is based on the 1977 Pontiac Firebird which famously appeared in Smokey and the Bandit.
- The revolver being named "Laika" could be a reference to Laika: Aged Through Blood another game by Brainwash Gang.
- Another "Laika: Aged Through Blood" reference can be found in the store Pixel Vision in the hub area, which shows a pixel animation advertisement for the game.
- Little Lars' name and species seems to be one to Lars, the protagonist of The Little Polar Bear
- Stink Bomb: The Toxic Bomb, a glass vial that explodes into a giant green cloud that poisons anyone within upon hitting the ground.
- Take That!: Some graffiti found on the ground in the game's lobby reads "F*ck P2W!"
- Weapon-Based Characterization: Every character has their own weapons of choice in their idle animations and poses in the menu, though most still start with the default pistol with the exceptions of Stevie Gull, Myk Raver and Sable Santana.
- Duck Anderson and Haru carry the default Boira pistol, while Stevie Gull has the Golden Boira.
- DJ Newton has the Albatross 21 strapped to their back.
- Spike Remington and Donnie B. both have the Laika revolver, though Spike is dual wielding two of them.
- Myk Raver holds the Brasshopper SMG which is also depicted in his personality card.
- Sable Santana stands at the ready with the katana.
- Little Lars wields the Punch-R.
- You Nuke 'Em: The Nuke card transforms the map into a giant crater formed in the aftermath of a nuclear strike for one round, with wreckage all around and a prominent mushroom cloud (with a cat face) in the back. If a second Nuke card is played during the same round, the map will change again to a floating rock in space... and if a third nuke card is played, the map glitches out into a simple white grid box as the text "ERROR NUKE OVERFLOW" flashes.
