Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2

Lore & Background

The game features a new single-player roguelike campaign in which players must stop Danny Phantom villain Vlad Plasmius from conquering the multiverse. Players start in the hub area, the Timeless Stardial, and progress through nodes with challenges, waves of enemies, platforming, and boss battles. Power-ups and currencies are earned and discarded upon run completion or defeat. New playable characters are unlocked by defeating them in battle.

The plot follows SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star as they are drawn into a multiverse conflict. Clockwork summons them to the Timeless Stardial and explains that Vlad Plasmius is mind-controlling beings across universes. The heroes free allies, fight clones, and eventually confront the real Vlad, whose machine malfunctions and threatens the universe. Clockwork is later corrupted by the machine's effects, and the heroes defeat him, after which he returns everyone to their worlds with no memories of the incident.

Gameplay has been updated with revised movesets, new horizontal attacks, aerial dodging, dodge rolling, and a Slime Meter that powers up attacks, extends recovery, and enables character-specific super attacks. The game includes 26 stages, some with alternate layouts, and supports cross-platform play online.

Reader's Guide

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is significant as a sequel that improved upon its predecessor in several ways, including full English voice-acting from launch, refined graphics, and expanded single-player content. The addition of a roguelike campaign, new mechanics like the Slime Meter and aerial dodging, and cross-platform play marked a notable evolution for the Nickelodeon Super Brawl series. The game received generally favorable reviews on PlayStation 5 and mixed or average reviews on Windows, with praise for overall improvements but criticism of performance, especially on Nintendo Switch. Its legacy includes the debut of Jacqueline Grace Lopez as Korra, following Janet Varney's departure from the role. The game's roster of 25 characters from 17 Nickelodeon franchises, plus four DLC characters, and its multiverse plot, reflect the enduring appeal of Nickelodeon properties in the fighting game genre.

Did You Know?

• The game was officially announced on July 27, 2023, after images were anonymously leaked online in June 2023.
• The full character roster was accidentally leaked via an Amazon retail listing one week after the game's announcement.
• Patrick's Elastic Waistband costume was made available for free to all who purchased the game digitally during the first week of release.

From Slap City to the Nickelodeon Universe

The road to this crossover brawler began with the commercial success of Swedish indie studio Ludosity's earlier fighting title, Slap City. That track record caught Nickelodeon's attention, and the brand approached the developers with a vision for a platform fighter built around its animated properties. Development kicked off in early 2020, with Ludosity leading and Costa Rican studio Fair Play Labs lending a hand. A guiding principle from day one was competitive depth: the team wanted approachable controls for newcomers while preserving the layered skill ceiling that dedicated players demand. Roster selection was a joint effort between publisher GameMill Entertainment and Ludosity, though a small number of character picks were turned down by Nickelodeon over global licensing concerns. The project's existence slipped out on July 10, 2021, when retailer GameFly accidentally revealed it, and the official reveal followed three days later through an IGN trailer. The game landed on October 5, 2021, across Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows, marking the first console entry in the long-running Nickelodeon Super Brawl franchise that had previously lived only in browser and mobile formats.

A Platform Fighter Built for the Competitive Mind

At its core, the title is a two-dimensional platform fighter where the goal is to blast rivals off the stage. Movement is fluid—running, jumping, double-jumping, and an eight-directional mid-air dash keep the action dynamic. Every character wields three attack tiers: quick light hits for chaining combos, slower heavy strikes that pack more damage and knockback, and a unique special move per fighter. Input combinations with directional pads and three attack buttons unlock the full move set, and players can grab and hurl opponents or even airborne projectiles. Guarding carries no stamina penalty, though it does push the character back. One mechanic stands apart from the genre: the strafe button, which lets a player keep facing their target while backing away, enabling retreat-while-striking patterns. Damage accumulates, and each hit dealt increases the knockback the victim suffers, so later-round trades become far more lethal. Stages vary in layout and some introduce hazards. A June 2022 update dropped sixteen throwable items into the mix, and a Sports mode—adapted from Slap City's Slap Ball—lets players lob different ball types into a goal. Online play supports up to four players with rollback netcode on eligible platforms.

Building the Roster, One Update at a Time

The launch roster packed twenty fighters drawn from seventeen Nickelodeon franchises, each with a home stage rooted in their source series. Two more characters arrived free of charge: Garfield on December 9, 2021, and Shredder alongside a Double Dare–themed stage on February 3, 2022. Three paid downloadable characters followed—Jenny at the May 13, 2022 announcement, Hugh Neutron on August 5, and Rocko on October 7—bringing the total to twenty-five. The game shipped without any voice acting, a decision that echoed its sibling titles Nickelodeon Kart Racers and its sequel, but the community jumped in fast: within the first week, PC modders had already crafted alternate costumes and full voice tracks. Ludosity responded by confirming free costume updates and, in June 2022, delivered English voice lines for every character. An Ultimate Edition physical package bundling all the DLC hit shelves on November 11, 2022. Distribution in most of Europe fell to Maximum Games, while French publisher Just For Games handled the French market under a partnership with GameMill.

Critical Verdicts and a Franchise Looking Ahead

Reviewers on Metacritic landed on a mixed-or-average consensus. The gameplay itself drew consistent praise—critics singled out the tight combat feel and the depth hiding beneath simple controls—but the presentation and the amount of content at launch drew sharper criticism. Push Square, for instance, hailed it as the best entry in the Super Smash Bros.–style niche at the time. The modding community, as noted, filled gaps almost immediately, and the developers listened, rolling out voice acting, items, and new fighters over the following months. In the broader Nickelodeon gaming landscape, the title was a milestone: the first console game in the Super Brawl lineage that had lived for years as browser and mobile experiences. Ludosity CEO Joel Nyström signaled the franchise was still growing, saying the team would review all options for future enhancements. That forward-looking stance carried into 2023, when Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 arrived as the direct sequel, continuing the platform-fighter experiment on the same multiplatform footprint.