I've been waiting to write this review so that I could give the developers time to rectify my situation, but I've lost all hope in them and the correspondents I've dealt with over the past month as they refuse to give me any answers.

I'll start off by saying that I do enjoy playing this game with my friends; I've bought the Battle Pass, Premium Chests, and have brought friends to the game that have done the same. Which is why it is even more disheartening that the developers would steal my money given my past patronage.

This situation took place on the 16th of June, the release day of Bomberground's Season 2 Battle Pass. I had bought two Welcome Packs which came with in-game currency in the form of gems; a series of bugs (the game was full of them that day especially, and still is) caused me to lose the items I had purchased from the Welcome Packs upon logging in. I immediately reported the bug and they removed the Welcome Packs from the game after my corresponding with one of the developers, Alex. I was then contacted by a moderator who assured me they were going to fix the situation, days passed, nothing. I was then messaged by another developer, Winrar who asked for my in-game name and assured me once again they were working on the situation, weeks passed, nothing. I then messaged the Community Manager, Alphawolf who told me, exact quote, "sorry dude,idk if anything can be done." All the while, they're giving out gems to people who commented on their YouTube video but not who purchased them with their hard earned money.

In total, I messaged 2 developers, 1 community manager, and 3 moderators to no end. I have provided proof of payment, proof of missing items, and have explained it to multiple people. It does me no good to message anyone anymore because they just ignore me and never get back with me when I have been as patient as I can be. Horrible experience, especially since I was really motivated to buy the Season 2 Battle Pass but can't justify giving any more money to people who stole from me. Extremely unprofessional.

This is one of the scummiest, most deceptive bait and switches I've ever seen.

Bombergrounds: Reborn rides on the good reviews that Bombergrounds: Battle Royale got before the "update" on October 6th. This puts Bombergrounds: Reborn in a much more favourable light than it deserves to be.

Bombergrounds: Battle Royale was killed in favour of the pay to win gacha dumpster fire that they released.

How this was allowed to be released as an update is beyond me. Gigantic Duck should be ashamed of themselves.

I never thought I would have to write a negative review on this game, however here we are. If your reading this, this game as of Oct 6th is a complete trash fire. This is NOT the game I loved and adored it is just simply a cash grab, bait and switch. Steam should honestly punish companies for this because not only is this not the same LOOKING game but also functionality and core features are GONE if you want a fun free game stay away form this it's just honestly not worth the time or effort. The only way I would be WILLING to change this review is if they were to put the old game back and release this as its own independent launch. I wasn't even refunded NEARLY enough currency to cover the items lost in the swap and now I don't even want to play the game because this isn't the game I once knew. Gigantic Duck you should feel ashamed.

Ignore all reviews from before October 6 2022. The game got an update, becoming Bombergrounds: Reborn and the gameplay was COMPLETELY ALTERED.

I played quite a number of games just a few weeks ago. It was basically this: bomberman, but you have a melee attack that can move bombs (like the boxing glove powerup), stun opponents and, if fully charged, kill them. It's 1 hit kill either with a fully charged melee or bomb. Easy fun for 32 players in a BR/last man standing wins. It only had 2 maps, though. Even when I lost, which happened often, I felt that I had fun.

Now, what you get is a 10 player BR, but everyone has a health bar and all melee attacks deal damage. Bombs play second fiddle to the gameplay, everyone just rushes everyone with melee attacks and ultimate skills. I played this update on my cellphone and couldn't feel any joy or fun.

I didn't even bother with seeing the cash shop or trying to see what else they changed, because this is now a completely different game and not what I wanted to play. But I fully believe everyone saying this became p2w, with progression and items affecting your stats during the game, instead of being wholly cosmetic.

If you want reviews for the current game, ignore all reviews before the 6th October 2022

Allow me to describe how this game used to be while it was in early access:

• It was simple: One melee attack, one bomb-attack. 2 Maps in total. (this map issue is not necessarily good)
  
• All "characters" behaved the same way, meaning they all had the same melee/bomb attacks. Their only difference was cosmetic in nature.
  
• Play as much as you want. Meaning: no energy or other P2W nonsense.
  
• Really fair season pass. It did not provide any gameplay benefits, only cosmetics. Price was fair too.
  
• Negative: The last "season" lasted over a year. from July 2021 until the end of early access in October 2022
  
• Negative: Some players were clearly bots, not humans. Although this was not a big deal.

Now here is how this game is, as of the 8th October 2022:
Do you know the mobile game "Brawl Stars"? Well, Bombergrounds is 98% identical to this, but somehow worse.

• Characters have now different stats and different attacks.
  
• Characters can be levelled up, increasing their stats
  
• Characters need to be unlocked using random loot boxes
  
• Login bonuses
  
• Game modes need to be unlocked
  
• Paying real money nets you real in-game benefits
  
• A bomb does not insta-kill you. This is bad: More HP = more survival chance. HP is one stat that can be boosted with money.
  
• There is an energy meter called "bombs". You get 20 Bombs every 3 (or so) hours. Playing one game costs you 20 bombs. No bombs = no more progression
  
• Positive: There are more maps now
  
• Positive: Instead of 25 players, its only 10 players per map now. Technically this should make it easier and faster to find parties. However I am not fully convinced of that.
  
• Positive: There are more game modes now.

All in all, after waiting for over one year, this release has been an incredible disappointment. I do not understand why the devs would simply carbon-copy a mediocre mobile game instead of sticking to what they did best.

Oh wait, I DO understand why: Money!!!

I really wish they would un-release this game and we could go back to playing it how it used to be in Early Access!

Edit on the 01.11:
In addition to the above, turns out that some new bugs were introduced during the release.

- Special abilities sometimes will not work: Teddy's shield will not always protect from damage even though the animation plays
- Controls are sometimes buggy: melee will also trigger the special and the bomb attack
- After a lag spike, the character will not respond to movement commands. Yet the rest of the game including other players will move and work just fine.

Literally changed a perfectly fine game to be pay to win.

This game was really fun before they completely remade this game to target pay to win players. They went from 25 players a game to 10, making it borderline boring to play as you're walking around most of the match without fighting anyone. I played this game casually, but now it just saddens me to boot this up. Uninstalled.

please return the original bombergrounds: battle royale. make bomberground: reborn as another independent game like bomberground 2. I liked the simplicity of the original game no level ups, no special skills, no health bar. Simply just die from a bomb or charged attack. The latest update has too much going on.

I miss when this game first came out. It was so much more like bomberman online with no p2w stuff. You could pay for cosmetics or just play and unlock them by chance or by buying them with in game currency. I miss it so much honestly. I hope a private server of the first iteration of this game comes out because whatever it's become now sucks so badly compared to what it once was :( Bring back OG Bombergrounds! </3

Used to be a good game in the beginning, but "reborn" was a horrible patch for so many reasons;

- Loot-box-based progression system
- No leaderboards / ranking of any kind besides personal player levels
- Seemingly no skill-based matchmaking, not even based off of character level or profile level
- Completely unbalanced powers on mythic animals, particularly gruff
- Lobby sized reduced to 10, making games feel like nothing happened and 40 seconds later "oh I won"
- Possibly worst of all, with the addition of characters came health bars and varying damage for each character. I cannot understand this for any other reason than as a money grab to make you want to pay-to-win your way through the progression and have 6,000 health or bombs that one shot

Season 1 of the game before "reborn" was amazing whilst simplistic and still had competitive elements like daily, weekly and monthly leaderboards for number of kills etc, but reborn has removed elements which I felt made the game worth coming back to and playing again, and have added a huge number of micro-transactions for the purpose of progression.