Lo and behold, it’s another bullet heaven. This time, it’s time for a cartoony 2D title with cute yet deadly capybaras, battling against hordes of enemies in small arenas – alone, or with multiple allies in co-op. It’s Extremely Powerful Capybaras, and here’s our review for the Xbox Series X version!
All you can bullet
If you know me, you know I live and breathe the bullet heaven genre – or survivors-like, auto-shooter, whatever the globally accepted term will become, anyway. September 2025 alone brought so much goodness to the genre. Game Pass owners are digging deep into Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor‘s mines. The excellent undead-themed Yet Another Zombie Survivors launched in Game Preview on Xbox. We even had the Norse-themed Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel on consoles. Over on PC, the unique Machick 2 made its debut too, with the innovative Megabonk also writing quite a success story. It’s a great time to be a fan of the genre, that’s for sure.
It is in this crowded market that Extremely Powerful Capybaras, after a long stint only on PC, finally lands on our consoles as well. Needless to say, with competition this fierce, you really have to stand out now. Fortunately, Brazil-based developer Studio Bravarda packs a fairly unique art style, a large focus on co-op, and some interesting deviations on the usual formula. And, of course, there’s a lot of capybaras. Let’s dig in, shall we?
No cap(ybara)
The game immediately offers players with a choice of up to 4 players in local play, as 4 cute 2D cartoony capybaras take a nice bath. As they end this relaxing moment, they have to choose between character classes, buy upgrades or cosmetic changes if they so desire, then enter one of the game’s arenas. These follow the bullet heaven basics pretty much to a T, albeit in much smaller arenas than most titles tend to do.
Kill enemies with various automated attacks. Avoid their attacks and hitboxes. Grab their XP and health drops to heal, if needed. Use the XP to level up mid-run, unlocking new weapons, perks and more. As the amount and tenacity of enemies increases, so does our tremendous power to balance it out. Either the run’s timer ends and we beat the final boss, or die sometime along the way. After each run, the credits earned can be used to buy permanent upgrades, new classes, outfit changes for our capybaras and more. It’s 2025, you probably played a bullet heaven title before, so you get the drill.
Capybaras united
Even when fully upgraded, the combat is generally quite slow, with limited amount of enemy crowd management available. Due to the limited spaces, large area attacks seem to be the best choice in most cases. Visibility becomes an issue before long, too, as all the effects and attacks on screen can cover enemies and their projectiles. What’s interesting is that there is a finite ending to our mid-run upgrades, which is when all of our passive and active powers are upgraded to the maximum. At this point, we turn into extremely powerful capybaras (a-ha, clever), wreaking havoc in the arena and satisfyingly turning every enemy into money to collect. Would be nice to have that ability in real life!
There’s a few powers that are interesting, such as the ones giving bonuses based on the balance of passive and active powers we chose, but overall, there’s not a whole lot of novelty in here. Being able to play in co-op up to 4 players is nice, at least, though at the time of this writing, this is only possible in local play. Developers did confirm that online will be turned on shortly after launch, so I’m intrigued to try that – even if, all in all, the general gameplay loop in Extremely Powerful Capybaras is quite basic. There’s a few cool weapon synergies, but it’s all quite formulaic. There also really isn’t much to unlock, and what little there is also takes too long to finish, too, as we’ll be replaying slight variations of the same 4 small arenas.
Somewhat strong capybaras, I guess
Extremely Powerful Capybaras is an enjoyable co-op romp for up to 4 players, making for a chaotic but fairly stylish bullet heaven experience. Taken as a solo game or comparing it to its much more ambitious contemporaries, however, it does very little to stand out, and its basic gameplay doesn’t quite hold the depth necessary to warrant many repeat runs. Hardcore bullet heaven fans like me and those seeking a fun co-op experience will have a good time, but there’s countless more interesting titles in the genre by now.
Extremely Powerful Capybaras
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Cute art style
- Fun in co-op
- A few cool ideas
CONS
- Very formulaic gameplay
- Not much depth or variety
- Slow and limited progression
