Awesomenauts Cartoon chaos in 3v3 space battles

Most MOBAs bury you under an hour of lanes and a wiki's worth of jargon before anything fun happens. Awesomenauts keeps the tactical core, classes, upgrades, creeps, turrets and bases, and packs it into fast 3v3 platformer rounds. You jump, glide and fight in 2D instead of clicking across an isometric map, and matches move at arcade speed. It is easier to pick up than most games in the genre: get comfortable with one character and the controls, and you can hold your own without studying a meta guide first. The depth is still there, it just stops standing in the way.

Every Awesomenaut comes with their own abilities, upgrades, skins and character theme, and the customization goes deep. Before and during a match you decide which skills to buy and how to tune them, shaping each character to your play style rather than a fixed template. One run you play a ranged hero who keeps its distance and chips away; the next you spec for burst and go hunting. Kills and pushes earn you the currency for upgrades, so what you spend on shapes how you fight. Earn Awesomepoints and unlock more customization options as you go.

This is a game built for a sofa. Up to three of you can play local splitscreen, online or offline, and the cartoon mayhem only gets funnier with company. You shout callouts across the couch, someone misjudges a jump and drops the team fight, and the plan falls apart in the best way. If your friends are elsewhere, queue up together as an online party instead. Either way a session is simple: join a lobby, coordinate who plays what, jump into a round. Short matches make it easy to say one more.