Renew or die. That's what Warner Bros. must have thought when they saw that the number of active players of Multiversus, their simultaneous fighting game that mixes a multitude of characters from their countless franchises, was falling and the game was nearing the point of being forgotten. It went from a soaring start to nothing–a situation that forced the company to shut down its title after realizing that the numerous changes and additions that were introduced to try to win back the mass of players weren’t working.

What nobody expected was that a year later, the studio responsible for its development, Player First Games, would pick the idea back up to try their luck again. It’s often said that second attempts are never good, but Multiversus is a resurrection that emerges from the graveyard of video games to reclaim its throne in one of the most entertaining genres in the industry. And what's more, it does it for free, something that always tempts gamers to give it a try.

A broader scope for greater possibilities

In Super Smash Bros. style fighting games, which includes Multiversus, it's essential to have a really broad compendium of characters to give players more diversity when it comes to choosing who to fight with or even trying out multiple characters until they master one of them to perfection. This creates a very attractive playable loop that grabs the user's attention. Before they know it, they’re already immersed in the game and can’t stop playing. That was one of the big mistakes of Warner Bros.' title at the beginning, and one that they’ve sought to fix in one go in its relaunch.

As a result, Multiversus expands its cast of playable characters to 26 fighters with names as representative as Arya Stark, Bugs Bunny, The Joker, Morty, and Superman, among many other characters from the numerous licenses owned by the production company. In addition, it has already been confirmed that they’ll soon be expanded, adding such illustrious personalities as Samurai Jack or Aquaman, while fans are still longing for the appearance of Gandalf. What’s clear is that the options in this regard are manifold to give the game a truly vast compendium of characters that will be able to bring together millions of players from all over the world to play with their favorite, whatever the franchise.

As well as the characters, Multiversus has also expanded scenarios to adapt to the aforementioned franchises such as Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Looney Tunes, and Rick and Morty, among many others. This freshness allows the initial games to always offer something different, a crucial aspect to keep all those who discover the videogame with this relaunch from abandoning it as soon as the first change appears. Time will tell if its future content path will suffice, but the title's appearance on Steam has managed to gather more than 150,000 simultaneous players on Valve's platform, numbers on a par with the digital shop’s most-played games.

A revamped look and feel under the Unreal Engine 5 brand

If content is Multiversus's main asset for the resurgence of its success and to capture the attention of players in this rare second chance that very few games have in the sector, it has also opted for an improvement at the graphic level. With this, the environments, the playable characters themselves, and the animations they perform are sharper and more fluid, allowing everything you see on screen to be more interesting and contribute to the whole proposal.

To achieve this, the Player First Games team has turned to the current star graphics engine, Unreal Engine 5, to extract the full potential of the tool from Epic Games, creators of Fortnite. The result is superb in this regard, giving the characters more personality and a more lucid color palette and appearance to better distinguish them in the pitched battles that occur in each game. A process for which the game has been remade from scratch, explaining its withdrawal from the market just a year ago.

The case of Multiversus is one of the strangest in the videogame sector. Nobody was expecting its return to be a success, but the work carried out by those responsible for it shows that sometimes it’s necessary to stop in order to look at ideas from a different perspective and achieve the desired result. Now the colossal task of trying to convince one of the most demanding communities that exist in the leisure sector will begin, so the next steps must be as successful as that of its revival.