What This Retro Brawler Actually Is
Dan the Man: Action Platformer is a side-scrolling beat-em-up from Halfbrick Studios, the team behind Fruit Ninja, dressed up in chunky 16-bit style pixel art. It plays like a mashup of old-school Mario and Sonic platforming with Street Fighter-style combo brawling, and it now includes a co-op multiplayer horde mode where two players team up online to fight through waves of soldiers, robots, bats, and bosses. It’s built for people who grew up on arcade beat-em-ups and want that same feeling on a phone, whether alone in campaign mode or with a friend in multiplayer.
Combat and Controls That Actually Feel Good
The biggest praise from players centers on how the game controls, and it’s deserved. Reviewers repeatedly call the controls ‘SUPER responsive’ and the combat ‘fast paced,’ comparing the fighting to a combo-based street fighting game layered on top of platforming. With three separate story campaigns to work through, there’s a real sense of variety rather than one repetitive stage layout copy-pasted forward. Leveling up characters is described as quick and easy, and the difficulty ramps up fast enough to keep long-term players challenged rather than bored.
The New Multiplayer Mode, Warts and All
The headline addition is the co-op horde multiplayer, letting you either grab a friend or get matched with a random ‘brawl buddy’ to clean up the streets together. Players genuinely like this addition, but it launched with a specific and repeated complaint: in some boss fights, the boss gets to attack before either player can even move, killing both players almost instantly, especially against enemies using machine guns. That’s a real balance problem worth knowing about before you jump into a match expecting a fair fight.
The Free-to-Play Catches You’ll Run Into
This is a free game with optional in-app purchases, and the free-to-play structure shows up in ways that will frustrate some players. Multiple reviewers mention timers you have to wait out, sometimes hours, before unlocking the next level or story chapter, and extra story modes plus at least one extra character sit behind a paywall. One player specifically noted you can earn the Frosty Plains area for free by getting all gold trophies in adventure mode, which is a nice workaround, but it shows how much of the extra content is otherwise gated behind either grinding or paying. Customization options for your own hero are also described as thinner than expected, with one reviewer directly asking for more items to choose from.
Progress Saving Is a Real Risk
A recurring and serious complaint is the lack of account-based cloud saves. At least one player lost all progress after switching to a different device, and specifically called out the absence of accounts as something that needs fixing given how much time people invest leveling up characters and unlocking skins. There are also scattered mentions of achievement or Game Center syncing issues, though it’s unclear if that’s a game bug or a platform-level quirk. If you care about long-term progress, this is worth knowing going in.
Who Should Actually Download This
Dan the Man is a legitimately well-made arcade brawler with tight controls, genuine humor, and enough content across campaign, endless survival, adventure, and now multiplayer modes to keep fans of retro platformers busy for a long time, all playable for free. It’s best suited to players who enjoyed classic beat-em-ups and don’t mind occasional wait timers or a light paywall around bonus content. If you’re someone who wants to make fast progress without any grinding, or who plays exclusively on multiple devices and needs guaranteed save syncing, temper your expectations first. For everyone else looking for a genuinely fun, funny, combo-heavy platform fighter with new co-op multiplayer, it’s worth the download.
