Gridpunk Battle Royale 3v3 PvP

My first real match in Gridpunk ended in a 15 to 5 win, and I had almost nothing to do with it. A teammate named Brandon finished with 17 takedowns and over 21,000 damage, while I walked off with zero kills and 528 damage. The game still paid me well for it, and then the shop showed me how slowly the rest of the progress comes in.

A yard full of robots before anyone shoots back

The tutorial starts in a fenced yard with a few slow robots, and it walks you through the controls one button at a time. You move with a stick on the left, and you shoot by holding the big fire button on the right and dragging your thumb toward a target.

Two skills sit next to the fire button. One is a rocket launcher with a cooldown counter, which flattened a whole group of robots in one shot. The other is a dash that throws your hero in whatever direction you drag it. Once the robots are scrap, the game drops you into a short 3v3 to try it all in a proper match.

Every so often in a fight, three upgrade cards appear along the bottom of the screen, such as Double Barrel or Plasma Bullets, and you tap one to power up your gun. The tutorial ended with 4,000 coins, two cap blueprints and two belt blueprints, plus a Laser Carbine that raised my Total Power from 1 to 22 once I equipped it.

Fifteen takedowns in about three minutes

A normal match starts from the FIGHT button in the lobby, and each one costs 8 energy from a bar that holds 150. The only mode open at first is 3v3 on a city map called Sentinel Park, with a Ranked Match box ticked by default. The game found me a team within a few seconds.

The VS screen showed our three heroes at 22 to 24 power against three at 30, so I figured we'd get a beating. Instead the match turned into a chase between parked cars and a street sweeper. The kill feed in the corner kept ticking up for our side until we reached 15 while the other team had 5.

The whole thing took about three minutes. I spent most of it dragging my aim around, eating a stun from an enemy I never saw coming, and watching Brandon clean up. Even with zero kills I got 20 trophies, 6,400 coins, two boot blueprints and a pants blueprint, and the Punk Pass moved forward by 30 points.

Gambetta first, Lil Loca after 30 trophies

You start with Gambetta, a shirtless gunman with 2,400 HP, a rifle, a rocket launcher and a dash. The roster next to him shows Lil Loca, Hackerman, Babushka and Gunther behind locks, and tapping GET on Lil Loca opened the trophy road instead of a price tag.

That road is the real progression. Battle Royale unlocks at 10 trophies, Lil Loca at 30, a mode called Gridcity at 60, Hackerman at 100 and Knockout at 150. Further out sit 5v5 at 300, Babushka at 400, 2v2 at 500 and Trio Battle Royale at 600, with chests in between.

At 20 trophies a win, Lil Loca is two wins away from a fresh start and Hackerman five, which feels quick. The arenas follow the same road, starting at Sentinel Park in the United States and moving on to Copacabana Beach, Rainbow Crossing, Seoul River, Falls of Wonder and Rio's Guardian.

Six gear slots, daily missions and a Punk Pass

Outside the trophy road, your power comes from six gear slots for a weapon, shirt, cap, pants, belt and shoes. Items level up to 30 and unlock perks along the way. My Laser Carbine started with 10% more attack, and its later perks include plasma bullets for the rifle that deal electric damage for three seconds.

Missions open after the first match, with Dailies such as playing one ranked match or opening a chest from the shop, plus Weeklies, Achievements and Daily Rewards. Claiming my first few dailies added 6,000 coins in one go, which was a nice surprise after such a short session.

Season 28 of the Punk Pass was running with 16 days left. The paid pass costs 169 gems and promises extra quests and ad-free rewards. Punk Pass Max costs 299 gems and adds three epic outfits and four S-type chests, which is a lot to ask when my wallet held 10 gems.

Thirty Cash at a time, and a crate costs 80

The squeeze shows up in the shop. Gear crates run on Cash, the green money. A Supply Crate costs 80 Cash, an Elite Crate needs a key, and a pull from the S Grade Items box costs 300 Cash or 2,680 for ten. The free Cash in the Daily Shop comes in piles of 30.

That tile gives one free pile and then two more behind a video, with a wait of about five minutes in between, so it tops out at 90 Cash a day. That's barely one Supply Crate, and the Elite Crate's free open behind a video only comes back after about four days.

Coins are easier to earn, but what they buy isn't cheap either. A win paid me 6,400 coins, while the Daily Shop sold ten weapon blueprints for 30,000 coins and ten clothing blueprints for 18,000. Cash packs go from 80 to 14,000 Cash with a doubled first purchase, and Google Play lists in-app purchases from $0.99 to $99.99 per item.

Energy is a softer brake, since a full bar covers 18 matches. Still, after one match my bar read 142 of 150, and the timer under it showed almost two hours to refill the 8 points I had spent.

What the MOD menu switch did to the video buttons

In VipMod, a red VIP button sits on the left edge of the game, and it opens a MOD menu with a single switch for ad rewards. With the switch off, I tapped the video Cash tile twice and nothing happened at all, so I didn't get a video or any Cash.

With it on, the same tap took my Cash from 30 to 60 straight away, and the tile started its five-minute countdown as if I had sat through an ad. The next claim took me from 60 to 90 and put a checkmark on the tile for the day.

The crates behaved the same way. The Supply Crate's video button opened a crate on the spot and gave me Groove Joggers, and the Elite Crate's free open handed over Freestyle Hightops. The video pile of coins raised my balance from 10,000 to 16,000 as well. Then I spent 80 of that Cash on a Supply Crate, got a Kingpin Hat, and watched the balance drop from 90 to 10.

A few things to know up front:

• The switch needs a VIP1 plan, and it only works on buttons that show a video icon.
• The game's counters still run, so the Cash tile still stops after its daily claims and each crate keeps its own timer.
• It doesn't touch your hero, your damage or anything else that happens during a match.
• Gem packs, Cash packs and the Punk Pass still cost exactly what the shop says.

How a few matches felt on my phone

The fights are the best part. Matches are short, the drag-to-aim control felt natural after a couple of minutes, and the sunny city streets look bright and clean on a phone screen. The upgrade cards in the middle of a fight also give each round a small twist, even when you play the same hero every time.

The weaker part is how little one player decides at this level. My first win came almost entirely from a teammate, and the other team's higher power didn't seem to matter. The tutorial also took a while before it let me open the shop on my own.

Gridpunk has 4.5 stars from about 11,800 reviews on Google Play, more than a million downloads and a Teen rating for violence and blood. The language menu runs from English and Spanish to Korean, Japanese, Turkish, Arabic and Romanian, and the Asia chat showed 77 players online on a Monday evening.

So who should download it

If you want a quick top-down shooter for short breaks, this one gets you into a match fast, and the trophy road hands out a new hero or mode every few wins at the start. It's also friendly to players who aren't great shots yet, since the team carries a lot of the weight.

If you tried it before and got tired of sitting through a video for every free crate, the mod removes exactly that chore. Every free crate and Cash pile in the shop pays out without a video, which turns the daily freebies into a quick round of taps instead of a string of ads.