---
name: Burnish Brawl
slug: burnish-brawl
tags: [anime, top-down, brawler, party game, flat colour, cel-shaded, geometric fx, neon, streetwear, night city]
best_for: [top-down brawlers and arena games, party and roguelike PvP, hero and character-select games, action games where every hit should feel huge]
seen_in: []
---
# Burnish Brawl
## The idea
A top-down party brawl where every hit lands like a poster. Sharp streetwear-anime characters fight across a city
at night, seen from high above: rooftops, basketball courts, parking lots and fire escapes. When they use their
powers the screen erupts in fire that isn't really fire: flat pink, mint and magenta shards, triangles and squares
that crack across the arena and vanish. Everything is flat colour, even the 3D, with shadows tinted violet or teal
rather than grey, and the menus are black with loud sticker-cut badges. It feels like a Trigger film playing out
on a party-game board: readable enough to play with seven friends, and over the top enough that nobody forgets the
round.
## Touchstones
- **_BAPBAP_ (Maison Bap, early access March 2025, 1.0 August 2025)**: the top-down roguelike party brawler this style starts
from. Take the high arena camera over chunky, low-detail night-city blocks, angular streetwear-anime characters
(white hair, tracksuits, masks, a goldfish in a mech, ramen with legs) that read from far above, neon VFX trails,
and near-black menus with punk sticker badges and tarot-like augment cards.
[More: Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2226280/BAPBAP/)
- **_Promare_ (Studio Trigger, 2019; dir. Hiroyuki Imaishi, designs Shigeto Koyama, CG by Sanzigen)**: flat colour
in both the drawn and the 3D parts, blended so each matched the other. Koyama didn't want "cloudy" colour; the
Burnish fire is pink, green and purple so it is obviously not ordinary flame, simplified and alive, riffed from a
flame gradient in concept work by Pixar's Grant Alexander. The art director's geometric habit gave it triangle
flames, square lens flares and cubic ice. Take the colour, the geometry and the shadows tinted lilac and teal.
[More: Trigger on the film (Anime Herald)](https://animeherald.com/2020/05/04/insight-into-promare-from-studio-triggers-wakabayashi-and-koyama/)
- **_Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt_ (Gainax, 2010; dir. Hiroyuki Imaishi)**: the cartoon taste Imaishi wanted
Promare to share: flat fills, thick graphic shapes and Western-cartoon proportions pushed to the limit. Take the
confidence to simplify a character to a few bold shapes and colours.
[More: the 2025 series (Otaku USA)](https://otakuusamagazine.com/new-panty-stocking-with-garterbelt-reveals-start-date-in-main-trailer/)
- **_Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse_ (Sony Pictures Animation, 2018)**: Imaishi's example of a film that kept the
look of its image boards all the way to the screen. Take 3D that is graded and drawn over until it reads as an
illustration, and colour that swings whole frames to pink or violet when the moment calls for it.
[More: production design (Cartoon Brew)](https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/spider-man-into-the-spider-verse-production-design-is-about-character-not-style-168137.html)
- **Tawaraya Sōtatsu, _Wind God and Thunder God_ screens (early 17th century)**: the painting Koyama showed for Mad
Burnish's Gueira and Meis. Two gods tumbling through empty gold, drawn with total economy. Take the mythic register,
the flat ground and the way two figures can fill a whole field.
.jpg "Sōtatsu, the thunder god (left screen)")
[More: Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wind-God-Fujin-and-Thunder-God-Raijin-by-Tawaraya-Sotatsu.png)
- **Edo firefighters (machi-bikeshi): matoi standards and hanten coats (18th–19th century)**: the brigades whose
crest standards and quilted, dyed coats Galo's matoi and gear nod to. Take heroic rescue iconography, bold crests
that identify a crew at a glance, and dragons and waves hidden inside the coat.
,%2019th%20century,%20Honolulu%20Museum%20of%20Art.jpg "Hikeshi hanten, 19th century (Honolulu Museum of Art)")
[More: the print (Library of Congress)](https://www.loc.gov/item/2008660887/)
- **_Persona 5_ (Atlus, 2016; _Royal_ 2019)**: black, white and one hot red, with every menu and speech bubble cut
out at an angle like a ransom note. Bapbap's sticker lobby reads as kin to it (our reading; Maison Bap hasn't named
its influences). Take UI with attitude: tilted cards, cut-out panels and type that shouts.
[More: Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1687950/Persona_5_Royal/)
- **_Jet Set Radio_ (Smilebit/Sega, 2000)**: the cel-shaded city as a playground for street kids, with graffiti,
bold outlines and hand-drawn number fonts. Like Persona, our reading of Bapbap rather than a stated influence. Take
street culture as the hero's world, and a city that is fun to look down on.
[More: Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/205950/Jet_Set_Radio/)
## The core
1. **Flat colour, even in 3D.** No cloudy gradients or grey murk: a light colour, a shadow colour and maybe a
highlight, with shadows tinted (violet, teal, lilac) rather than darkened.
2. **Fire is geometry.** Powers and effects are triangles, squares, cubes and shards in colours real fire never is
(pink, mint, magenta). They appear, crack and vanish; they don't smoke.
3. **Poster silhouettes.** Angular streetwear-anime characters who read from a high camera by shape and one or two
signature colours alone.
4. **Dark stage, loud play.** The world and the UI sit low and dark so the characters and their powers do the
shouting.
5. **Everything at maximum.** Hits, finishers and pick-ups land like title cards: freeze frames, giant type,
whole-screen colour swings.
## Dials
| Dial | One end | Other end |
|---|---|---|
| Camera | High top-down arena (BAPBAP) | Low cinematic, side-on and posed (Promare) |
| Line | Lineless, shapes only | Coloured line art / black ink outline (Panty & Stocking, Jet Set Radio) |
| World | Grimy night city of alleys and rooftops | Candy-pastel future city by day (Promepolis) |
| Heat | Burnish pink and magenta flame | Freeze Force cyan ice cubes |
| Register | Street and contemporary (tracksuits, vending machines) | Edo folklore and gods (Sōtatsu, fire brigades) |
| FX density | One clean shape per hit | Screen-filling shard storms |
## Directions to try
- **Rooftop Burnish**: BAPBAP's arena camera at night with Promare's pink triangle fire as the only real light;
the city stays dark indigo until someone uses a power.
- **Freeze vs Flare**: two teams, cubic cyan ice against triangular pink flame, so the geometry tells you whose
side an effect is on before its colour does.
- **Matoi brigade**: a rescue crew in crested hanten coats, each player's crest on a standard; putting fires out is
the party game.
- **Wind and thunder bosses**: Sōtatsu's gods as flat bosses on an empty gold arena, drawn in a few strokes.
- **Sticker HQ**: the meta-game as tilted, sticker-cut cards over a black hideout, in the manner of Persona 5 and
BAPBAP's lobby.
- **Promepolis by day**: the same fights in Promare's pastel city, lilac and mint, with the pink fire turned up
against it.
## Traps
- Realistic fire, smoke and soft particle glow; it stops being Burnish and becomes generic fantasy VFX.
- Grey or black shading and physically-based materials that turn the flat colour muddy ("cloudy colour").
- Detail that doesn't read from the gameplay camera: characters must work as silhouettes first.
- Neon everywhere; if the world is as loud as the powers, nothing stands out.
- Tracing Promare or BAPBAP's characters; take the rules, not the designs.
## Starting points
`tokens.json` holds a night palette of violet-indigo with Burnish pink, flame mint and a pale flare yellow, and
teal shadows taken from Promare, with variants for Promepolis by day, a Freeze Force ice palette, a black sticker
HQ for menus and a gold-ground wind-and-thunder palette. Type is a heavy Japanese-style display face for title cards
and a sturdy rounded sans for UI. These are suggestions.
## Seen in
Nothing yet.