Category: News

Indie success story and gonzo projectile beatdown sensation Lethal League recently got a sequel in Lethal League Blaze. The games combine a fighting game setup with play that involves manipulating a third entity, a ball that floats around the playfield and bounces off of walls like the ball in Breakout. When smacked by a player, it gains gratifyingly greater speeds and becomes able to do huge damage to opponents.

One of the game’s creators, Dion Koster of Team Reptile, agreed to answer out questions about this engaging and kinetic take on fighting games.

This interview has been slightly edited for publication.

[…] I’m Dion Koster, I like dancing and making things. Me and Tim Remmers are the two bosses of Team Reptile. We’re a concentrated team of about five people. We also bring in lots of artists for specific things so the credits roll a bit longer than that. My own role is that of a game director. Determining the style and vision both visual and gameplay-wise are the things on my plate. Tim is on the business and management side, but both of us still spend most of our time hands-on with the game. We released our first game, called Megabyte Punch, in 2013 and then our first heavy hitter, Lethal League, in 2014.

Lethal League did really well, both of us moved out and from that point on we were truly self sufficient. We never worked with a publisher or received any funds for development either, mostly because we can’t work without full creative control. Lethal League Blaze is our latest release and it did even better for us than the original Lethal League. All of our games made their investment back and a bunch more for the Lethal League series. So as an independent studio we’re pretty well off. Of course, we don’t want to sit back too much. We do our best to challenge ourselves in new ways for every new game and if the fans can see our sincerity with that then I’m as happy as can be.

Sure! While we were making Megabyte Punch, there was a mechanic that reflected projectiles. There were projectiles that were one-hit-kill in that game which made it really exciting to reflect them back and forth. We decided to make this into a mini game, which became the Lethal League prototype.

I made it in flash in a space of two weeks, put it on our site for free and we sent it off to a few websites (you can actually still play it over here). It appeared on the radar of Adam Heart, who people might know from Divekick, who was at Shoryuken.com at the time. He featured it at the Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament 9 as the grand final mystery game and that really boosted our popularity early on.

We finished Megabyte Punch and it was clear we should just head straight into making Lethal League into a proper full game. A year later, in 2014, we showcased the game on EVO and released it on Steam. Before the release we didn’t get a lot of attention outside of the FGC. Thereafter however, Youtubers jumped on it one by one. TotalBiscuit, Game Grumps, PewDiePie, Markiplier, it probably was the extremity and big anticipation moments that attracted them. We kept updating the game for a while and we managed to port it to PS4 and Xbox One in-house.

While that was going on we decided to do a sequel with 3D graphics, since we ported the thing to Unity anyway. It was also a good way to up our ‘game dev game,’ to scale up a bit without taking that big of a risk. I didn’t want to name it Lethal League 2 because it implies that you’d had to have played the original. So we went with Lethal League Blaze instead.

The Blaze is actually the get-up move you can do in this version after being knocked down, signifying the fact that you won’t die in one hit anymore. On high speeds you still have the one-hit-kill shots so the hype is not lost. We added more moves, like pitching and spiking. The pitch is especially important because it directly counters parrying (which is like blocking in Lethal League).

Of course the main attraction are the new characters, stages, modes and music. We have double the characters that the original had at launch. One of the modes you can unlock is called Lethal Volley, we had a lot of 2v2 fun with that one. We also made a story mode in this iteration. Even though Lethal League doesn’t really shine in singleplayer, most people will be buying this game by themselves and I want them to get some fun out of it even before finding a homie to play against.

The style comes from my experiences in street culture and hip hop with the skating, b-boying and graffiti I was doing. This is what drew me to Jet Set Radio Future at the time, which blew my mind with near-future versions of the styles I was familiar with.

Hip hop originated in America of course, but what they had done was use inspiration from the French sci-fi artist Moebius and the backdrop of Tokyo to advance it into new territory. Although I admit it hit me more than others because I saw where it was coming from; this mix between west and east influenced my personal style heavily. So yeah I’m a fan of Ryuta Ueda, the art director for Jet Set Radio. Looking for similar Japanese artists, I also came across Ippei Gyoubu and Daisuke Nakayama. Add to that my friends in the European underground dance scene and graffiti writers from all over the world and you get something that looks like Lethal League Blaze.

It wasn’t really tempting to add more elements perse. When looking at people picking up the games we make, they usually seem to have more fun with something deep instead of something complex, if you get what I mean. There are still not that many elements compared to most top of the bill fighting games, but the interactions in certain contexts or with certain additional inputs actually number quite a few.

It’s true that I like to hide extra mechanics inside others. Some definitely disagree with me here, but I believe the fun of discovering and sharing these is a big part of enjoying the game. It’s also a way to keep it interesting for both beginners and experienced players. There’s many techniques to learn, but they won’t get in the way when you’re playing free-for-all at a house party.

In action games there’s an old trick to give more impact to any hit, be it fighting games, beat ’em ups or sports. You would pause the animation at the moment of impact to give the feel that the thing you’re hitting has more resistance. I added this (hitpause as we call it) without a thought to the prototype and when I had the ball speed up it made sense to increase this pause along with it. Of course, the speed of the ball can be increased exponentially so you would be hanging there for multiple seconds after a while. This upped the hype by a ton so it felt like it was the right direction.

We really wanted to show the characters close up, but the gameplay doesn’t really allow for that. Although it was very late in development we still needed a K.O. moment anyway, so I went ahead and tried a few camera movements. It turned out it didn’t take much to look dope, because with the way we handle animation the characters are in poses that work by themselves pretty much all the time. You see, sometime during development we switched to limited animation instead of 60fps full animation for the characters for better readability and a more stylized appeal. [This tweet from Team Reptile’s Twitter account demonstrates the animation.]

This means that almost all animation frames are handpicked poses. We did, however, have trouble with the backgrounds not supporting all the new angles and positions of the camera, you could see through all the smoke and mirrors so to speak. In the end, the teaser we made to announce the game a year before inspired the solution to this problem. In that teaser we used hard opaque colors to save time and have it stand out. We did the same with the K.O. camera and turned the background into a big red canvas. I’m sure everyone thought we planned it all along!

So I have a kind of backwards way to do that. What is important to me is that the visual design sort of activates your mind by surprising you with a big contrast or extremity that still makes sense. I’ll refrain from going really deep into this, but the characters’ appearance is really important to me because they embody the style of the game not only to those who are playing the game, but also the ones who haven’t seen any gameplay yet at all.

So I design the visuals first and then think about how they would play in the game. I’ll test out ideas for their movement and actions on existing characters. Having the special ability be fun and work even for beginners is the most important thing in that phase. Sometimes I’ll go back and forth a bit with the design at this point to better fit with the gameplay. Of course, I’ll only know if it’s fun for real once I let others try it, so I make sure to let my critical friends try it out.

As I explained earlier I always feel like improving upon our previous work in a big or different way. So I set a couple of goals for myself. These just came from seeing beginners picking it up at conventions and the hardcore players doing the online tournaments every other week. First was to have the game not be as punishing for new players, but to retain its hype play. Second was to add a few new moves to make it a game that you could play for longer, with the requirement that each action has a proper place and time to use. Thirdly, we one-up the game in every other way. Graphics, characters, stages, modes, music, outfits and so on.

In this GDC 2010 Online session Richard Bartle, co-creator of MUD, explains the concept behind its original design and corrects some of the misconceptions about what it must have been like to play.

Bartle also goes into detail about how MMO development has advanced dramatically since 1978, and how there are still some areas where early MUDs were more capable than today’s behemoths.

It was an insightful talk that’s definitely still worth watching, so developers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to do so now that it’s freely available on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa

Emma Kidwell (@Emmakidwell) is a contributing editor at Gamasutra and sometimes makes content for the web.

I hardly played any video games released in 2018. With the exception of Detroit: Become Human (its first and only mention in my GOTY), I missed most all the new hits.

I’m not sure if it’s because 2018 felt like an eternity and drained my desire to do anything (yikes), but I think I was just too busy. Not busy doing anything productive, but finding myself going back to play older games like Overwatch, Dr. Mario, or Jeopardy! instead with my friends or partner.

I gravitated toward games with a social aspect this past year since it was my first full year working remotely for Gamasutra. Adjusting to a different schedule than your peers is difficult at first, but socializing through games helped a lot. 

I was also reminded a few days ago that I can write off video game purchases during tax season, so here’s to 2019! In no particular order, here are my top five games released this year.

Florence is a game I’ve thought about often since playing it toward the beginning of the year. Before diving into why it’s a unique experience, I want to applaud the developers for making a game that’s the perfect length of time. Clocking in at around two hours, Florence tells a story about love at a great pace.

The game takes the generic formula of a traditional relationship (meeting, falling in love, falling out of love) but tells it in such a compelling way through its effective use of simple mechanics, powerful score, and unique art style.

Games without lots of dialogue or text need to go the extra mile to convey an engaging and emotional story effectively, and Florence absolutely nails it.

I’m not going to give away any story spoilers because I encourage you to take the time to play it yourself, I’ll say that Florence is made for mobile and other short, narrative games would find themselves a great home on the platform. Mobile is confined to a very small subset of mechanics: Tapping, swiping, or holding an icon on your screen. Those constraints serve as powerful storytelling tools ripe for innovation.

The game in its entirety is made up of small, digestible vignettes of very personal and intimate moments in adult relationships where both the good and the bad are shared in a special way.

The nice thing about writing a personal GOTY list is that games ported to different platforms get a free pass, which means I can stand on my soapbox to talk about how important A Mortician’s Tale is.

To start off, this game works incredibly well for mobile. Simple point-and-click mechanics from its PC counterpart transitioned over smoothly to the small screen. I prefer mobile because it felt more personal this time around as I gently guided bones over to the cremulator.

I’m not going to talk about how the American funeral industry preys on society’s collective fear of death and dying, but A Mortician’s Tale will, and not in a ham-fisted, preachy way.

The game teaches you about a field often shrouded in misinformation and mystery in a very respectful and engaging way that is so unique to this medium. Do yourself a favor and play it.

House Flipper is my go-to “listen to a podcast and mentally check out for a few hours” kind of game. That’s in no way an insult– like many other games on this list, it’s the ideal amount of length (I usually play in 2 hour chunks) and literally watching paint dry is part of the fun.

I had zero expectations when this game popped up in my library, but it’s the most delightful title I’ve played in a while, especially when I’m looking to relax. Yes, cleaning up piles of virtual garbage and scrubbing dirty floors is my ideal way to unwind.

House Flipper is engaging enough to complete tasks without feeling like a chore, so you can upgrade your tools, earn more money, and complete strange requests for the homeowners you’re doing manual, contracted labor for. It’s a simulation game much like driving a truck through the mountains or tending to a field of crops.

Except this simulation game is active in a way I really like, where my contributions have some payoff and I see the result of my efforts. It’s a great game to play and come back to multiple times and go right back to stomping a bunch of roaches out.

I don’t like feeling dumb when I play a game, and I felt incredibly dumb during my time with Return of the Obra Dinn. Even though I felt stupid going back and forth between my handwritten notes and squinting against the description of “man with weird nose,” and the artists’ rendition of its crew members, I never felt dejected.

I’m not going to spoil any part of this game because it’s essential that everyone reading this feel as dumb (and go in as blind) as I did, and nothing is more rewarding than solving something correctly with all the facts in place and the game rewarding you for it.

The mystery of the Obra Dinn is compelling and there was absolutely no way I uncovered all its secrets, especially with how poorly I played. Despite being a terrible insurance claims woman and a horrible detective, the game was incredible from start to finish. The visuals, soundtrack, pacing– it hit all the right notes.

While it’s the longest game on my list, time flew by as I was playing. It’s the best detective game I’ve played, and it never holds your hand. I’m not used to that in my games, so it was refreshing. I only wish I could have found someone who died of scurvy.

The theme of my GOTY list seems to be games that are the perfect amount of length, and A Frog Detective Game is just about an hour long and a damn delight.

I do want to stand on my soapbox for a second and take time to appreciate small games like A Frog Detective Game for being light-hearted, genuine, and including well-written silly dialogue.

I oftentimes forget these gems exist among the sea of big releases and backlog of games in my repertoire, but I encourage you to give your money and time to indie games made by a small team. I’m certainly glad I did, and I had a genuinely great time playing A Frog Detective Game.

Play this little game, and then play a few smaller games like it. The score is appropriately noire, the Frog protagonist is refreshingly optimistic, and it was a great way to spend an hour.

In this GDC 2017 session, Guerrilla Games’ Paul van Grinsven explores the traversal system that allows Aloy to explore the vast world of Horizon Zero Dawn.

Ginsven goes over the different systems and techniques involved in the implementation of these traversal mechanics from a gameplay programmer’s perspective, and provides perspective for certain design decisions.

It was an insightful talk that’s definitely still worth watching, so developers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to do so now that it’s freely available on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa

Razer and Microsoft are collaborating to release a wireless keyboard and mouse combo designed specifically for the Xbox One.

This news comes after Microsoft finally brought mouse and keyboard support to the console last month, although the new feature seems to only be available to Xbox Insiders.

It will eventually be opened up to all players, but at an unspecified date. 

Dubbed the Razer Turret, it features a full-size mechanical keyboard with a dedicated Xbox key that pulls up the Xbox One dashboard. 

The mouse is modeled after the Razer Mamba wireless mouse, and can sit on a retractable base that slides out from the keyboard.

Predictably, the Turret is also compatible with PC so players can switch back and forth between platforms as they wish.

The Razer Turret costs $250 USD, and is currently available for preorder on the Microsoft Store. 

Halo developer 343 Industries announced earlier today that it is partnering with Limbitless Solutions, a non-profit providing prosthetic limbs for children, to offer Halo-themed “Bionic Arm” prosthetics to young kids. 

This is yet another heartwarming example of studios collaborating with important organizations to help those in need, and it’s always important to highlight the good work being done. 

The studio explained the partnership in a blog post, explaining how it was born from the desire to inspire and help others.

“There are, however, times where opportunities to inspire heroes and deliver wonder present themselves outside the scope of game code, cutscene scripts, or sandbox balancing.”

The 3D-printed Limbitless Bionic Arm prosthetics are functional and cost effective. Best of all, the non-profit organization donates their prosthetic arms completely free of charge to recipients and their families.

As for where Halo comes in, beginning in 2019, Limbitless will add two special Halo-themed options to their lineup of designs for their 3D-printed Bionic Arms, with the first being a recreation of the Master Chief’s own Mk. VI armor.

The entire post goes into more detail about the collaboration and the kind of work Limbitless is doing, so be sure to read it here.