Just like last year, we've put a lot of time and effort into improving the game during the Early Access period. The combined patch notes alone from 2024 are over 20 pages long. We probably can't touch on everything, but we'll recap some highlights, then share some of our plans for 2025.
2024 Recap
In 2024 we took the game's visuals to the next level. Paul, Billy, Nick, Lewis and now Noel are in full color with finished quality sprites. There are now 10 swappable (and moddable!) palettes for each character, and that number is likely to go up in the future.
Online got a very important feature: players can now queue up for a match while playing other modes! This is becoming standard for most modern fighting games, and we think it will make it a little easier to organically find matches.
in terms of single player content, a power-up system was added to Survival mode to make the mode more fun and dynamic, and new leaderboards were added (viewable in the Community Hub for now) so that you can compare high scores with other players. We've also added unlockable colors for meeting certain milestones in Arcade and Survival, though tournament organizers and impatient players can skip this process in the options menu.
Our last update brought the first new character into the game since alpha: Nils! Nils is a charge zoner like Street Fighter's Guile, and I think we did a good job translating charge mechanics realistically into a turn based format. He's still in early development using draft sprites like most characters had last year. Nils is currently only playable by entering a code you can get on our Discord, but you can also fight him at the end of Nick's arcade mode..
The menus and HUD improved quite a bit during this time. We revamped the Character Select, the Rebinding menu, the Tutorial and some other menus, and added a VS splash screen before the beginning of fights. The tutorial and hints system has a new mascot charcter: Sensei Bob, who previously appeared on a poster in Paul's stage. There's a new Strategic View you can turn on in-game to see a combat log that includes frame data. More menus have been rigged up for localization, putting us closer to support for a workable set of full translations. There are also some slick new status icons for frame advantage/punish states, which replace the old programmer art that used to appear in their place.
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Menus now have a glyph system to more clearly show in-game actions and hotkeys at a glance, which really helps the look of various parts of the tutorial, rebinding menus and the in game input display.
Replays got better: you can now optionally step through them turn by turn instead of full speed, if you want to analyze your matches. They also remember the colors and stages players picked out. You can now record replays in single player by playing "One on One" mode as well.
We also added a new stage for Noel, the Greenhouse, although it's still in the draft stages. Owners of the free Green Screen Jeremy DLC got a new stage too: Chroma, the green screen stage, which we think has some creative potential.
In terms of balance changes, we made some dominant neutral tools like B attacks and fireballs a little easier to deal with, and midscreen throw loops have been toned down through the addition of push. Nick got a little better with the change to his A combo, Billy got better with a new mobility tool. jC is now a more useful air button for all chracters. A lot of other small tweaks happened as well to most of the cast. Overall the balance of the game is in a pretty good place right now.
We made lots of little adjustments to animations and timings to improve game feel and minimize "weird looking stuff" that breaks immersion. Characters do bespoke back throw animations now, too. We did some more optimization on textures--the hard disk footprint is smaller than last year, despite adding a LOT of new sprites. We have also fixed several dozen bugs, some of them which have been hanging around for a long time.
We also added our first DLC, Supporter Colors, which is just a cosmetic perk you can buy to support development of the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3067270/Mega_Knockdown__Supporter_Colors/
In league play, Steaph continued her reign of dominance, winning 8 of the 11 leagues we ran this year. ItsJustChrisNow, Missingno and hypergrav also won one league each. Think you can step up to the challenge and join the Hall of Fame? Join our Discord!
2025 Goals
We hope to be out of early access by the end of 2025. In no particular order, here are some of the goals we're going to work on:
Finished quality sprites for Marv and Jayne, who still has draft art:
Fully add Nils to the game, at least for multiplayer modes:
Add proper idle animations, win poses, and victory screens:
Add/finish more stage backgrounds:
Improve menus with additional touches like key art portraits in the character select:
Finish and implement our new ending animatics:
Expand localization (thanks to Stealph for her translation help so far):
As a disclaimer, we have a very small team with one programmer, one artist and no publisher money, so we may or may not make as much progress as we'd like toward these goals. If you want to support our continued work on the game, one great way to do that is to join our Patreon.
If you want to see last year's Year In Review, check it out here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1492750/announcements/detail/3888359911119183912?l=german
Thanks for your continued support!