Hi everyone,
We are incredibly excited to announce that we will be coming out of early access next week on Tuesday, February 13th! This release update is our biggest yet:
- Brought the opponent count to 9 total characters for release
- Re-reordered circuit progression with a title fight at the end of each of the 3 circuits
- Added Grudge Match mode, where all 9 characters are faster, stronger, and have new moves
- Added cinematics between each fight to help tie together your progression through the game
- Heavily overhauled gameplay for fights
- Created a revamped stadium environment that includes dynamic stadium screens
- Revamped the entire tutorial, which includes new lessons about the new fight mechanics
- Added leaderboard support for all game modes
- Added achievements that include an interactive in-game trophy room
- Revamped the UI
- Included many miscellaneous bug fixes, balance changes, and other tweaks to help polish your experience
Lastly, let’s talk a little more in depth about our overhauled gameplay mechanics. We received a tremendous amount of constructive feedback during early access that helped shape the direction of our final gameplay mechanics. These improvements include:
- Rewarding players for punching hard and throwing good combinations of punches
- If you punch hard and punch with variety (straights, hooks, uppercuts, head/body shots), you’ll earn your Golden Gloves faster. Golden Gloves increase the amount of damage you do, modify your block to become a perfect parry, and increase the score multiplier you earn with each punch you land. If you want to maximize your times and scores in our fights, you’re gonna have to really earn it now!
- Allowing players to go on the offensive and break through their opponent’s guard
- You can now get some hits on your opponent without waiting for them to attack. If you mix up your punches while your opponents are trying to block, you can increase your chances of slipping punches through their guard. Earn your Golden Gloves, and you’ll have an even greater chance of breaking their guard. Be careful though! Wildly swinging punches might make it hard to react to a fast attack from your opponent. Also, a few of our opponents still have a perfect guard, so be on the lookout so you don’t waste energy.
- Giving players special opportunities to interrupt their opponent’s attacks
- You will now see a visual indicator on either the head or body of your opponent during some special moves that signifies an opening to attack. The timing on these is strict, but if you can take advantage, you’ll be able to give yourself an edge in the fight!
- Showing players clear indicators for how close they are to knocking down their opponents
- Our new stadium includes stamina monitors attached to the corners of the ring. The right corner displays your opponent’s stamina, and the left corner displays your stamina (in addition to your current score multiplier). Now, when you see that your opponent is barely hanging on, you can try to go for a quick finish by breaking through their guard!
- Clarifying for players when an opponent’s attack has special properties
- You will now see clear visual indicators when an opponent’s attack is unblockable or undodgeable to help reduce confusion during fights.
- Improving the tradeoff for players when choosing to block or dodge an attack
- Turtling with blocks is riskier now, so try to mix in some dodging. Each time you block, you’ll take a little bit of block fatigue (visible on your stamina bar). If you take a hit when you have block fatigue, the fatigue will be converted into additional damage. You can reduce this fatigue by doing damage to your opponent. Also, parrying with Golden Gloves does not give you any block fatigue!
- Giving players a way to end their fights in style
- When you drop your opponent’s stamina bar to 0 for the final knockout, you’ll get a special, longer stun state to hit your opponent as much as possible. This is your moment to continue racking up as high of a score multiplier as you possibly can. Really giving it your all can help turn a solid performance into a great one!
- Adding other ways for players to maximize their performance in a fight
- In addition to the new systems explained above, we also changed how our opponent’s normal stun states work in order to create additional potential for improving your fighting performance. Now, instead of a specific punch limit, you have a set amount of time to do damage when your opponent is stunned before they stumble backwards. Interrupts and parries give you additional time to hit. This means you’ll have to take risks and balance your punching speed, power, and variety in order to maximize your performance. If you want to truly dominate your opponent, you’ll need to put in some solid effort!
In the coming days, you might notice changes and additions to the achievements listed for our game. This is in preparation for release. Please note that the achievements during early access were for testing purposes, so those old ones will be removed and replaced with the final list of achievements. In addition, progression data from early access will be wiped for release, since a lot of content has been changed or added since the last update.
Thanks again for all of the support and feedback during early access. We hope you are all excited to play with the new content on February 13th!