Ideas for a fighting game concept I'm working on

News & General Discussion
1

While I may be getting a group to help work on the gameplay mechanics and visual styles (which I’m still working on). My main focus is working on the designs/ideas themselves and I’d like some advice on what others find more interesting.

It’s a fighting game, which I plan to make into a 2D style, with 3D visuals. The design/ideas around it would have a horror/future-sci-fi theme to it and even a story to go along with it. I just would like some feedback on some of my ideas before I finalize them.

So since these characters have different themes, which all blend in, without seeming too out of place, I have a lot of horror themed and sci-fi themed, but I have ideas for more fantasy themed. What are some ways I can make them fit in better?

For instance I have an idea for a huge frost giant, which feels more medieval, but I’m not so sure how it would fit in with a theme of horror and cyberpunk characters? What are some ways I can make this work?

Also does a fire dancing acrobat clown woman fit better as a techno/vibrant futuristic creepy horror theme? Or more as a dark/fantasy, or straight up horror theme?

Same for a scarecrow, does it suit better being from an old peasant’s farm that’s been possessed? Or being from some outer-world, like a scarecrow species from it’s own realm?

And tell me if these ideas run into bad stereotypes or not;

An Amazonian female warrior-turned into a vampire?
A Chinese terracotta sand statue?
A pro fighter that can transform into werewolf, or an aristocrat that can transform into one?
A female Mongolian archer, a high-tech soldier archer or a feudal samurai archer?

Thank you for anyone who can give me advice. I hope this was the right place to ask these questions. If not I apologize, I’m new here.

2

I won’t comment on any of your concepts, though I expect you will find it difficult to bring a team of ‘worker’ developers together to create your ideas - unless you are contributing to the creation as well, other than the idea guy. :slight_smile: You should be willing to do the majority of the work yourself - up to all of it. Not sure if you realize this - but it’s good to be ready.

But anyway - what I wanted to say originally was - you should look at all the Tekken reference material you can. Especially the older stuff.
That game - great fighting game by the way - had characters that were completely unrelated, and through the story elements the development team linked each character together. It was quite masterfully done. You will be able to capture some great solutions to the character theme dilemmas you face by looking into Tekken.

GL on your project.

3

I actually am the idea guy and pretty much working this on my own :slight_smile:

I was hoping in the future I can get a team that is skilled in developing the engine for it. But I’m the one creating all the character ideas, story board, gane mechanics, etc

Thank you, I will look into more of this and their characters.

Do you find any of the ideas I have so far to be offensive or inappropriate for a fighting game cast?

Thank you again.

4

You should just be aware that “idea guy” is pretty much a pejorative term in the game industry. It refers to someone whose self-proclaimed role is coming up with all the ideas on what should be in the game, but lacks any hard skills. I’m not saying that describes you in this case, but you should be aware of the term, and try to avoid the stereotype. Generally speaking, the “idea guy” thinks he’s the most critical member of the team, when the reality is often much more bleak.

As for you thread in general, it really feels like you’re focusing on the wrong things here. You’re trying to get into the specifics of the character design and story, when the most important thing in most games is the gameplay. What kind of unique game mechanics are you planning for your game, to set it apart? Why not let the characters emerge from the gameplay? It’s fine if you have some theme ideas in mind, but you seem to be coming at this from the perspective that the theme/story is the most important thing, and you’ll fit the gameplay into it. The reality is typically to prioritize the gameplay, and fit the story/character onto it.

Anyway, I’d highly recommend you learn to “get your hands dirty” and start working on an actual prototype. “Designing” game mechanics isn’t just a matter or writing down ideas. It’s a matter of prototyping them and seeing that they’re actually fun and interesting. One of the most surprising things about game design is how an idea sounds great on paper, but for various reasons, just isn’t fun when you actually get it working. Prototype early, prototype often. Don’t try to “finalize” any of your ideas at this stage.

3 Likes
5

Thank you for the clarification. I wasn’t aware of this.

I agree. I’m working on the playstyle mechanics and the design/ideas will reflect the way the characters will play. I just wanted to make sure from an artistic standpoint that any of these ideas could be taken offensively, with the situations going on in the world today, the chances are that even if the game mechanics play nicely, the character designs can put people off and turn them away. Even if the specific character has amazing gameplay, it won’t matter as there can be a huge lawsuit for improper nuances, which I would not take chances with.

Im working on that. The reason I asked about specific character designs, is to avoid poorly chosen character design archetypes, more than the gameplay archetypes. For example, one being a Chinese terracotta statue that can manipulate sand and would be a trap/zoner. And a female tribal Amazonian vampire which is strictly a rushdown, relying on mostly speed and aggression. I have a lot of ideas for their gameplay mechanics and how to balance them out play wise, but if the character idea/design concept sounds offensive, I will have to change it up, no matter how fun they are to play. Do they appear offensive from a designer’s point of view?

Thanks for the help.

6

Again, that just seems to be really unnecessary stuff to be concerned with right now. To me, it feels like the kind of detail that doesn’t get you any closer to having an actual game.

For example, with your terracotta statue that has sand powers… Let’s say you implement those abilities in a character, and the gameplay is good. But then people say they’re concerned that the character is offensive. You can easily just change the character to some generic sand monster. You seem to be getting really hung up on having all this lore/story, as though that were the foundation of your game. Maybe it is, but from fighting games I’ve seen, lore/story adds some flavor, and it’s the gameplay that matters.

The way you’ve said this makes it seem like you feel the mechanics/gameplay are already properly designed and balanced, and now it’s just a matter of building them out in a game engine. That’s incredible optimistic. You seem more worried that some character design issue will force you to rework some game mechanics. In reality, mechanics will most likely force you to rework some character design. I think you’ll find that getting really good gameplay is harder than you might think, and you don’t want to be overly constrained by some story goals when trying to perfect the gameplay.

Anyway, I could obviously be wrong about all of this. But it seems an all-too-common occurrence where someone spends most of their time “designing” a game, primarily in a word processor, just thinking of ideas, rather than prototyping and testing and seeing if things are fun. It kind of sounds like you’re more interested in writing a story than making a game, or your deeply overestimating a player’s appetite for “story” in a fighting game.

7

It’s a fighting game. Go nuts.

But I will make two suggestions:

  1. Make a middle of the road character for your base. Then balance all your character off of them. You’ll likely need to make a win/loss matrix to keep track of any fighters are significantly slanted, but starting with measuring them off of a base character is the way to go.

  2. Parries. Oh my god, do I miss the days of SFIII parries. Last Blade also did this fantastically.

8

dgoyette is 100% correct. The gameplay and mechanics have to be in place, they have to be the priority. The characters can be different colored cubes at this point, representing the different characters.
Gameplay is the core of the game - nothing else matters until this is solid. Its fine to ‘work’ on the story elements and character designs in parallel, but gameplay trumps all other priorities.

However since you requested advice on the characters regarding offensiveness, I would say - dont worry about that either. Mortal Kombat was offensive when it first came out due to its blood and gore. Street Fighter had it’s naysayers because of the females physique.
Some of the best games intentionally attempt to be confrontational and offensive. I wont say Hatred is a good game - but it sold a bucket load of copies because it pushed the boundaries of offensive content.
An old rockstar game called Man Hunt was offensive because the core gameplay was trying to murder enemies using particularly lewd and unique methods. There are several other examples of this. BulletStorm, Borderlands, even GTA if you are a more conservative type player. The list is long. As another poster said - go crazy - and do what you want with your designs, you will always turn one or two players away due to something. No need to worry about that.

9

@NightWind887

If you are looking for cool ideas, check out a game called Dark Stalkers/Vampire Saviour/Vampire Hunter. That game series is full of crazy characters.

It has two Vampire type girls Morrigan and Lilith, who strangely look and act more human than vampire.

A sasquatch who has ice powers and likes eating watermelons and bananas.

A human looking bee girl called Q Bee, who looks for food to feed a colony she belongs to.

A cat girl named Felicia, who lives in a nuns monestary with lots of other cat girls, who is also a famous pop star singer.

A 5000 year old aztec robot with a little aztec boy, who can shoot ice and fire beams and turns into an ancient race car.

Twin chinese girls, who combine into a supernatural zombie mandarin kung fu girl, called Hsien Ko.

And it even has a little girl named Bulleta aka B.B. Hood, who looks like Little Red Riding Hood and is a vampire werewolf hunter, who travels with a band of tall giant european 12th century looking white dudes, who possess superhuman strength, and hunt vampires and other mystical creatures all over the world.

10

Your ideas seems pretty standard, nothing really special or outstanding in your descriptions so far… success will depend on your implementation and how interesting their mechanics are…

I play guilty gear and the skills of one of my mains (Faust) has been pretty interesting throughout the series, ranging from stabbing them in the butt, to giving them an afro, to giving them cosmetic surgery, ramming enemies ankles with a wheel chair etc and i’ve never heard any one complain about it… Its one of the most beautiful and anime like games (in my opinion anyway) which transitioned from pure 2D to 3D in 2D style on the unreal engine. check it out (Guilty Gear Xrd is the current latest in the series, excluding the soon to be released Guilty Gear Strive, hopefully out in June, yay!).

In terms of mechanics, one of the more interesting one’s i like is arcana hearts where players not only have to choose their character but also the characters arcana which can greatly affect gameplay.

Anyway, all replies here are correct and in fighting games, gameplay should be key. Look at games like MVC

11

@NightWind887
Check out Killer Instinct. Your game idea sounds very close to it.

12

This. A few years back I joined a small studio that wanted to focus on fighting games and one of the things we learned very quickly is that the people who have the funds to finance our project don’t care about your world and it’s lore in the slightest. They want to see gameplay and that you’re capable of shipping a game and little else.

This too. You will be asked what makes your game stand out from the competition. Investors want a return on their money and you won’t have much of a return if everyone is already happy with the current major fighting games.

1 Like