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Cosmo Clock 21 · Jul 3, 2016

I've got a pretty low opinion of control schemes for existing mobile fighting games so I'm looking forward to seeing how Hidden Variable tries to pull it off. Movement options aren't very clear from the trailer, mind sharing details?

Malyse · Jul 3, 2016

File under: I'm sorry, what?

InfiniteBento · Jul 3, 2016

im skeptical but hopeful at the same time.

Azure J · Jul 3, 2016

This is cool and totally out of the blue. Also Moonlight, please go collect that hug.

Edit: Annie confirmed?! PogChamp

Moonlight · Jul 3, 2016

Ravidrath said:
WTF, Moonlight!

You were at the panel and didn't introduce yourself!?

Please come say hi at the booth - I'll be there until 2 tomorrow and all Monday.

And you will probably be hugged, BTW.

Haha, I didn't think you could just up and do that. Missed opportunities, I guess. I was actually at the booth too (for Mariel's livedraw), just wasn't sure how to introduce myself. Will be sure to pop by tomorrow though. Hugs sound nice, I mean.

Though regarding Skullgirls mobile, do you have an idea of what the game'll probably look like on iPhone? Mariel mentioned it looked pretty good, but there was a decent amount going on screen real estate-wise.

Ravidrath · Jul 3, 2016

Cosmo Clock 21 said:
I've got a pretty low opinion of control schemes for existing mobile fighting games so I'm looking forward to seeing how Hidden Variable tries to pull it off. Movement options aren't very clear from the trailer, mind sharing details?

Swipe forward does a dash-forward attack, swipe back does a back dash. Pretty sure that's it for pure movement?

Tapping does a canned combo, swipe up does a launcher and tapping them in the air does an aerial combo. Swiping down does a knockdown attack. And holding a finger of them does a charge attack.

Holding two fingers blocks, and swiping two fingers does a throw.

Moonlight said:
Haha, I didn't think you could just up and do that. Missed opportunities, I guess. I was actually at the booth too (for Mariel's livedraw), just wasn't sure how to introduce myself. Will be sure to pop by tomorrow though. Hugs sound nice, I mean.

Though regarding Skullgirls mobile, do you have an idea of what the game'll probably look like on iPhone? Mariel mentioned it looked pretty good, but there was a decent amount going on screen real estate-wise.

I will show it to you on my iPhone when you come by. It looks really good.

It looks exactly like to console game, really - we were so surprised when they first showed it to us because it was so exact.

i-Jest · Jul 3, 2016

This might be the first mobile game I actually buy.

Moonlight · Jul 3, 2016

i-Jest said:
This might be the first mobile game I actually buy.

It's free.

Raging Spaniard · Jul 3, 2016

I was at the panel as well, the audience really seemed to like Skullgirls mobile, mostly because they know they can trust Lab Zero with this stuff.

The Indivisible update looked great, crowd was eating up all the new content which really could shake up the Metroidvania concept moving forward. Super excited.

fernoca · Jul 3, 2016

Not bad. Does remind me of Mortal Kombat X Mobile with the cards, decks, RPG/leveling, etc.

Ravidrath · Jul 3, 2016

fernoca said:
Not bad. Does remind me of Mortal Kombat X Mobile with the cards, decks, RPG/leveling, etc.

There's obviously some similarity, but Hidden Variable is trying to make a much faster and more fun game.

The WB games tend to become all meta-game very quickly, and they want people to actually enjoy the minute-to-minute gameplay, too, which is why we have so many more options.

Leafhopper · Jul 3, 2016

A prequel...on mobile.

Ugh, kinda annoying.

TheOGB · Jul 3, 2016

SolicitorPirate said:
Happy to support any Lab Zero venture

I'm still surprised, astounded, and confused as all hell, but ultimately this ^^

Eolz · Jul 3, 2016

Updated the OP with the new links for now, will try to make it look better later.

Moonlight said:
Came out of the panel. In general, it was awesome. Skullgirls mobile looked cool, too. To address a few immediate concerns: what they showed looked like Skullgirls. They headed off any concerns on predatory micro transactions (but the game will be free to play) and everything in the game will be unlockable for free, apparently. Ravid specifically compared it to League, where you can play the full uncompromised game for free and if you're kicking over money it's because you want to, basically.

It's more of a game than I was expecting, actually. All the controls are limited to a couple buttons to control supers and swipe/hold motions. There's dashing forward/back, launchers, blocking, etc. RPG mechanics/progression come into how the game seems to calculate damage and different skills characters have. They demo'd Big Band who has a skill where he regents some health for a couple seconds when he tags into a battle. Eliza inflicts a bleed status effect when anyone uses a super and heals off getting hit with bleed. Each character colour palette has different skills and stuff. Think of it sorta like custom moves in Smash 4?

The game is so far totally single player, though. We might see Versus later, I don't recall them promising anything.

There's new music, new assets, new animations, and they said they wanted to add new characters to the game to use as a basis for Skullgirls 2 (!!!) since the game basically uses the exact same sprites/assets in the exact same way. They also made no guarantees or promises but basically

Annie is confirmed

.

I think I covered everything off the top of my head. They'll let anyone at AX play it tomorrow so that'll be cool. Just bummed I didn't get my question asked. orz

EDIT: Oh yeah, there's an offensive assist mode for people who'd feel intimidated even by the touch controls. Basically it just sets the character you play as into a really aggressive AI that just attacks with normals so you can just think of when to activate supers or when to block or even when to attack yourself. Seems like a pretty smart feature. Implementation wise, at least.

Sounds really good!
Disappointed they're not thinking of pushing forward Skullgirls 2 before that, but hey, better than no new Skullgirls at all...

Inuhanyou · Jul 3, 2016

It looks interesting, but i don't play mobile games, and i doubt my phone or whatever could play them anyway.

I wish it full success, but i hope Skullgirls 2 comes out on console at some point.

FSLink · Jul 3, 2016

Leafhopper said:
A prequel...on mobile.

Ugh, kinda annoying.

I'd love to see the story for this being thrown into Skullgirls 2 if that ever gets made. Whether that's just an extra story mode or an unlock if you have the mobile version (maybe both? Unlock after x conditions or unlock early via mobile connectivity)

Anyway, I'm in. Gameplay looks solid and if it has Mike Z's approval, I'm definitely interested.

Zubz · Jul 3, 2016

I was a sucker for the Injustice game for awhile, and that's just because I wanted the Batman Beyond costume. Skullgirls is my favorite non-Smash fighting game, both for the gameplay and the story, so I'm definitely going to get hooked on this. The only time I've ever thrown money at a mobile game was to get "Always" back in Robot Unicorn 2, but I'm willing to spend a bit here to support L0!

Eolz said:
Sounds really good!
Disappointed they're not thinking of pushing forward Skullgirls 2 before that, but hey, better than no new Skullgirls at all...

I'd love a full-on sequel, too, but this all makes sense to me. This game may take up some resources, but the budget/work breakdowns they made when they did their IGG campaign shows that Skullgirls 2 would be more than enough work for L0. They're currently working on Indivisible, so the fact that they're still getting a new Skullgirls made via an outside developer is more than we could've hoped for!

Leafhopper · Jul 3, 2016

FSLink said:
I'd love to see the story for this being thrown into Skullgirls 2 if that ever gets made. Whether that's just an extra story mode or an unlock if you have the mobile version (maybe both? Unlock after x conditions or unlock early via mobile connectivity)

Anyway, I'm in. Gameplay looks solid and if it has Mike Z's approval, I'm definitely interested.

Yeah sure ill be behind that. I just don't play a lot of mobile games (mainly because battery life.)

Kthulhu · Jul 3, 2016

I'm going to try to sign up for the beta. The least I could do is give this a shot.

lightskintwin · Jul 3, 2016

I'm all for anything that will help in bringing about Skullgirls 2. Will the new Indivisible footage be uploaded?

Ravidrath · Jul 3, 2016

lightskintwin said:
I'm all for anything that will help in bringing about Skullgirls 2. Will the new Indivisible footage be uploaded?

The sizzle reel we made for AX is up now, yeah.

https://youtu.be/mTFmaDYfKB

That also has Kikuta's first pass on the game's main theme.

WarRock · Jul 3, 2016

Moonlight said:
They also made no guarantees or promises but basically

Annie is confirmed

.

The real megaton.

lightskintwin · Jul 3, 2016

Ravidrath said:
The sizzle reel we made for AX is up now, yeah.

https://youtu.be/mTFmaDYfKB

That also has Kikuta's first pass on the game's main theme.

It says the video doesn't exist.

JC Lately · Jul 3, 2016

Ah cool. I love the Skullgirls setting and characters, but am absolute rubbish at any fighting game not named Smash Brothers. If I can get more of the former without all the BS of a fighting game, hell yeah, sign a brotha up.

kami_sama · Jul 3, 2016

Looks great. The control scheme seems very innovative.
Any way for the Indivisible backers to get beta access?

Edit: For the video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTFmaDYfKBk&feature=youtu.be

lightskintwin · Jul 3, 2016

kami_sama said:
Looks great. The control scheme seems very innovative.
Any way for the Indivisible backers to get beta access?

Edit: For the video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTFmaDYfKBk&feature=youtu.be

Thank you, Game is shaping up nicely. Love the main theme.

GoaThief · Jul 3, 2016

Consider my curiosity well and truly piqued.

Really enjoyed Skullgirls, just wish I had spent more time with the PC version (multiplayer in particular) before switching to PS4 as my main gaming device.

E_Darkness said:
There's a beta which you can apply for here.

Thanks for this!

NCR Redslayer · Jul 3, 2016

Please be good and not shit like 95 % of mobile microtransactions ridden games.

-Digits- · Jul 3, 2016

I tried signing up for the beta but got an error that too many attempts were made with my email adress (first attempt). Anyone else get that? Is the site getting hammered?

Edit: it went through now.

GuardianE · Jul 3, 2016

Signed up for the beta. I'm down for anything Skullgirls/Lab Zero.

The questionnaire asked if we were an Indiegogo backer. Is that with regard to Indivisible, Squigly, or a future one for this game? I backed Squigly and Indivisible, so I just said "yes".

Samemind · Jul 3, 2016

To be honest, maybe I was a bit reactionary. I do want more Skullgirls (introducing new character assets that could be reused in a sequel sounds f'n radical) and the video shows smooth-looking gameplay. I think my biggest gripes with gacha-based games is that the gameplay design is usually inoffensive at best and more importantly, gated by stamina. So I'm crossing my fingers that this game can offer gameplay that's satisfying for it's own sake and the option to play it at my leisure, no matter how much time I've spent playing it a short while ago. (And no connection requirement would be heavenly)

Signed up to beta

Moonlight · Jul 3, 2016

Played around with it a bit. I really enjoyed myself, actually. The controls feel very intuitive. It took me like a minute to fully adjust, and it totally clicked from there. Was pretty fun messing around with the grabs, launchers, dashing, etc. Felt... yeah, like Skullgirls. Different, of course, but the pacing of the fights felt right.

Ravid showed me how it looks like on a phone screen. And yeah, if looks really nice.

I had the gacha/monetization stuff explained to me a bit, too. You earn crates (relics is the nomenclature, technically) that contain some random loot - special moves for your characters, new versions of characters (?), and such - and if you get duplicates, those convert into skill points for the character that special/palette was associated with. You spend the skill points in the progression tree those characters have. They'll have daily events (on a rotation? I wasn't sure) where you're guaranteed a crate for that character's drops. And then you can buy in-game currency to buy these crates yourself if you want. No stamina stuff, either.

But that all doesn't matter because what really matters is that Charley gave me a quick glimpse at the story menu and I see that one of the chapters reaaaaally looks like it concerns Black Dahlia. All I need from this story, really.

(also apologies to Ravid, I can be amazingly awkward)

Eolz · Jul 3, 2016

Hmmmm, sounds like they will have to balance the drops reaaaaally carefully.
Good luck with that.

Rest of the impressions sound good, once again!

Infernostew · Jul 4, 2016

Ravidrath said:
The sizzle reel we made for AX is up now, yeah.

https://youtu.be/mTFmaDYfKB

That also has Kikuta's first pass on the game's main theme.

No anime studio announcement i'm guessing?

Zubz · Jul 4, 2016

GuardianE said:
Signed up for the beta. I'm down for anything Skullgirls/Lab Zero.

The questionnaire asked if we were an Indiegogo backer. Is that with regard to Indivisible, Squigly, or a future one for this game? I backed Squigly and Indivisible, so I just said "yes".

I thought it meant Squigly, but I honestly wasn't sure. I backed both, so I thought I was safe for me either way, but I genuinely don't know which one it means.

Ravidrath · Jul 4, 2016

Infernostew said:
No anime studio announcement i'm guessing?

Sadly, no.

Really tried to get things to an announceable state by AX, but it didn't happen.

I'm told we'll have some major progress "soon," and we'll announce it as soon as we can.

Ravidrath · Jul 16, 2016

Here's a recording our our Anime Expo 2016 panel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzRWpxOmfs

We really stress how important it is to us that this be an actually good game, not some pay-to-win nightmare.

So if you'd like to hear it from our own mouths, here you go.

Purple Cheeto · Jul 16, 2016

Ravidrath said:
Definitely open to it, but we'll see what happens.

As someone who wants to make RPGs and works for a (primarily) mobile game studio, I'd love to work on an Indivisible mobile tie-in ;-)

Seraph_Nicholas · Aug 19, 2016

I got into the beta!

Hope they don't mind me using the art from the email, heh. It seemed incredibly appropriate.

Dimitri LH · Aug 20, 2016

Figured I would not get in with my crappy phone, wonder if my second phone (Pokemon go phone) could run it.

Got a email showing Parasouls and Peacocks new intros. Good stuff~

Seraph_Nicholas · Aug 20, 2016

Well, this is novel.

It's very much a mobile game in a lot of ways - Characters are represented by cards of varying rarity that level up, and you can equip them with a single special move. Each character has a skill tree, they get skill points on leveling up, etc. Each character has an individual energy meter that's depleted while playing, so even if your best team is out, you can switch in alternates. There's also a quick match mode that seems to be free.

Cards, special moves, and other loot are unlocked via 'relics', your basic box o' items that can be bought with premium currency. There's a few quirks here; For one, there's a LOT of relics. Daily, 4 hour, special move, bronze, silver, and one each for every character that gives unlocks for them. For another, there's one that can only be purchased with a great deal of a particular currency that I've only acquired (so far) through duplicate card draws.

The actual matches are surprisingly coherent. It's played in landscape with two thumbs, and some combination of taps and swipes allows you basic movement and combos. Swiping left or right dashes and attacks, tapping does an auto combo, swiping up with your right thumb is a launcher and with both is a throw, and holding both sides blocks. Special moves are an onscreen button, and have a cooldown, while Blockbusters are shown at the bottom of the screen in three separate buttons that fill basically like you'd expect a fighting game super meter to act.

The main enjoyment I'm getting right now is the art and writing. A lot of the extended Skullgirls cast get some screentime. Your faceless PC is quickly conscripted into the Black Egrets, and reports to Adam and Molly. A bunch of other also-rans from the DLC competition have shown up, and I'm only on the third chapter. All characters have various mood portraits, maps are gorgeous, and basically, New Meridian is now a place that you can get a sense of geography in.

Performance is fairly poor right now. Playable without issue, and no severe bugs, but I had to disable lighting, and Big Band munches fps for some weird reason. That all comes along with with early days in beta, of course.

Good stuff, all around. I'm having a lot of fun, and I have no doubt this game will have a permanent place on my phone. There's a rhythm to attacking and blocking in the moment-to-moment gameplay that's very engaging, and feels like a good distillation of fighting game flow. There's more to it than Divekick, but it's on the same axis, if that gives some idea.

...Speaking of Divekick, that's a great candidate for a mobile port.

joe2187 · Aug 27, 2016

Another wave of Beta invites went out today.

Just got mine! anybody who signed up should check their inboxes now!

also, still on the download screen, but the All jazz main theme is amazing...will the remixed/new music be added to the Backer OSTs?

GoaThief · Aug 27, 2016

joe2187 said:
Another wave of Beta invites went out today.

Just got mine! anybody who signed up should check their inboxes now!

also, still on the download screen, but the All jazz main theme is amazing...will the remixed/new music be added to the Backer OSTs?

Nope, nothing. :-

Glad to hear everyone's mostly positive feedback though!

Kthulhu · Aug 27, 2016

Just got the beta last night. Enjoying it so far, I'm surprised at how smooth and satisfying it feels.

NEO0MJ · Aug 27, 2016

Lab Zero still haven't found me worthy ;^;

-Digits- · Aug 27, 2016

I got into the beta today. It's quite fun but it seems to run my phone quite hot. Is that a common issue? I haven't checked out the beta forums yet, I'll do that after the weekend when I have more time.

Eolz · Aug 27, 2016

I'm in too! Woohoo!

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