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Hidden Variable announces Skullgirls mobile game, season 1 = prequel, RPG elements

Eolz

Member
It's been revealed today that Hidden Variable Studio alongside Skullgirls's franchise developer, Lab Zero, announced that a Skullgirls mobile game will be launching later this year.

Designed as more of a 'complementary' series of stories to the console game, with the first season acting as a prequel to the franchise, this complex fighter is apparently taking a more casual and accessible approach to the series with RPG elements. Such elements include team/deck building mechanics and a Fight Assist feature that gives the players the opportunity to take a more tactical approach to fighting, should they want to.

Copy%20of%20skullgirlsm_ax16_002.jpg

Source: Pocketgamer (a bit more at the link)

Has this ever been announced/teased before? Sounds good to me!

edit: seems like the article was pulled but another tweet has been put out with another screen. Weird.


Edit 2: trailer + beta
They posted the trailer for the mobile game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nga3jYloM-s

Yes its real, I posted the trailer above

Also I just saw the link to the beta sign up from the thread DeathSparks made

http://hiddenvariable.us7.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=646470b075ed4c7baa5f5c6ae&id=3dc3263857
 
I guess they took the response to Skullgirls 2: Death Airport or something as a positive one. I'd try it out.

edit: The link in the OP doesn't go to the article.
 

Eolz

Member
Updated the OP, seems like the article has been pulled but they tweeted another time the same link.
It was said at the end of the article that they'll keep updating it. Not sure what to take out of this...
 

Gintoki

Member
Tweet got removed too. Guess its supposed to be announced officially today but they posted the news article early
 

Eolz

Member
Tweet got removed too. Guess its supposed to be announced officially today but they posted the news article early

Welp. Should I leave the thread like that or ask for a mod to edit it?
Graphics seem good enough to not be a fake, and doubt pocketgamer would release something fake either. They probably jumped the gun yeah...
 

Mozendo

Member
Is this going to be another gatcha f2p bore? That would just the most disgusting use of this IP imo
Is the IP even successful enough to even get a sequel without crowd funding? To me Skullgirls seemed to be one of the flavors of the month indie games.
 
Is the IP even successful enough to even get a sequel without crowd funding? To me Skullgirls seemed to be one of the flavors of the month indie games.
I would hardly consider Skullgirls 'flavor of the month', but it was definitely niche in terms of its popularity.

After Indivisible was successful I'm sure a sequel could possibly make it via crowdfunding, depending on the fundraising goal.
 

shaowebb

Member
Oh man tactical deck build? If this is like Marvel Puzzle Quest team build stuff Iwill be all over it. Heck Im all over it for the prequel story anyway.
 

Ravidrath

Member
Is this Lab Zero's adaptation to Skullgirls of the WB iOS spin-offs for their fighting games?

I suppose, but we're trying to make it something our existing fans would want to play by emphasizing more minute-to-minute gameplay, deck-building, and more strategic RPG stuff.

So for example, we have way more things you can do than the WB games: launchers, aerial combos, throws, etc. And it's much faster-paced than any of those and, most importantly, actually feels like Skullgirls.
 

Moonlight

Banned
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.
 
.....well, im a fan, and even though I worry about my favorite games going the mobile route, ill give them the benefit of the doubt and try it. If it helps fund Skullgirls 2 im in, and if the new stories are cool and are part of the cannon, then that is something to look foward to.
 

VariantX

Member
Shit, I need to see if I can sideload this into my kindle. I want to play it but my phone is way too shitty for it.
 
.....well, im a fan, and even though I worry about my favorite games going the mobile route, ill give them the benefit of the doubt and try it. If it helps fund Skullgirls 2 im in, and if the new stories are cool and are part of the cannon, then that is something to look foward to.

Complementary games have appeared for these sorts of fighting games for a while. Hell, BlazBlue has like 3 visual novel game prequels and that's still a thing.
 
Complementary games have appeared for these sorts of fighting games for a while. Hell, BlazBlue has like 3 visual novel game prequels and that's still a thing.

Your right about that, I think Injustice also did this.

Signed up for the beta.....hope my phone is not shitty enough that it cant play it. might have to borrow my friends Plus1 phone. >_____>;

Subbed
 

ZoronMaro

Member
This seems like a good way for Alex to get more of his lore out there, which isn't a bad thing.

So I'll bite, especially if there's new content.
 
I saw the words "possible Skullgirls 2 if this does well". Well I hope the game finds some whales. I'll get it if it has some new content such as story for sure.
 

Ravidrath

Member
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.

So who approached whom to get this made?

Autumn was looking for devs for SG Mobile, but all they were getting were Match 3 games and "maybe we can play some animations at the top, if we have enough memory."

I reached out to Hidden Variable at GDC 2014, and it was pretty immediately obvious they were the studio. They pitched a fighting experience, and they took all of Mike's crazy animation and scripting tech and ported it into Unity, and they were focused on making the gameplay fun.

Mike, BTW, is super impressed with their technical chops. And if you know Mike, he is not easily impressed.

They've been working on it for two years and a year of that was working making the combat fun. Metagame, monetization, etc. was all secondary to making the combat fun.
 
Autumn was looking for devs for SG Mobile, but all they were getting were Match 3 games and "maybe we can play some animations at the top, if we have enough memory."

I reached out to Hidden Variable at GDC 2014, and it was pretty immediately obvious they were the studio. They pitched a fighting experience, and they took all of Mike's crazy animation and scripting tech and ported it into Unity, and they were focused on making the gameplay fun.

Mike, BTW, is super impressed with their technical chops. And if you know Mike, he is not easily impressed.

They've been working on it for two years and a year of that was working making the combat fun. Metagame, monetization, etc. was all secondary to making the combat fun.

That makes me less nervous about this game.
 
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.



Autumn was looking for devs for SG Mobile, but all they were getting were Match 3 games and "maybe we can play some animations at the top, if we have enough memory."

I reached out to Hidden Variable at GDC 2014, and it was pretty immediately obvious they were the studio. They pitched a fighting experience, and they took all of Mike's crazy animation and scripting tech and ported it into Unity, and they were focused on making the gameplay fun.

Mike, BTW, is super impressed with their technical chops. And if you know Mike, he is not easily impressed.

They've been working on it for two years and a year of that was working making the combat fun. Metagame, monetization, etc. was all secondary to making the combat fun.


This gonna be good then~~ Surprised its Unity though, not in a bad way mind you.
 
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.



Autumn was looking for devs for SG Mobile, but all they were getting were Match 3 games and "maybe we can play some animations at the top, if we have enough memory."

I reached out to Hidden Variable at GDC 2014, and it was pretty immediately obvious they were the studio. They pitched a fighting experience, and they took all of Mike's crazy animation and scripting tech and ported it into Unity, and they were focused on making the gameplay fun.

Mike, BTW, is super impressed with their technical chops. And if you know Mike, he is not easily impressed.

They've been working on it for two years and a year of that was working making the combat fun. Metagame, monetization, etc. was all secondary to making the combat fun.

Hi Ravi, I know this is probably way too early to ask this, but will you guys be open to making mobile spin offs for Indivisible as well?
 

Ravidrath

Member
The first time we saw this running, BTW, the Lab Zero staff was really surprised because... it looks exactly like Skullgirls.

They exactly duplicated the animations, shaders, etc. and is so much faster than the other mobile fighters it actually feels like Skullgirls.
 
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