Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is an upcoming one smash– that’s how it sounds despite its licensed character an absolutely legitimate one Fighting game. The lead developers not only have experience developing their own popular platform fighter, but also consider implementing rollback netcode for the best online experience. Kotaku had the opportunity to speak to the folks at Ludosity, the studio behind it All-star brawl about their hopes for a casual and competitive future.
Ludosity may not be a household name but thanks to the reveal of. it was brought into the spotlight Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl earlier this week. The studio, based in Sweden, was founded over ten years ago and employs less than a dozen people. Ludosity has released several games over the decade, most notably in 2018 Slap City, a platform fighter in the style of Super Smash Bros. that was even featured on Major smash Community tournaments.
“Shortly after the success of Slap City, we were approached by Nickelodeon, “said Joel Nyström, CEO of Ludosity Kotaku by email. “At first I didn’t think it was real. You get a lot of weird emails and offers every week, so I dismissed it as spam first! “
The little studio eventually realized it wasn’t being cheated and contacted Nickelodeon, who put forward their plans for a platform fighter. Ludosity developed a demo and in early 2020 the developers were in production Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl together with the co-developer Fair Play Labs from Costa Rica and the publisher GameMill Entertainment.
That last name may not have instilled confidence among those familiar with his earlier, mediocre work on licensed Nickelodeon games, but the niche community of competitive fighting game players immediately recognized the tremendous importance of Ludosity’s commitment. Here was a group of people who had already shown intimate knowledge and familiarity with developing a competent platform fighter, and they were tasked with making a game with characters from classic cartoons like. to develop SpongeBob SquarePants, Hey arnold!, and Rugrats. It was almost too good to be true.
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People got onto Ludosity’s official Discord channel after the Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl reveal to inundate developers with questions about the upcoming game. And they were happy to follow suit, giving away little details about the project’s game mechanics and the use of rollback netcode.
Elias “sinxtanx” Forslind, the chief designer who joined Nyström in answering our questions, was the loudest; he explained that the team took inspiration from both of them smash and their work so far Slap City to add aspects to the publication that will appeal to those who are familiar with playing these games at all levels.
“If Slap City played a bit like the old ones smash Games, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl definitely plays like his own thing, ”explained Forslind.
But Nickelodeon isn’t really interested in making a competitive fighting game, is it? Not that Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl naturally needs such an official mandate from its rights holders in order to produce a committed community of high-ranking players. I mean, Just look up Shrek SuperSlam. But the idea of a giant cartoon channel trying to break into the fighting game community was so out of the reach for me that when Ludosity clarified me during our conversation, I was devastated.
“Nickelodeon is absolutely on board when it comes to making the game competitive,” said Nyström. “That was discussed from the start. That’s why they came to us. “
“My approach to the casual / competitive question is the same as with Slap CityForslind added and answered a follow-up question about the balancing act between the two. “If a game is fun, everyone can have fun with it. This is very good for me as I don’t have the crazy skills like competitive players, but I can still enjoy casual free-for-all matches in big ones Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. “
Nickelodeon has also given the studio a surprising amount of freedom in development Nickelodeon All-Star Brawlso much so that the developers say very few of their suggestions have been abandoned.
The moveset and fighting style of each character, from SpongeBob SquarePants‘Patrick Star too Ren & Stimpy‘s Powdered Toast Man, came entirely from the Ludosity team. If it has anything to do with gameplay at all, it’s probably an idea that came from them, Nyström said. And while they’re obviously not ready to talk about final squad size or DLC plans (“There’s talk” about post-release support, I was told), Ludosity was even able to provide input on character selection. It’s both surprising and encouraging that Nickelodeon is open to this type of collaboration, a dynamic that bodes well for the game’s success outside of its built-in licensed potential.
Though it’s months before discharge Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl has a lot on his cartoon-like shoulders. Not only is it an advertising medium for a ton of classic, popular nicktoons, but it’s also the added stress of targeting a group of people for whom nothing appears to be good enough in the competitive fighting game scene.
While still overwhelmed by the overwhelmingly positive response earlier this week, the folks at Ludosity seem to be calmly getting the attention. The developers are still interacting with the sprouting Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl Community on Discord – they had to start a new channel to avoid flooding the original room of the studio with conversation about the new game – and have a very clear picture of what they want to achieve with this ambitious project.
“Nigel Thornberry Edge Guarding is a target for yourself,” Forslind joked, referring to the character’s status as a Internet evenbefore adding, “I hope this game can inspire others to continue experimenting with the platform warrior genre. It’s over 20 years old now, but it still feels like a young genre with a lot of potential. ”
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