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Select character screen; characters you hover over are colorized, while the others are not
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Once both players have selected a character, the text changes and you are ready to fight!
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A quick overview of the controls shows up before the game.
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Here we see an attack (the fire) being blocked by the water!
Inspiration
Rhythm games and fighting games... both amazing game categories. But what if there was a game that combined both? From that idea, Frontier Fugue Fighters came forth!
How we built it
The wild-west aesthetics of this game are all composed of hand-drawn illustrations, carefully composed to match both existing fighting game visuals, while including the general theme within this year's bitcamp. These assets were then taken and given a nostalgic effect using a pixelization shader in Godot.
For the rhythm game aspect, we took inspiration from games like Rhythm Heaven by requiring the inputs to line up with the music beat for maximum effect. We did this by counting the frames between beats and tweaking several parameters in order to make the game feel smooth. The end result is a flexible system which can be adjusted on the fly to improve user experience.
For the fighting game aspect, we simplified traditional fighting games while still keeping the core mechanic of attacks beating grabs, grabs beating blocks, and blocks beating attacks. However, the rhythm mechanic adds a unique twist: depending on the timing of your input, your attacks, blocks, and grabs will be more or less effective! Will you stay on tempo to be the most efficient, or will you try catching your opponent off-guard by going off-beat?
A lot of thought and care has been put into our UI and UX design as well. The opening screen is flashy and responsive with several visual and audio cues, allowing players to become immersed in the game with a smooth character selection UI. This continues into the fighting screen, where after the simple tutorial, you jump right into the action. The characters bob to the beat, and the marshmallow in the top center provides a visual indicator for the tempo. The inputs are responsive and the animations are clear and fast, contributing to that fighting game feel!
Lastly, with a rhythm game comes its audio and sound design! We had to find the right audio to match the aesthetic and 8-bit like design. A lot of the fighter-like visuals and audio components of this game were inspired by other popular fighter games you may know!
What we learned
None of us had worked with Godot before, although we were all interested in game design. After many hours of trial and error, and lots of video tutorials, we all learned the basics of the engine and were able to implement complex concepts. Some of us had not used GitHub before either! We had traditionally collaborated on code using only one computer, but tighter deadlines demand more efficiency. Through files lost through pushing to main and frustrated discussions on how to fix an error never before seen, we were able to set up a repository, have it automatically sync to Godot, and keep our code organized and up to date!
What's next for Frontier Fugue Fighters
- More beats to beat em' up to!
- Different kits for the different marshies!
- Combos! Special attacks! There's so much more we can pull from fighting games!
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