So, just what IS this game exactly? Well, it’s a 2d smash-bros inspired fighting game starting Bowser’s children! That includes all 7 Koopalings and Bowser Jr. It will feature up to 4 players in arenas that function more like platforming levels than traditional flat fighting game arenas. This game is being designed as though it were for the Nintendo Wii.
Before we can get to the game mechanics themselves, though, I want to discuss some aspects of my mindset for this project. You can consider this an insight into my game design philosophies, if you will.
Graphics
A rather controversial part of games. Some people worship graphics, some people would play Mario Galaxy if it had Atari sprites. Personally, I feel that great graphics can enhance the atmosphere tremendously, but this has more to do with art style than nice technology and pretty bloom effects. Yoshi Story’s “pop-up book” graphics are more impressive to me than “generic Xbox FPS realistic graphics that will look outdated next console.”
Now, for the graphics for Koopaling Khaos. At first it was really tempting to have graphics like Super Mario Galaxy, but in the end I decided to go with a similar graphical style to New Super Mario Bros Wii. This can mainly be attributed to the fact that I want this game to play online, so I want to as little strain on the “wonderful” wi-fi as possible. As you might expect, the characters will all use their most recent appearances from NSMBWii.
Sound
I consider sounds more important to a game than graphics. When people mention redeeming features of Sonic 2006, they don’t talk about how fuzzy Sonic was, they mention the soundtrack. The Mario series has had an assortment of memorable tracks throughout its inception, so for this game a lot of the soundtrack will be based of pre-existing Mario songs. And of course some original tracks that you’ll never hear since I can’t compose music, lol.
Playable Roster
Now we get to some gameplay elements! Right of the bat, we’ve got 8 playable characters; all 7 of Bowser’s Koopalings plus Bowser Jr, the pseudo-8th-koopaling. Because the game is supposed to about Bowser’s kids, and not his random generic soldiers, or even Mario to an extent, this will most likely remain as the full roster.
8 characters is actually a nice, well-rounded size for a roster. It’s enough to create a diverse selection of playstyles, but without having a bunch of redundant similar characters. Besides that, but let’s think about this from a competitive standpoint. Most fighting games only have about 4-5 tourney-viable characters anyways, so with 8 characters, I’m still not guaranteed to have all of them be viable for high-level play. By the same token, the movelists themselves will be relatively small for a fighting game, but this is so that the options that ARE in play can be useful and interesting.
Speaking of balance, my method for balance ties directly into playstyles. Essentially, make each other awesome at what they do, and do not give characters any major weaknesses that might take away from that style. No more “this character is good at KOing but fail at gimping!” If someone is fail at something, the counterpart had better be near perfect. Similarly, just because a character is meant to be offensive does not mean they should have no defense whatsoever. They need at least a little defense so matches don’t become “all or nothing”. In short, a character should never be completely shut-down.
Playstyles
While we’re on the subject, I should mention the actual player’s styles themselves. Aren’t you tired of hearing “Baaawwwww Brawl is too campy!” or “Waaaa, Melee is all combos!”? In Koopaling Khaos, ALL playstyles will be overused (or at least viable, lulz). You wanna be a rushdown combo-fanatic? Go ahead. You wanna turtle? Sure! Spam projectiles? Of course! Poke at your opponent to force an opening? Be my guest. Pretty much every facet of the gameplay can be turned into a core strategy if you want. Just be sure to pick a character who’s built for it.
Competitive Play
Oh yes, this game will indeed be aiming for high-quality tourney play. There is no way a competitive game can actually harm casual play unless you are a whiny sore loser and can’t stand to see people actually improve in a game. The characters, movesets, stages, and general mechanics will be designed in a way to allow for mindgames, strategy, and counters to those strategies.
Building off of that, the game will try to be as newcomer-friendly as possible. This does NOT mean tripping, items, and random chaoticness to “give them a chance”. What it means is that it will be easy to learn the basic mechanics of the game, and ease them into the more complicated stuff. For that matter, I will try my best to not include 19837438 special meters for each character. Any “special mechanics” I come up with will try to work within the standard “meters” for the game.
Stages
Obviously, there will be a lot of different stages with various platform set-ups and blahblahblahblahblah. That goes without saying. What I want to specifically address right now is stage hazards.
Nearly all of the stages in Koopaling Khaos have some type of hazard or interactive feature. Unlike smash-bros, these hazards can be turned off (in case you like the platform layout but hate the hazard), but the hazards will be designed for viable tourney-play. Yes, this even includes instant-death hazards. Stage features add depth to the game in the way they now add more factors to the decisions you make. “Do I want to attack him, or try to lure him into this trap?” Virtua Fighter has ring-outs which automatically make you lose the round and they are kept in high-level play, I see no reason why a game that already has more unique stages than standard fighting games can’t get away with it. My goal is for both versions of each stage to be tourney-viable, thereby effectively doubling the amount of stages in competitive play without having to make as many “unique” layouts.
So there ya go. Hopefully this gave you some incite to my beliefs as a game designer. They’ve been formed from many years as an avid game PLAYER. Coming up next, the controls and game mechanics, and then maybe an actual playable character…
Koopaling Khaos 