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SkullgirlS - Indie Gaming Gold!
Written by Modojo on Sunday, October 15, 2006
First of all, I'd like to thank Siliconera for breaking this news. They did an excellent interview with a couple of the guys responsible for bringing about an excellent 2D fighting game called SkullgirlS.
The team behind SkullgirlS is about as independent as it gets. They are basically just a few guys developing the game after work or school, without any idea how their game will ever actually be received. They make mention of thinking about developing the game for XNA in their interview with Siliconera, and they also talk about distributing the game themselves at conventions and other events, but with no concrete release date, apart from a long estimate of 2009, these guys just work on their game, because they can. That ladies and gentleman, is love.
The game is similar to almost every other 2D fighter, but it boasts one of the most charming artstyles I've seen since Clayfighter on the SNES. Goddamn, I'd love to see some more claymation games. Anyways, the team speaks of hoping to implement over 1000 frames of animation for each character, each one drawn in Photoshop. Hotsauce!
They also talk about how in each characters special attack, they intend to transform the characters into more menacing beasts with seperate movesets, ala Bloody Roar. I don't know how they stole this idea from within the depths of my mind, but I will find a shield from these idea-nabbing thieves. I've thought about exploring that in a 2D fighter for like years. Seriosly though, excellent idea guys.
There is a demo available on the SkullgirlS site with two playable characters. One of my friends couldn't get the demo to work at all, but I enjoyed it as much as it can be enjoyed I guess. The game is very rough at this point, but somewhere in there I see the sparkle of what can potentially be a sleeper hit, on whatever platform it is eventually relased for. Obviously I'm thinking this could be handled well on either something portable like the DS, or more likely the Xbox Live Arcade-which is hopefully the home of more 2D fighters as time rolls on.
