Kickstarter Treachery in Beatdown city. Bringing back SoR/Final Fight spirit

[Ryudo]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...cal-beat-em-up
M
my good friend has been working on a PSVita/PC/Mac/PSM game called Treachery in Beatdown City. It's been a long road for Manny and Shaun and development gone much longer than expected. They are losing sanity and need your help to become sane once more. The started off as a Streets of Rage and a Final Fight reboot but turned into more a tribute to those games with a twist. It has a Mario 3 type over world and a combat system similar to Fallout 3. Manny and Shaun worked for R* games for many years. Rubbed shoulders and friends with many top names. Manny is deathly afraid of Mario's creator...let him tell you that story.

It's 20XX and world stability is in danger. The US President Barak Orama travels to East Fulton to attend a summit at the UN, but is kidnapped during his speech.

A mysterious group, the Ninja Dragon Terrorist organization takes responsibility for the kidnapping, demanding $1 trillion for the safe return of the president.

The corrupt billionaire mayor of East Fulton, Mike Moneybags, won't let the police investigate unless the federal government pays the city billions of dollars in relief.

The dutiful chief of police, Antonio Santiago, calls his daughter and two friends to investigate in his stead. He needs to find out what is going on, although in the back of his mind, something about all of this just isn't right...

Welcome to Treachery in Beatdown City, a beat ‘em up game like no other.


What makes Treachery in Beatdown City Unique?

Designed by fans/critics of the genre: We LOVE brawlers, but they have problems, right? We’re here to reinvent the way you play a side scrolling beat ‘em up because we want to grow the genre!

Tactical Brawling: Use real time movement to walk around the arena, and even use some real time attacks to break open a few garbage cans or mailboxes for health or other items. When it comes to attacking, your COMBO menu becomes your best tool.

Using a combination of Fight Points (FP) and combo meter, players of all skill types can choose up to 3 moves out of dozens of moves that will be learned over the course of the adventure to create any number of unique combinations of attacks.

Combine strikes with grapples, or do multiple grapple moves in a row. It's your choice!

Over 26 unique enemies and growing! : Enemies look different, walk differently and all have their own unique ways of attacking. The only repetition in attacks is that there are only so many ways that a person can throw a punch. Enemies range from fast and agile to slow, lumbering and extremely powerful. Some will charge you, others will play keep away.
Plus many more to come!


Enemies are broken down into class types.

Grunts have regular attacks, but also usually have 1 or 2 hidden super strong attacks.

Sneaky enemies focus on lowering offensive options for players.

Grapplers focus on throwing the player.

Support characters taunt and cheer in the fight to cast buffs on your foes and give them an advantage.

Giants have super strong offense, but are often on the slower side.

These class types make fighting mixed groups of enemies a real challenge. And enemies can take on sub classes, so there can be a Giant Support with enormous amounts of HP and high evade or a grappler grunt who has strong strikes as well as strong grapples!

The possibilities are endless!

Learn a large array of new moves as the game goes on! – Moves aren’t in just for the sake of adding moves, as every attack, defensive maneuver and combo is tested and included only if it adds to the fighting mechanics in a positive way.

Experimentation & creativity are key elements to the experience whereas execution is not.





Shawn Alexander Allen (@anuchallenger) is the game designer, director, animator, artist, and founder of Nuchallenger. Before creating Treachery in Beatdown City Shawn worked for 4.5 years at Rockstar games where he worked on a variety of tasks, such as creating trailers, short films, cutscene cameras, writing/performing character dialog & game analysis on numerous titles spanning GTA IV, Ballad of Gay Tony/Lost and Damned, Red Dead Redemption, LA Noire, Max Payne 3 & the preliminary stages of the GTA V marketing campaign.

Shawn began doing in depth analysis of fighting in games years ago both for work and on his own time, and it became more and more evident that the only thing to satiate that would be to build his own unique brawler.


http://kotaku.com/from-poverty-to-pl...owa-1458980654

http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/wr...n-t/1100-4777/

Manny A. Marcano (@cavaliergames) is the coder and co-designer on Treachery in Beatdown City, having initially built a prototype with Shawn in Gamemaker to make sure they both weren't out of their minds creating a turn based beat 'em up.

Manny grew up playing all manner of RPGs, beating complex games at the age of 4. He takes pride in building the stats that drive Treachery in Beatdown Cities unique battles.

Before working on Treachery in Beatdown City Manny worked at Take Two and Rockstar Games on The Darkness, Bioshock & Max Payne 3 in a number of roles

Diana Santiago (@deeluxdi) designed Lisa, the female protagonist, makes all of the beautiful non-digital art assets for the game and serves as the producer. She also created those lenticular business cards that Shawn carries around, in case you've ever seen them.

She has her Masters in Fine Art and she is also a performance artist and co-creator of the web series Supertight. She had been married to Shawn for just 6 months before development of Treachery in Beatdown City became a full time thing, when the prototype was in full swing.
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Shaun

Manny

Diana

[Jorpho]

I saw the words "Kickstarter Treachery" and assumed someone was up to shenanigans.

[buzz_n64]

Turn based side scrolling beat 'em up? I don't mind some RPG elements, as I love River City Ransom, but making it turn based kills an "action" game genre for me. Imagine if they made a turn based Call of Duty game, it would turn away a majority of the audience that is into that genre. I'm sure there will be RPG fans that will enjoy this, but it's not for me.

[Bojay1997]

Turn based side scrolling beat 'em up? I don't mind some RPG elements, as I love River City Ransom, but making it turn based kills an "action" game genre for me. Imagine if they made a turn based Call of Duty game, it would turn a majority of the audience that is into that genre. I'm sure there will be RPG fans that will enjoy this, but it's not for me.

Strongly agree. I was interested in the art style, but upon further inspection, the gameplay looks like it would be terrible. There is a very good reason why there aren't a lot of turn based side scrollers and I just don't think they've given enough thought to the entertainment value here. I wish them luck, but I won't put money into something I have zero interest in playing.

[bb_hood]

I think it looks ok, pretty good for something made by so few people.

Why does it take place in 20XX though? that is clearly President Obama and this isnt mega man X.

[Greg2600]

Hang on, can they use President Obama's likeness without permission? Wonder how many people that wouldn't buy because you have to save him? Ha ha ha. I would never play this either, I just don't like anything that's turn based. Reading the title, I was expecting a SOR or Final Fight 16-bit looking graphical style, not 8-bit. Since they're NY'ers, and I like supporting locals, I'll probably just give $10 to get the game, and then forget that I did!

[Ryudo]

Don't write off because the combat. Watch the vids out on their kickstarter and go to the comments and post some questions. Shaun is really hands on answering questions. I can promise ya these guys won't twitter rage ya lol.
New ideas are sometimes controversial and sometimes scary or not to sure but give it a shot.

[Bojay1997]

Don't write off because the combat. Watch the vids out on their kickstarter and go to the comments and post some questions. Shaun is really hands on answering questions. I can promise ya these guys won't twitter rage ya lol.
New ideas are sometimes controversial and sometimes scary or not to sure but give it a shot.

I'm sorry, but how can you not write it off because of the combat when it's a scrolling brawler? I've been a gamer for a very long time and I can pretty quickly tell by watching gameplay whether something is going to be fun or not. This isn't a new idea, it's an idea that nobody has done in this particular genre because nobody would want to play a game that essentially stops anytime the best part of a game like this (i.e. the combat) breaks out. I commend them for trying something new, but this is pretty clearly not a good idea and they are wasting their talents on trying to be different simply for the sake of being different.

[JSoup]

Looks....interesting, but not for me.

[Tanooki]

That straight up just does not look fun. It has been done before even with a brawler technically, ever played Hybrid Heaven (N64-Konami) before? In essence it's a future game all scifi and stuff and you go and solve whatever the plot was playing it out as what appears to be a hand to hand 3rd person combat brawler as that was cool about that time with junk like that Fighting Force 64 Final Fight 3D wannabe. Basically each time you approach someone free roaming, it jars you into a turned based RPG combat system where each of your limbs, head, and body can take individual damage like you have an RPG party of 6 and all have their own health and can level up like an RPG. Each limb gets some form of a turn, punch, kicks, skills whatever.

This is much like this but it goes into a more traditional looking RPG mode pulling straight away from some Double Dragon looking side scrolling fraud of sorts. I can tell you from owning Hybrid Heaven you may enjoy it up front but it will get stale and then annoying if not more pretty quick because you'll see where a lot of fun and potential is pissed away on doing something stupid to be original.

I'll admit I don't pay into the kickstarter blind mans beggars cup with pencils, ever, but if this somehow was rewarding them with the funding I couldn't see touching it even if it were an Android game for a buck.

[Segata Sanshiro Jr.]

Turn based side scrolling beat 'em up? I don't mind some RPG elements, as I love River City Ransom, but making it turn based kills an "action" game genre for me. Imagine if they made a turn based Call of Duty game, it would turn a majority of the audience that is into that genre. I'm sure there will be RPG fans that will enjoy this, but it's not for me.

I was working at 2k and got a hand in on Bioshock, which is an FPS with RPG elements, also Fallout 3 does have "Turns" in that the vats system slows things down. People forget sometimes that FF12, The Last Story and the original Dragon Age are turn based as well (You need to wait for a meter to refill to act). Beatdown city actually gives back "turns" in the form of combo meter faster then any of those games so the combat is pretty snappy. On top of that, positioning, avoidance and all of the other aspects of brawlers (and even fighting games) is still present. I hope that with more playtests we can convince you, and others that the game still retains a lot of the satisfaction that is in games like Final fight and SOR.

Strongly agree. I was interested in the art style, but upon further inspection, the gameplay looks like it would be terrible. There is a very good reason why there aren't a lot of turn based side scrollers and I just don't think they've given enough thought to the entertainment value here. I wish them luck, but I won't put money into something I have zero interest in playing.

Well we've been working on this game for a very long time, its a number of projects put together. At first I was making a fighting game that I was never serious about, and Shawn wanted to make a brawler. To help me focus on something after my life was pretty much ruined (I lost multiple members of my family, got fired from my job and was thrown out on the street for a while) We decided to work on a brawler together. This was during a time when a bunch of other indie brawlers like fistpuncher and abobo's big adventure we're being talked about so we decided to try out some new ideas. Since as the programmer and gameplay designer I was well versed on working with RPGs and stat based elements we decided that was a good avenue to explore. With concepts and everything its been about 4 years that this game has been in the making with only the last 2 being full time. We've given a ton of thought to this, and are dedicated to playtesting and prototyping. I'm sorry that the videos don't appeal to you, but if you ever have the chance I'd love to walk you through the game personally at an event (We'll be hitting Pax and GDC again this year)

I'm sorry, but how can you not write it off because of the combat when it's a scrolling brawler? I've been a gamer for a very long time and I can pretty quickly tell by watching gameplay whether something is going to be fun or not. This isn't a new idea, it's an idea that nobody has done in this particular genre because nobody would want to play a game that essentially stops anytime the best part of a game like this (i.e. the combat) breaks out. I commend them for trying something new, but this is pretty clearly not a good idea and they are wasting their talents on trying to be different simply for the sake of being different.

We've taken the game to EVO, E3, PAX Prime and East, GDC, Indiecade, Indiecade East and a number of smaller venues in the NY-NJ area and we've gotten a lot of love from anyone who has played the game. Suda 51 once yelled "Sugoiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" while playing the game because he loved how I animated the piledriver.

Hang on, can they use President Obama's likeness without permission? Wonder how many people that wouldn't buy because you have to save him? Ha ha ha. I would never play this either, I just don't like anything that's turn based. Reading the title, I was expecting a SOR or Final Fight 16-bit looking graphical style, not 8-bit. Since they're NY'ers, and I like supporting locals, I'll probably just give $10 to get the game, and then forget that I did!

Obama? Nah man, thats Burak Orama We thank you for the support no matter the reason but if you do want to try out the game, we often make the rounds at NYU's Game center, IDGA NJ's demo night and at NYC Game's Forums events like the Demo nights they have at Microsoft. Because the game is built on a lot of logic you'd find in a fighting game We're always looking for feedback on balance, timing, and general tweaking so if you get the chance come out and try it.

That straight up just does not look fun. It has been done before even with a brawler technically, ever played Hybrid Heaven (N64-Konami) before? In essence it's a future game all scifi and stuff and you go and solve whatever the plot was playing it out as what appears to be a hand to hand 3rd person combat brawler as that was cool about that time with junk like that Fighting Force 64 Final Fight 3D wannabe. Basically each time you approach someone free roaming, it jars you into a turned based RPG combat system where each of your limbs, head, and body can take individual damage like you have an RPG party of 6 and all have their own health and can level up like an RPG. Each limb gets some form of a turn, punch, kicks, skills whatever.

This is much like this but it goes into a more traditional looking RPG mode pulling straight away from some Double Dragon looking side scrolling fraud of sorts. I can tell you from owning Hybrid Heaven you may enjoy it up front but it will get stale and then annoying if not more pretty quick because you'll see where a lot of fun and potential is pissed away on doing something stupid to be original.

I'll admit I don't pay into the kickstarter blind mans beggars cup with pencils, ever, but if this somehow was rewarding them with the funding I couldn't see touching it even if it were an Android game for a buck.

I've played Hybrid Heaven to death and although its a game I liked years ago I've pulled apart everything wrong with the game (like the fact that once you learn the headbutt you win). Beatdown City is not like Hybrid Heaven, especially in pacing. All of the moves you learn are viable, and the quick attacks are useful all the time. You could play the game on just quick attacks alone, but just like Fallout 3 you get a lot farther faster if you use vats. The reason we keep going o about the Fallout 3 comparison is because it is far more appropriate. Beatdown City is not a slow game, and there will be points in the PC version where you don't need to use the battle menu at all however it exists because brawlers in themselves have problems. Using attack from the battle menu is more akin to setting a combo in King of Fighters 99 (which let you map special moves to a button) its just meant to allow the player more range then just punching and kicking for both offense and defense. Its unfortunate we do not have your support but hopefully with more gameplay we can change people's minds.

[Tanooki]

I'll say this much, it's an interesting concept, and if you're so certain it will turn out more amazing than Hybird Heaven which has aged horribly and is around the level of Fallout 3 (which I haven't played but watched) it could be interesting enough to play. If you get funded and if it goes up for sale I'll keep it in mind and watch for reviews.

[Ryudo]

[JSoup]

Returning to this topic, it looks like the Kickstarter fell short of 50%.

[badinsults]

The Super Chinese World series looks like a much more appealing hybrid of side-scrolling beat-em-up and RPG. Though the only one that came out in the US (as Super Ninja Boy) it terrible due to extreme slowdown.

[eskobar]

Don't mean to be rude but the game doesn't look particularly fun, it's slow and dull ... Every new game doesn't need to have "new concepts" to be good, it just needs to be well designed and fun to pick-up and play.