DracoFighter

Store Page: https://vecderg.itch.io/dracofighter 

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2027810/DracoFighter/ 

DracoFighter is a traditional 2D fighting game with the ultimate goal of being accessible. I conceptualized it on my own, but used many different inspirations for the design and animation during development, including Street Fighter and Tekken. It was programmed from scratch in Godot using GDScript, and went on to sell over 350 copies across 3 different online stores, including a mobile port.

Fighting games have the notoriety of being a difficult genre, so the primary goal was to make a game that was friendly to outsiders, while also leveraging the fundamentals of fighting games. While many fighting games focus on aggression and combos, these usually skewed matches heavily towards those with more experience. DracoFighter was designed to be focused on decision-making by prioritizing a few main mechanics.  

The control scheme only requires 4 buttons (Left, Right, A, and B), and there are no complex input commands. Combat strictly follows an attack triangle -- grabbing beats blocking, attacking beats grabbing, and blocking beats attacking. Combos were made simple and short, reducing their frustration and mechanical requirements in favor of returning back to neutral faster. Despite these simplifications, the game still plays like a traditional fighter, with knowledge of spacing, mix-ups, and frame data greatly benefiting players.

Designing and balancing all the character movesets was definitely my favorite part of DracoFighter's development. Adjusting game-feel, adapting to character needs through move additions/adjustments, and testing characters against each other were all common events. The game was run by multiple playtesters to get feedback, much of which was put into the game directly, or surmised through observation.

One notable example was Plexie, a character based on the "swordie" archetype in Smash Bros. She's a mid-range zoner that asserts power through disjoints, but her F-Attack was too powerful due to its massive range and speed, making her a very linear character. It had to be adjusted to encourage other options -- by slowing it down and making the hitbox vertically smaller, it allowed jump-in punishes to be more consistent. Meanwhile, her anti-airs were buffed: N-Special, a low-risk vertical projectile, and her B-Attack, which had a faster start-up but was much more punishable. Her B-Special was also sped up to be a usable a high-risk high-reward ground alternative to F-Attack. While initially a very linear character, all these adjustments based on playtesting and feedback made her into a much more dynamic character.

The main things I learned from the project were organizing data and managing a game release. Hitboxes created a massive amount of data to be held, organized, and passed between objects, which was a bit of a challenge. DracoFighter also helped me understand the full process of designing, implementing, marketing, and releasing a game, which was a rather difficult process, especially since the game had to be working fully on multiple platforms and stores. However, this project was an amazing experience, and I continue to enjoy it and its influence very much.

DracoFighter is also a Finalist for The Rookies 2023 Game of the Year contest in the Mobile category:
https://www.therookies.co/entries/23289