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[Emma Larkins]

Hi everyone! Excited to share a bit about Blade Ballet, the first game being developed by my company, DreamSail Games.

Blade Ballet is a multiplayer fighting game in which players take control of one of ten robots with unique weapons (swords, daggers, maces, etc.) and special abilities (dashing, bomb-throwing, stunning, teleportation, etc.).

They battle across a variety of arenas, attacking each other and avoiding treacherous environmental hazards in an attempt to be Last Bot Standing.

UPDATE

The Blade Ballet Coming Soon page is now on Steam! We've confirmed simultaneous release on Steam and PlayStation 4.



Meet the Bots



Our goal is to make players fall in love with the characters, not just because of their abilities, but also because of their individual personalities. Whether you prefer wild-eyed, short-fused characters, sneaky backstabbers, or strong-and-silent types, we hope you'll meet your match.

Nix: Uses teleportation to effortlessly and mysteriously phase through enemies and line up the perfect attack. Commits fully to each new location - even if you go off a ledge, there's no turning back.
Vanguard: This chivalrous, noble bot has strong ties to a bodyguard origin. Armored and heavy, with a blazing charge. Slow-turning, but makes up for it with a long reach.
Torque: Yes, it will blend. Torque has no shields, but spins so fast in "Blender Mode" that any bot would be crazy to get within slicing range.
Ruckus: Powerful wrecking ball sweeps away all opposition. Ruckus uses a mace to reposition other bots at will. A mace-punch to another bot's face is particularly effective in combat.
DropJaw: Don't get too close to this bot unless you want to be laid low by a stunningly disruptive shockwave. Typical combo includes jump into Ground Pound, finishing off with the stab of a sword.
Syphon: How many swords is too many swords? Syphon steals the shields of other bots, then turns them into a ring of slicing death.
Riot: This solid and imposing maneuverable bludgeon of a bot makes up for a lack of swords with spiked shields that regenerate quickly over time.
Catbot: No bot is safe with this adorable deviant on the loose. Don't let that cute face fool you - this cat will slice through your shields without a second thought.
Trigger: Hectic and unstable. Lives for mayhem. This bot loves nothing better than to sling powerful bombs across the stage, wrecking everything in sight. Is not immune to self-destruction.
STEVe: STEVe was never meant to battle in the Blade Ballet arena, but gives it a good shot. The difficulty of mastering the strafe and powerful lunge makes every landed hit worth celebrating.

Here's a video showcasing STEVe, and also some Blade Ballet gameplay.





Deadly Arenas





Each arena is its own unique experience. Some arenas have deadly environmental hazards, like a player-activated laser or tiles that unexpectedly plummet out from under the players. Others let players focus on combat while navigating interesting layouts.

Modes

Currently we have three modes in the game: Stock Mode, Timed Death Match, and Soccer Mode.

Stock Mode: You get to set the number of rounds (each on a different map) and number of lives per round/map. First player to win the set number of rounds wins the match.

Timed Death Match: Bot that gets the most kills in the designated time wins!

Soccer Mode: Play soccer on our custom soccer levels! 1v1 or 2v2 team mode.

Previous Devlogs

We've been tracking our Blade Ballet progress on our site for the past few months. Here are some sample posts if you'd like to learn more!

Shields Up!, HUDs, Respawn Platforms (6/28/2016)

Weathering Storms, Better Dummies, Swag (5/2/2016)

Greebles and Stuff (1/6/2016)

Release Plans

Just announced our launch date - coming to PS4 and Steam on August 9!





Love to hear what people think!

[io3 creations]

I like the cartoon-ish  sci-fi style and character designs.

[Mark Mayers]

Cool to see you posting on TIGSource! Game is looking really fun.

[Pixelologist]

That's a really solid first post.

[Emma Larkins]

Thanks!! Glad you guys like it

[Emma Larkins]

Update 4/6/2016

We have a few nuggets of Blade Ballet goodness to share this week.

Iterating on Level Design

Level design is an art unto itself. There's a lot of thought that goes into crafting even simple levels like the ones in Blade Ballet. In the past, we've lucked into some slam dunks, like AI Core (players activate a rotating laser in the center to mow down opposing bots). We've also bogged ourselves down with some misses, like Giant Wall of Cubes That Frustratingly Slows My Attempts to Stab Everyone.



The twain shall never meet

Over time, we've vastly improved our process of ideating, playtesting, and honing our levels, starting with level layout concept art, then modeling the levels and testing them in Unity before dedicating a lot of art and coding time.



Latest level design concepts

The Fox Known Only as STEVe

You want skins? We got skins!



It's important for us that people connect with our bots - so we're providing the option to customize your bot appearance with skins. Still working on implementing customization in-game, but in the meantime we're generating a ton of cool skin options. What do you think? Does STEVe's new skin put him in the running for Blade Ballet's cutest bot?

April Fool's Bots

Props to programmer Neil for making a hilarious mod to the game that puts the DreamSail Games team front and center. This is what game development is all about. Made possible by Tim Allen grunts, with a tribute to the lovely sounds of Gang Beasts.





Like what you see? Read more on our devlog!

[Emma Larkins]

We made a silly live-action video announcing that we're going to PAX East. Hope you enjoy 

[Emma Larkins]

Update 4/15/2016

We have two awesome new levels in development to show off today. We're also updating our UI, replacing the simple text titles that introduced each level with fancy new title cards, each artistically reflecting the associated level - Avalanche Valley has ski poles, for example, and Aero Meadow has vines and leaves.

A Level in the Desert

First up is OA.SYS (and yes, we do feel incredibly clever coming up with that name).

This desert level is built around an exhaust port for the sprawling, robotic labyrinth beneath the planet's surface.

We tested the playability of the level in Unity before progressing with art creation. Then, after some quick concept art...



... it was time to start modeling! Stay tuned for more updates.



Bitsburgh Level Development

Next, we're adding a fun new city level to the game. This one is an important addition, because it really ties in strongly to the lore we're establishing for the game. In fact, building this level had an added benefit of solidifying a lot of our lore, and we're really happy with where it's at now.

This Blade Ballet arena was created by the Overlord shortly after the mysterious disappearance of humans from the planet. As you can see, the city is still well-maintained, and the strategically-placed ads show that the Overlord is prepared for humans to return at any moment. However, the construction cranes and the placement of the arena smack in the middle of downtown hint that something isn't quite right. The Overlord is starting to lose its grip with reality in its quest to find more and better arenas to propagate the Blade Ballet performances to.

Here's what the level looked like when we first tested it for playability:



Here's a look at the level in the middle of modeling and texturing:



And, with the magic of the internet, we are able to hand-wave away hours upon hours of work and show you what it looks like now:



There's more work yet to be done to get the level into the game, but we're pretty happy with where it's at artistically.

Title Cards

Perfecting UI has been one of the most interesting challenges we've worked on as a team. It touches on all areas of development - art, programming, music, and even community (UI can hugely affect how people connect with and relate to a game). Our most recent progress has been related to what we communicate in the brief gameplay pauses between level switches.

There are a lot of decisions that go into this moment. Should we show the level names at all? Should we have a countdown? Do players press a button to start gameplay, or does it start automatically?

We've settled (for now) on showing the level name between each round, along with our "Initializing" voiceover, with a fadeout and automatic transition into gameplay. Here's what the cards look like over the levels:



That's it for now. Thanks for checking out our latest updates!

Full details of recent developments are up on our devlog - including some hilarious outtakes from a recent voiceover recording session  

[hyperduck]

HAHA that trailer, aw <3 love it. Looks gorgeous and really charming style. Will play, will laugh.

[Emma Larkins]

HAHA that trailer, aw <3 love it. Looks gorgeous and really charming style. Will play, will laugh.

Yay, thank you! Also just saw that you did the sound for Toto Temple - love that game!

[hyperduck]

Oh yes, we work with Juicy Beast quite a bit, they're great! And it's a fantastic couch game, always crack it on when I have mates around.

[Emma Larkins]

Super exciting news to share today, everyone. Blade Ballet has a Coming Soon page up on Steam!

Now we can officially say that we'll be launching on Steam at the same time as PlayStation 4. One more step closer to that golden day of game release 

Interested to hear what people think!

[Cranktrain]

Looks great! I love the oil splash on the floor after a blade finds its mark.

Having a coming-soon page on Steam is a recent development that's really great for developers, let's people wishlist the game early. Valve recently mentioned that something like ~23% of wishlisters eventually convert, so starting that count before (even long before) the game is released is lovely. I'd be very interested in hearing how many wishlisters you get pre-release, if you'd be happy divulging that!

[readyplaygames]

I didn't even know steam had a "coming soon" page. That's great.

[Emma Larkins]

Thanks! The oil spills are one of our recent favorite additions.

The Coming Soon pages are great for developers, especially when paired with something like Early Access, because the longer you have it up the more Wishlists you get and as Cranktrain mentioned, Wishlists are a pretty reliable indicator for sales. Our page has been live for a few days now and we've reached the triple digits, woo! The biggest spike was right at page launch, before we promoted, so there is some discoverability (or at least was for us).

We would like to share some stats from our game, possibly in the style of Juicy Beast, though have to figure out exactly what we can post. Stay tuned!

[io3 creations]

The first question would be: How to get a game on Steam?  I think I've seen some "in development" type pages but don't games have to be approved before they can go on sale?  Steam Greenlight is one way but it doesn't seem like your game went through that.

[Mark Mayers]

Great talking to you at PAX, Emma! Wish I could have stopped by to play the game

[Emma Larkins]

The first question would be: How to get a game on Steam?  I think I've seen some "in development" type pages but don't games have to be approved before they can go on sale?  Steam Greenlight is one way but it doesn't seem like your game went through that.

Greenlight to get a game on Steam. It's a great way to start building your essential game community as early as possible.

Great talking to you at PAX, Emma! Wish I could have stopped by to play the game

Great talking with you too! You are a never-ending font of amazing game dev information. Hopefully you'll have a chance to play soon.

[Emma Larkins]

Update 5/3/2016

Today's update includes a couple of things we've been working on over the past few weeks, along with some thoughts about our time at PAX East.

PAX East Recap

We couldn't have asked for a better time at PAX East! Hundreds of people played our game, we got to be on Twitch, and a good handful of media people, streamers, and YouTubers stopped by to chat with us.





Some of the most important things we learned about the way we show/share our game:

• Multiple stations are really important. We tried this for the first time at MAGFest, and were amazed at how much it increased our throughput. With a fast-paced multiplayer game, we want to get controllers into the hands of as many people as possible. At PAX, we had two setups at PAX Rising (though it was a bit of a squeeze) and an additional setup at the Playcrafting booth for one day.
• A tablet for email is essential. Our friends over at Robotic Potato Games pushed us to switch over to digital from paper, and we're so glad we did. We collected many more emails than we had in the past this way. Now that we're set up on Steam, we can also give away launch keys, which is was a huge draw for people at PAX.
• Don't be afraid to approach the press. The awesome creators of Skibum were next to us at PAX Rising, and they gave us the idea to approach press people instead of waiting for them to come to us. As long as you're respectful and not pushy, you have a chance of grabbing someone's attention. It was scary at first, but worth it.
• Pre-arranged press meetings have pros and cons. Arranging meetings is a typical strategy advocated by conventional wisdom and PR companies. Though you can grab some press on the floor (see above), it tends to be hit or miss, and this is supposed to be more reliable. However, it turned out for us that having meetings didn't guarantee people would show up, and if we didn't have real-time contact info, we couldn't follow up. Reserving one of our stations also meant a lot of players passed us by. We found that people we already had warm relationships with actively sought out our booth, even without meetings. We want to keep doing meetings to some extent, but it's something that needs to be done in a smart way and isn't an automatic win.

And now, game updates!

Weathering Storms

We're making another polish pass over our arenas - this time, focusing on environments and weather effects.

Experimenting with effects leads to some pretty entertaining scenarios. Realistic-looking lightning isn't as easy to create as you might think.



Many hours of trial and error later, we managed to capture the mood we were going for - a tumultuous and chaotic maelstrom in an abandoned industrial complex, hardly the sort of place you'd imagine someone choosing for a televised robot battle spectacle.



Contrast this with the peaceful mood of Aero Meadow, with gentle puffs of pollen drifting by as leaves swirl lazily in the breeze. Of course, the perilously swooping drones don't exactly gel with that vibe, and hint that something not-quite-right is going on behind the scenes.



A Better Dummy

There is so much to consider when making a game, that it can be easy for little things to fall between the cracks - especially when the nit-picky details need to compete for time with making a cool new bot or a hilarious new level mechanic.

Case in point, the dummy bot in our tutorial area has looked like this for more than five months:



James made some new concept art to get the ball rolling...



...and now our dummy fits adorably into our bot roster! Might even need to consider making him into a button...



Thanks for checking out our latest news!

If you're hungry for more, check out the complete devlog on our site.

[Emma Larkins]

We're planning on a more thorough devlog update soon. In the meantime, here's a recap from our Indie Showcase booth at MomoCon.





Reminder to all devs - bringing a camera to shows to take video is always a win! We use a Nikon D3300, but in many cases even a phone will take decent footage. 100% recommend picking up an inexpensive lav mic from Amazon (make sure you get a converter if you're using it with a DSLR - or capture the audio separately on your phone). Otherwise it's almost impossible to hear what people are saying.

The interviews you capture in the moment when people have just had fun playing your game are very valuable. Use them as proof of fun when submitting your game to showcases/contests, post them to YouTube, share liberally. As an added benefit, fans who are excited about your game love getting a chance to promote it!