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[BanzaiBrigade]

BrawlBeast

>>kck.st/1JlW0l4<<

Platforms: PC

Brawlbeast is a monster RPG in the vein of games like Pokemon. I am bad at synopsis so I will just list a few points:

Permadeath - If your Brawlbeast's HP drops to 0, it dies. No coming back. This means that your starter that has been with you since the very beginning and who you have very carefully levelled to maximise it's stats is not safe. At any moment your strongest Brawlers can be killed.

Real Time Combat - The battle system can probably be best described as being "Dota(MOBA)" style. Your Brawlbeast will have 4 abilities mapped to Q, W, E and R, all of which will be able to use dependant on each abilities cooldowns.

Diversity of Abilities - As your Brawlbeast levels up, it can learn new abilities but what is key is that at any time you can swap abilities for new or old ones. Finding synergies between abilities and designing tactics to exploit these synergies is key to taking down opponents.

A More Mature Believable World - The world of Brawlbeast is a diverse place. As such you will encounter verdant fields filled with cute bunny beasts, and conversely you will explore the dark underbelly of underground brawling. The key thing which I wanted to achieve is a believable world with interesting and diverse characters. This is no simple utopia.

Platforms - Currently the target platform is PC, with Mac and Linux being likely.

I'll hopefully be releasing a trailer soon(tm) to go with a Kickstarter campaign, but in the run up I'll share some more GIF's/screenshots. Any specific aspect you'd like to see? e.g Battles?

Questions/Feedback welcome.

PS.

Sorry about the huge GIF's, I couldn't manage to resize them without a massive decrease in quality.

[BanzaiBrigade]

[reserved]

[BanzaiBrigade]

(06/04/2015) Quadruplets

Making alot of progress towards polishing things up for the trailer. Meanwhile, here's a look at the (currently nameless) player character. Just to prove to everyone how awfully liberal and PC I am, you will be able to customise the player character's race and hair colour (within bounds, no ginger black characters).

It's worth noting that the player character is not supposed to BE the player. He will eventually be a voice acted character with his own personality. Consequently there isn't going to be a female player character.

[BanzaiBrigade]

(13/06/2015) A Big GIF

http://i.imgur.com/GWPbx49.gif

Pardon the artifacting and frame jumps. The GIFing/recording process makes things look crap.

The GIF is from one of the more seedy suburbs of the city in which Brawlbeast takes place. By day it is a fairly benign albeit run down area, at night however the streets ring to the sound of underground beast brawling. The area is also home to "The Doc". An enigmatic woman who pays a fair amount to dissect live brawlbeasts.

The Doc will provide a mechanism for the player to learn about the weaknesses and strengths of brawlbeasts. The Doc only accepts live brawlbeasts however, so the player has to catch and essentially sacrifice the beasts in order to better understand them.

The trailer will hopefully be ready to go on Friday.

[crbonilha]

Interesting concept, hoping to hear more about it.

[BanzaiBrigade]

(22/08/2015) Kickstarter is go! GIFs and a trailer

The trailer is here: http://kck.st/1JlW0l4

Now onto combat. Combat follows a dota-esque system. Each brawlbeast has 4 slots for attack bound (usually) to Q W E R. Some GIFs of Wyrat to demonstrate this:

The skills can be offensive, defensive or purely utility. In practice battles are fairly short (~1min) and fast paced (most skills have low cooldowns. Here's a link from the above album to show what a battle looks like:
http://i.imgur.com/4L8FvZf.gif

Interesting concept, hoping to hear more about it.

Thanks!

[BanzaiBrigade]

(27/08/2015 A few GIFS

The Kickstarter unfortunately isn't going well, I'm struggling to get any word of mouth going. That said, dev'ing marches forward. I've been putting the finishing touches on a really nice new area which I will post about in a few days. Before that, here are a few GIFs!

Also a youtube mirror of the kickstarter trailer:


And the kickstarter link once more: http://kck.st/1JlW0l4

[digitalskyfire]

To be perfectly honest, it's not a good trailer. I think it works as a good indication of feel and tone, but definitely not as a kickstarter video. There's no gameplay of any kind, or even a pitch.

You're correct in that getting the word out is important, but that's only gonna happen if people care about it, and right now, there's very little to make a person care. I guarantee you that most people coming across this are simply saying, "I'll come back around for the 2nd kickstarter, when there's an actual game."

Next time:

• Show and explain the gameplay
• Actually make a pitch in your pitch video

I wish you the best of luck!

[BanzaiBrigade]

I kept the trailer short because that is what I (maybe somewhat uniquely) generally prefer in kickstarter trailers rather than dev's talking extendedly about information already written below. Perhaps I was wrong in assuming this applied to most people.

That said, I would disagree that most people are in the "I'll come back around for the 2nd kickstarter, when there's an actual game." crowd. The conversion rate of people watching the video to those who back is normal compared to other successful projects (from the few KS's i was able to get data on), and thus I think the problem is primarily exposure.

I do not deny that I should have done a better job in portraying gameplay however. As such I'll be releasing a video of a battle in full over the next couple of days. I'll perhaps overlay key presses to make the battle system a little more clear.

I hope I don't sound hostile, your feedback is very welcome and very helpful. Feedback, good or bad, has been something I've been lacking.

[The_Otherworld_Agency]

Hey BanzaiBrigade. I just checked out the Kickstarter video. To be honest, it's fine enough - it's not the best video you could have done to get people interested in the game, but it's, yeah, fine enough. The rest of the kickstarter presentation isn't that great, though. I can barely read the 'stretch goals' title, because of that colour!

I think the scope of your game is also pretty big, man. £12k just doesn't seem like it'll cut it. £12k won't even cover audio! - if you're paying voice actors, and paying for music and sound. If I were you, i'd probably pull down the KS - statistically speaking, it's not going to be funded this time - reassess how much you need, and don't be afraid to overestimate and make a higher goal. Feel free to get in touch with me, and I can help you with how to estimate your costs (i've worked with dozens of game devs doing kickstarters).

Aside from Kickstarter, also poke around some publishers. You'll need a small playable build first, for them to get the feel of your game - doesn't need to be complete. Another option is the Indie-Fund: http://indie-fund.com/. The small playable build also helps when you want to send it to media/reviewers to check out your game, and then talk about it, in the case you want to do another kickstarter.

The game itself looks pretty cool. It's a bit of a childhood destroyer, but there's definitely a market for that haha. Worth getting this off the ground!

[BanzaiBrigade]

I'll definitely be looking into alternate funding methods if the KS doesn't take off. The 12k figure is based on what VA's and Musicians have asked for, and further to that, should the project need a little more money later in development I can meet it myself.

I'll keep the kickstarter up in the hopes of a miracle  It is not taking up alot of my time, and I am actively dev'ing while it's up.

Clearly alot of lessons for me here. I'll take your advice and direct my efforts into making a polished demo build, both you and digital seem to find the portrayal of the gameplay lacking, which a demo would hopefully solve.

Thanks for the offer of help and kind words.

[The_Otherworld_Agency]

I'll definitely be looking into alternate funding methods if the KS doesn't take off. The 12k figure is based on what VA's and Musicians have asked for, and further to that, should the project need a little more money later in development I can meet it myself.

I'll keep the kickstarter up in the hopes of a miracle  It is not taking up alot of my time, and I am actively dev'ing while it's up.

Clearly alot of lessons for me here. I'll take your advice and direct my efforts into making a polished demo build, both you and digital seem to find the portrayal of the gameplay lacking, which a demo would hopefully solve.

Thanks for the offer of help and kind words.

Ah great! Well, it's good that you've managed to nail all of the audio for that much! I can definitely see some of the gameplay in the video, but yeah, a build will be the thing to interest publishers and media, etc. Good luck with it, mate!