I'm a sucker for indie fighting games but the recent trends are kind of pissing me off.
Here's my average experience playing an indie fighting game:
Oh, finally! I'm totally down to support a new original world.
No motion inputs? Okay, that's cool. I'm totally down for that. No biggie. Experimentation is cool.
No jumping? That's weird.
No crouching? That's weird.
No mixups? That's weird.
I can only move by dashing? There's no walking? That's kind of cartoonish.
There's one normal attack button per character? Okay so why even bother.
I'm going back to E's Laf++ or Them's Fightin Herds or Skullgirls.
Almost any new indie fighting game I try has at least three of the above and it's weird. When I played Head 2 Head and the game held my hand so much that the jump button automatically does a jump-in, and you can only move by dashing, I kind of broke.
Like, I get it. You want new players. But the harsh truth is that no casual gives a fuck if your game doesn't have Goku, Ryu, Kazuya, Spider-Man, Batman, or some other big IP on the cover. The casual fighting game audience is entirely dominated by IP.
The only people who are going to play your mega-indie fighting game on
itch.io with a total budget of $6.99 are people are genuinely love the sport of fighting games. So if your game has the depth of a moist paper towel, congrats! Your game is dead on arrival?
