The Twitch TV stream from PAX East this year included some coverage of a little-known fighting game. The game is called Divekick. It looks like a joke. It kind of is a joke. It kind of isn’t.
Divekick. Dive, Kick. Dive dive dive kick kick, kick dive, Divekick. Kick, dive.
I chat with the developers on the floor. “Everyone says this is either the most ridiculous game they’ve ever seen, or the most brilliant.”
Thirty minutes later I’m siding with “brilliant.”
Dive dive kick.
I told them: this should be the final round of the Omegathon.
After Indiecade East I felt compelled to write about Hokra. My feeling is that while Hokra is simple and it’s great, it’s got accessibility problems that will prevent much wide exposure.
Divekick feels like a solution. Like the Sportsfriends games, it is designed for local multiplayer. The game, on release will be available, on PC, PS3, or Playstation Vita. That’s two players using a single computer or (perhaps absurdly) a single Vita.
Divekick isn’t entirely unique. It takes the form of a fighting game. I’ve played a lot of fighting games myself because I love the bold character designs and crazy moves. But I’ve never really played at a high level. Earlier on the same day I walked up to a Darkstalkers booth and was rightly schooled by someone with more experience. But I’m passing good at Divekick because there’s so little to know and learn. What one must learn is mostly in the minds of the opponent.
Each character in Divekick has a health bar, but it doesn’t matter. Get kicked once, and get knocked out. The game is first to five KOs. Rounds are short and brutal. There are a couple of other, small mechanics – kick your opponent in the head, and they’ll be dizzy next round which makes them slower. Win four rounds in a row, and a “fraud detector” kicks in that handicaps you slightly. There’s a meter to fill, and if you fill the meter divekicking is a little faster. All of this is just a way to divekick the other guy before he divekicks you.
Divekick has only two buttons: Dive, and Kick. There is no D-pad: that’s important. With a D-pad there might be some pressure to do a half-circle on the D-pad to unleash some kind of special attack, or a 360 for a super-throw, or to push forward in order to parry or back in order to block. So, no. In Divekick there is only Dive and Kick. Press Dive to jump; press Kick to Kick. Press kick before diving and you can jump backward.
The main characters of the game are seriously named Dive and Kick.
There’s a few other characters, parodies of characters from other fighting games. A familiar-looking young lady named Kung Pao. A literal wolverine. The main reason the game hasn’t been released yet is the team is adding and balancing other unannounced characters.
I’m “a gamer,” so I don’t know for sure if the concept of a fighting game is immediately intuitive to non-gamers. But, I really suspect that it is. It’s just two characters, fighting each other, and it’s not hard to tell who is who. The only thing that might initially confuse a spectator is how to see who has won the most rounds, since the health bar in Divekick has no actual purpose. Aside from that it’s pretty easy to understand the impact when someone is kicked.
It’s a silly game, really; it’s stupid, it’s simple, and it’s tense and it’s fun.
It’s like Paper, Rock, Scissors, in a way. But all fighting games are “Paper, Rock, Scissors in a way.” Lots of people like the idea of fighting games, but don’t have the time or patience to memorize sixteen different variations of rock to counter eighteen different variant scissors. Fighting games get better and bigger all the time and more gonzo, but with that depth accessibility fades.
So One True Game Studios appeared, and, in the name of just kidding around, they made a very accessible fighting game.
And that’s no joke.
Email the author of this post at aj@tap-repeatedly.com.
Hi, I’m the guy referenced from the Darkstalkers booth. Glad you enjoyed Divekick a lot! I think it’s really, fun but don’t be fooled by it being simple execution and RPS. The game will separate the good players from bad, and you need to put in the work to truly get good.
Also of note is that the game will have online play using the GGPO system, which is the favorite among a majority of fighting game fans since it uses a system where input lag can be put to a minimum, or not at all.
I really hope the simplicity of execution gets people into this game. It’s really fun for all skill levels, both for the gameplay and the jokes. I’ll be running events for it in New York as well. Thanks again for the publicity!
Hi, glad to see you here! 😀 Thanks for the butt-kicking by the way.
And I agree that there’s real depth in Divekick… but the fact that it requires almost no learning curve to pick up and start playing is exciting to me.
No doubt. I loved all the attention it was getting at PAX and was doing my best to hype it up as well (to the point people thought I worked for Iron Galaxy…).
Hopefully people can laugh when the game calls them a fraud though ^_^.
Wow. This is the most obvious step towards Idiocracy I’ve ever seen. We’re getting there! Woohoo!
@Din – I think the game is silly but good anyway. Your point of view intrigues me because on “steps to Idiocracy” I’d rank this particular game very low. Was ‘Go’ a step toward Idiocracy just because it only has one move (laying down a stone)? Is Canabalt, because it only has one button?
I’ve never heard about Canabalt until just now, so i won’t comment. But obviously Go can’t be compared to this game here. Go is all about strategy. The gameplay is anecdotic. In Kickdown’s case the strategy is anecdotic, and it’s all about twitchy gameplay. You can argue there’s a strategy to the timing of the dives and kicks, but the success of the kick is mostly blind luck. As you said, it’s rock-paper-scissors. But you already know this. The thing that makes it a step closer to Idiocracy is the praise it’s getting: it’s not a step forward in fighting games, it’s a dumb down of fighting games.
I have a suggestion for their next game: Punch!
Well, the good news if you like complex fighting games is, the existence of a very simple one won’t make them go away. I personally am a fan of anything that makes games more accessible. So, think of it as like… a fighting game gateway drug. 🙂