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ARENA GODS® is Spectacle Combat, a top-down, arena fighting game where 2 to 4 gladiators compete for the crowd’s favor in an anything goes death match spectacle. You are gladiator. Brave the arena and win the crowd to seize godhood!

  • Fight armed or unarmed, strike or throw, standing or on the ground.
  • Every object can be picked up, wielded as a weapon, and thrown as a projectile.
  • Projectiles can be deflected or caught in mid air.
  • Most weapons kill in a single hit, but all can be disarmed.
  • Each weapon is unique with specific strengths and weaknesses.
  • The arena shifts and changes each round.
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The Execution of Execution

News

A hot topic throughout our playtests this summer has been 'execution'.

Now

In Arena Gods, you can execute a knocked down opponent by standing over them and pressing B before they start getting up.

Like all moves in the game, once you start an execution you are committed to it until the animation ends or you're killed or knocked down. On average, attack animations have frame counts in the teens, but execution animations average 40 frames. They're considerably longer.

Each weapon has a unique execution animation. Currently, there are 3; unarmed, sword, and spear.

With Good Intentions...

Here is what I set out to achieve.

From the beginning I wanted execute to be its own button and not a contextual action of the attack button. I wanted to avoid scenarios where the game performs a different action from what the player intended. X is attack, Y is pick up/throw, and A is dodge so I used B for execute.

I wanted executions to be extravagant kills like in Hotline Miami which is why we made them long in comparison to the attack animations. I also wanted to implement some kind of feature in the future where you could earn 'glory' by performing spectacular feats, but had to risk exposing yourself while performing them. Glory would persist across rounds and could be spent to trigger things like having a weapon thrown into the arena or loosing tigers.

It was also important to me for each weapon to have a unique execution animation for visual variety.

Friction

Things don't always turn out the way you want them to...

Just about everyone complains that using a separate button for execute is unintuitive. While they all grasp it after a couple of matches, it is still an unpleasant stain on the game's input accessibility.

Being a 4-player game, what often happens now when a player tries to execute is they get knocked down or killed by another player who zeros in like a vulture. This is beautifully illustrated at 0:16, 0:21, and 0:46 in the video below. Funnily enough, the original victim often gets away. Because of this we've seen our playtesters wise up and reconsider executing at times. Our smarter playtesters will often knock a player down only to retreat if danger appears too close.

Arena Gods Pre-Alpha Playtest Highlights #3

Sam owns everybody, but not before Mike makes a spectacular play in The Pit!


Because weapon attacks kill and don't knockdown, weapon executions don't happen. I've only ever seen 2. Currently, to perform a weapon execution you have to knock an opponent down by punching or throwing a sword at them and hoping the hilt hits instead of the blade. Then you have to go pick up a weapon really quick and move into position on top of the downed player and press B to execute before that player starts getting up.

Truth

Sooner or later you gotta face the music.

Using the B button for execute is clearly causing more trouble than it's worth.

I like that executing has an especially clear risk versus reward dynamic now because of the lengthy animations, but I dislike players complaining about feeling sluggish when they aren't supposed to be. Furthermore, a single stomp taking twice the amount of time of a sword swing doesn't make sense. There also isn't any point holding onto this idea of 'earning glory with spectacular feats' when it hasn't been thought out and I have doubts about whether it can even work. It would also be a mistake to dictate to players that an action is impressive because it has a long and cool animation. That would be completely artificial. Rather, the game should highlight feats as impressive because they truly are difficult to achieve. What's impressive in this legendary clip isn't Chun Li's wonderfully animated ultra, it's Ken's parry which is practically a single frame.

Since weapon executions pretty much never happen it's questionable whether they should even exist much less be lengthy and extravagant.

Iteration

So this is what I'm going to do next.

I'm going to deprecate the B button as execute and add execute to the X button as a contextual action. Pressing X will execute when standing over a downed opponent while there are no other opponents standing within range. If a standing opponent is close enough then X will attack instead.

I'm going to simplify the animations of all executions and shorten them to be roughly the same length as their corresponding attacks. Hopefully, the risk versus reward dynamic will still remain, but players will no longer feel sluggish.

Weapons executions will still remain for variety's sake, but they'll be visually efficient instead of extravagant.


I'm looking forward to our next playtest to see what effect these changes will have. I'll be sure to do a follow up post after.

-Mark

A Prototype Called 'Uproar'

A Prototype Called 'Uproar'

News 1 comment

A look back at how Arena Gods was born. Purty GIFs at the end!

Playtest Highlights #2 - Confronto Brazuca!

Playtest Highlights #2 - Confronto Brazuca!

News 2 comments

Supertype's Rodrigo tries to school our Brazilian buddies, but Francesco, Gutcha, and Fernando ain't havin' it! The second video in a series that captures...

Playtest Highlights #1

Playtest Highlights #1

News

The first video in a series that captures the best moments from our Sunday playtests.

First Post

First Post

News 2 comments

We're proud to announce development of ARENA GODS!

Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 11)
Koko596
Koko596

I didn't play the game before the "execute" action was changed to the X button, But, I can say, now, it's the most frustrating issue in the game. Unless I'm missing something, there doesn't seem to be a viable counter to an opponent simply spamming the x button until you're up against a wall and stomping your face in.
I like the sound of your original idea for the execute function. A longer animation would certainly add some much needed risk. I feel there needs to be some difficulty involved to get an opponent into a situation in which they can be executed. Even if an extended animation adds risk, that's only useful if there are more than two players in the game, or left alive. If it is easy, but only risky due to length, that will mean, as soon as the match is down to two players, the winner will be the first to spam an execution. I also think the execution should be a deliberate action, having it on the X button makes it something that just happens kind of passively.
Awesome game though, my friends and I stayed up until about 4:00 after about a hundred "OK, this is the last round's". Finally, someone said "OK if anyone gets a complete shutout, we will quit". We all agreed that was unlikely. The very next tournament, the one who had suggest the idea (and had also been losing most of the time) completely shut us out. There was much shouting. Certainly a rare, memorable gaming moment. If you are looking for testers for updated versions... count me in!

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SamuelVirtu
SamuelVirtu

Having played it myself, I can say that this is definitely one to watch. Super fun, feels great.. overall really satisfying!

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Guest
Guest

Amazing game... looks so much fun

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Feeder301999
Feeder301999

We are players and we want the demo version of this miracle!

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Guest
Guest

I need a pc online version of this game!

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Xeoneid
Xeoneid

Looks really fun! I'll be waiting for it

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