Blade Ballet - Multiplayer Game of Whirling Robot Destruction

(Huge thanks to Goonter for making the Frameshift post where I got my formatting ideas!)

Blade Ballet is a two to four player multiplayer fighting game featuring ten robots with unique abilities battling across a multitude of hazardous arenas.

UPDATE

Blade Ballet is LIVE! Available now on Steam and PS4.


Flavor

Humans invent robots for specific functions: companionship, personal protection, demolition. Eventually, these bots are thrown into the arena to fight against one another. Long after humanity disappears from the face of the Earth, the battles continue.

Mechanics

The main unique mechanic of Blade Ballet is spinning. The right and left bumpers spin your character (clockwise and counterclockwise, respectively), which you can use to position yourself to get past your opponent’s defenses. Navigation is on the left stick. Characters can also jump, taunt, and use a character-specific special power.



Having bots with different special abilities and personalities is one of the core tenets of our game. It evolved naturally over time - the game started off as identical spinning, jumping cubes fighting each other. That version was pretty fun, but once our programmers added a bomb to one of the bots, the rest was history.



Nix: Mysterious, yet surprisingly default. One sword, two shields. Special: Teleportation.
Vanguard: Armored and heavy, with a blazing charge. Long sword, three shields. Special: Charge.
Torque: Hectic and unstable. Lives for mayhem. Two swords, no shields. Special: Blender Mode.
Ruckus: Powerful wrecking ball sweeps all opposition. One mace, one shield. Special: Mace Punch.
DropJaw: The circuit shatterer. One sword, two shields. Special: Ground Pound (stun).
Syphon: Drains the energy of foes. One sword, two shields. Special: Steals shields, makes more swords.
Riot: Solid and imposing, maneuverable bludgeon. Four shields. Special: Directional dash, shields regenerate.
Catbot: Agile and sneaky backstabber. One shield, one dagger. Special: Dashes, cuts through shields.
Trigger: Wanton distributor of mass destruction. One sword, one shield. Special: Throws bombs.
STEVe: Twitchiness is your friend. One sword, two shields. Special: Strafing, lunges extends sword.


Bots have a lot more to watch out for in Blade Ballet than just making sure they don't get sliced to pieces by other bots. We've engineers our battle stages with hazards that must be avoided if you want to survive. They can also be used against your opponents for ultimate mayhem.

Aero Meadow: Pleasant field patrolled by drones.



AI Core: Players activate a laser by standing in the center.



Avalanche Valley: Avoid the snow and the exploding humans.



Rubble Drop: Watch out for falling tiles.



Incineration Unit: Conveyor belt. Lava is bad.



Turbo Club: Soccer.



Modes

We currently have Streak Mode (Robomination) in the game - the first player to be last standing X times in a row wins (X is chosen by the players). Players cycle through all of our arenas until someone wins. We’re working on other modes, such as Time Bomb and Zombies.

Recent Devlogs

Hot Rods, Drones, Too Much STEVe to Handle

Skins Galore, Dash Effects, Special Abilities

New Bot Concept, Title Screen Animation, Tutorial Update

Trailer

Status

Blade Ballet is scheduled to release Spring 2016 on PS4 (planning a simultaneous Steam release, not 100% confirmed yet). We currently have local multiplayer in the game, and are working hard to implement networked multiplayer before launch.

Feedback

We want to hear your thoughts! Specifically, if this looks like the kind of game you would play, if you feel you have a good sense of what the gameplay is like, and if anything looks weird or out of place to you. You can reply here or message me on the forums.

Also, this is my first time posting here, so let me know if everything looks ok

 

Update 3/22/2016

We've been working hard to get some new levels, new modes, and new skins in the game.

The Overlord



The Overlord is the AI that plans, executes, and oversees the battles in Blade Ballet. We've gone through a few different iterations with this power-crazed artificial intelligence, and are currently experimenting with a potential Overlord-themed level.

Time Bomb Mode



Our original mode, Robomination, features a free-for-all bot fight that rotates through all of our in-game levels until one character is "last bot standing" twice in a row (aka, Streak Mode).

In order to flesh out our game, we're adding additional modes. First up in our new roster is Time Bomb, a hot-potato style mode in which players try to pass the time bomb to each other before it explodes. Last bot left alive wins.



Ice Cream Vanguard



We're lucky to have a talented group of artists on our team with plenty of cool character ideas. We're turning these ideas into skins for our bots, which will be unlockable in-game, providing extra motivation to keep playing.

This week, we're featuring Vanguard, who has a delicious-looking new Ice Cream skin. So delicious-looking, in fact, that it inspired an IRL ice cream party in our office.

Another awesome skin we're working on is Battle Queen Trigger.



Love to hear what you think! You can also check out the more detailed write-up on our site.

Read More Here

 

This looks amazing! And I am really surprised (In a good way) that you have managed to achieve art of such high quality!
This game looks really good and I would most certainly buy this game!
Infact we would love to do an early acces showcase of your game on our channel! If you are interested you can contact us through our business email which is on our profile!

Anyways good job on the project, I can't wait for it to release!

 

Thanks for checking out our post! Sounds awesome. Message sent

 

Update 3/29/2016

We've been testing out effects for a new mode. We're also getting a new level in the game and working on mode selection.

A Variety of Modes



Now that we're pretty happy with where our levels and bot abilities are at, we're experimenting to find which modes are best at highlighting the unique flavor of Blade Ballet. We mentioned Robomination and Time Bomb in our previous update - now, we're testing out Zombie Mode, in which players try to avoid being infected.

Of course, we need some sweet Unity effects/animations to do Zombie Mode justice...



Mode Selection

With more modes comes the need for players to be able to easily choose which mode they want to play. It seems like an easy task at first glance: let players move through a list and make a selection. However, this doesn't take into account the fact that choosing a mode is one of the first experiences players will have with the game, an experience that could make or break someone's impression.

This is what we have so far:



Void Base



The last few levels we put into Blade Ballet were studies in complex environmental hazards. For Void Base we stepped back and asked ourselves, "How can we make a less resource intensive level that is still fresh and fun to play?"

And thus, a landing platform looming far above Earth's surface was born. The Blade Ballet robots will brawl just about anywhere, and this is no exception. Expect tense battles to erupt as players do their best to attack each other without flying off the edge.



Thanks for reading! There's more on our site if you'd like to dig further into our development process.

Read More Here

 

Update 4/5/2016

Today we're sharing our level design process, a cute skin, and a hilarious April Fool's prank.

Level Design Process

Designing levels organically can be hit-or-miss. AI Core is always a fan favorite, for example, but Wall of Cubes ended up more frustrating than fun, and was eventually cut.


Cubes, why do you thwart me??

We've found that solidifying our level design process improves the quality of new levels and decreases the overall amount of development time (plus the levels are less likely to be rejected at a later date).



Here's what our current process looks like:

1. Concept the levels graphically
2. Build models
3. Implement in Unity
4. Playtest
5. Progress with art for favorite designs

It's working well so far!

STEVe Fox Skin

Customizable character appearance in games has never been a bigger deal. The majority of multiplayer games let you pick some aspect of your character's look, running the gamut from choosing from a selection of four character colors all the way to having complete control over face, hair, clothes, and more.

Our middle-ground options is skins. And oh, how glorious those skins have become! Today's reveal is Foxy STEVe. Can STEVe's desperate attempt at adorability beat out Catbot's cuteness lead? Only time will tell!



April Fool's Day Faces

A sense of humor is essential to making it through the sometimes-challenging realm of game design. Our devs came through in fine form by replacing all the bots with the faces of our team members. (Made awesome by a Gang Beasts music homage and Tim Allen grunts!)

That's it for today! Thanks for reading! There are a couple of other items on our site devlog if you'd like to know more.

Read More Here

 

We made a silly live-action announcement video about going to PAX East. Hope you enjoy!

 

Update 4/15/2016

Today we're sharing images from recent level development, along with progress we're making on our level title cards.

OA.SYS

Our first new level is inspired by an exhaust port set out in the desert. It's ventilating the vast underground complex that is the Overlord's domain.

After a first pass of concept art (over a model playtested for fun)...



... our artists moved on to modeling and texturing. Stay tuned for more!



Bitsburgh

Our second new level is placed smack-dab in the middle of a bustling metropolis. Bustling with bots, that is - in the Blade Ballet universe, people have long ago mysteriously disappeared. The Overlord acts like nothing has changed, however, dutifully propagating the Blade Ballet performances far and wide.

We playtested this stage in Unity a couple of weeks ago to prove that it would be fun in-game.



After several successful tests, our artists began to build out the level, adding graphical elements both to the arena itself and to the surrounding environment.



(Here we're hand-waving hours upon hours of intensive artist work). The level is now almost fully textured and animated. Just about ready to put in the game!



Level Title Cards

We've spruced up the UI elements that introduce each level to add more energy and excitement. Our goal is to emphasize the spectation element of the moment short pause moment between battles. Here they are in-game - did we succeed?



That's it for now! Want to learn more? Check out the complete devlog on our site!

 

The production quality of this game...

I'll note I get a Fusion Frenzy kind of feeling when looking at it. That's definitely a good thing ^_^

 

Wow, thank you!

Just checked out Fusion Frenzy - see what you're saying. Happy to be compared to it!

 

Exciting announcement today - our Coming Soon page is LIVE on Steam! This means we've confirmed simultaneous launch on Steam and PlayStation 4.

A bit daunting to think about launching on both, but we're excited to make the game as accessible as possible!

 

I'm a bit curious... because I'm a handheld fan... any Vita plans?

 

No plans at the moment - our team does love handhelds in general, though, so we'll see!

 

Update 5/4/2016

We survived PAX East! Couldn't have asked for a better reception of our game. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to check us out!

Now, on to the update.

Effect-ing the Weather

We continue to strive to make our game a.) more mechanically fun and b.) more artistically compelling, and it's easy to explain to people why these things are important. Behind all of our improvements, however, lies a subtler goal, one that's much more complicated and elusive to achieve.

We want people to connect with our game.

What exactly does this mean? Well, one way to achieve 'connection' is by evoking an emotional response. Our robots' facial expressions, sound effects, even their styling and movements have all evolved over time with their unique personalities in mind. People get emotional in the heat of robot combat - cheering at the thrill of victory, catching their breaths and gripping their controllers during particularly tense battles.

The question recently has become, "What else can we do to inspire emotion and connection, especially outside of those impactful moments?"

Our latest progress towards this goal comes in the form of minor tweaks to the backgrounds and environmental effects in the game.



Take OA.SYS - our desert/exhaust vent level. It looks and feels like a game level in the static picture above, and is fun to battle on. However, there's something generic and flat about it - it doesn't really compel people to spend time there, to learn its secrets.



The level does a much better of conveying a lonesome, abandoned, deserted mood with the addition of drifting sand and water effects.

Here's another example. This time, we've used dark clouds, lightning, and fast-flying dust particles to evoke a sense of drama and danger in our Frame Drop arena.



Dummies Have Needs Too

Ever find yourself pushing back changes that you really want to make in a game, just because something more important is always coming up? That's what happened with the dummy bot in our tutorial level. The poor guy has looked like a yellow trashcan for more than four months:



Thankfully, we finally had the art time available to push forward with Dummy Bot 2.0 (aka N31L). The new model is a huge improvement, and will be even more entertaining to practice on as players are getting ready to jump into a match.



That's it for today, thanks for reading! Check out the devlog on our site for the complete run-down of our latest game changes.

 

We're prepping a thorough devlog update. In the meantime, here's a video recap of our recent trip to MomoCon!

We highly recommend filming interviews at conventions to all indie devs. We've been surprised by how excited and passionate people are to talk about a game after they've had a great time playing. These videos are great for submitting as additional content to showcase/contest entries, or just for sharing with your fans.

 

We've started doing video devlogs every Friday at 2pm on Twitch! It's becoming a really valuable way for us to interface with our community - it's so awesome to be able to chat and answer fan questions in realtime. Here's our most recent video from last Friday, we always get a liiiitle off topic but manage to squeeze in some educational tidbits on development, game design, and art.

Check us out on Twitch and tune in Fridays at 2pm! https://www.twitch.tv/dreamsailgames/profile

 

Special Devlog 8-8-2016: Neil Edition!

In our latest written devlog, Neil Sveri, a co-founder and programmer at DreamSail, goes into detail about one of the latest features: Quality Settings. He spends time exploring the concepts he used to develop this feature, some of the issues he ran into, and his solutions.

This devlog is written with developers in mind (it gets pretty technical, I, intrepid community manager with mild HTML chops, don't understand much of the nitty gritty details). But, it also gives a general overview of what adding a new feature can look like, and how even a small thing can be more complicated than one would expect. Give it a read and shoot Neil some comments if you have questions!

http://bladeballet.com/blog/2016/8/5/quality-settings-an-adventure-in-json-imgui-and-reflection

 

Blade Ballet Devlog 8-22-2016: Patch 1.4 is Released

On Aug 9th, 2016, we launched Blade Ballet! It's been a wild 10 months of development to get where we are today, and there is still so much more we want to do. Now comes a time of listening to player feedback and integrating that into where we take the game next. It's gonna be a good time, y'all. Hope you're as excited for the future of Blade Ballet as we are

We included a number of new features in this patch! Some more immediately obvious to our players than others.
Here's a general rundown:

1. We added Patch Notes to the Start Screen. Patch Notes are useful because some updates aren't always as obvious as, let's say, a completely redesigned area, and players often like to know what's going on under the hood. It's also a nice way to inject some developer personality or work up hype for future releases. (Coming soon: SOMETHING AWESOME!)
2. Neil's Quality Settings (see the previous devlog) made it in! This gives players on PC the ability to change the graphics quality of the game more comprehensively than with Unity's built-in settings. Check out Neil's post for all the nitty gritty technical details on why this was necessary and how he went about implementing it.
3. We added the ability to rebind keys for players on PC, so you're not stuck with our default WASD and arrow keys setup. We added this due to player feedback during our playtesting phase pre-launch. In fact, using a keyboard to play in general came from player feedback - not everyone has a game controller to use.
4. We changed the basic names of our gameplay modes. Stock, Timed Deathmatch, and Soccer didn't have the *oomph* we really wanted, so our game designer, Jonathon Bove, attempted to in-office crowdsource mode name ideas. Most of our ideas were terrible/memes, because our office cannot take things seriously. We did however end up renaming the modes Robomination (Stock), Overclocked (Timed DM), and Blade Ball (soccer), which are pretty cool, so I guess we--or at least Jon--can get things done seriously.
5. We added some new sound effects and the ability to restart local matches from the end of a game more quickly, as well as various bug fixes.

Finally, one of the most major new changes, appearance-wise, is a complete graphical revamp of the Tutorial Area! In our playtesting we often found players were confused by some major things in the old tutorial: first, that it was a tutorial at all; second, how to get back to bot select; third, how to start the game. In the new area, we replaced the temporary word bubble "how to play" hints with permanent "how to play" text on the floor of the area. This makes it much more clear what the purpose of the area is, as well as teaching the player the controls in a more obvious way. This also fixed the issue of the word bubbles disappearing and players not knowing the controls by the time they started the game, which kind of defeats the purpose of an educational tutorial area.

​

We better conveyed that moving backwards off the platform is the way to choose a new bot, by effectively destroying the one you'd chosen in a pit of lava. Whee! Before, players would accidentally lunge off the edge of the platform to end up back in bot select - that caused many a confusing moment. Now at least it's very clear that falling off the platform means choosing a new bot. Is the destruction-by-lava of your current bot a little harsh? Maybe. But it ties into the lore!

​

We also changed the Start platform from a blank podium to one of the respawn bots that appear in-game when a player dies. This platform is a lot more visually appealing than the white podium of the original tutorial area, and it's much more clear that it is something the player is meant to interact with. Plus, you get to see that little silly face on the platform up close, what a cutie!

​

We have a whole slew of new things coming up in the next patch, including matchmaking and online play improvements, and something super exciting we haven't shown off anywhere yet: SKINS! This is a major content addition (there are many, many skins, so collecting them all will become a major new part of the game) and we are looking forward to seeing how the community reacts to them!

Check out our Twitch for weekly Friday devlogs from 2-3pm EST: https://www.twitch.tv/dreamsailgames
And keep posted for our next devlog!​

 

Very nice art style and good coding! I noticed some cool shader effects there. It looks like a very polished console game. There is nothing indie about it... except scope.