Breakaway – a four-vs-four competitive action arena

Killer Instinct developer Double Helix, previously acquired by Amazon Game Studios, has plans on the esports market with a new game called Breakaway. It is a four-vs-four competitive action arena title. The game, built with the help of Lumberyard, features deep fighting system, which plays a part of team-based action.

Breakaway evolves around one idea – two teams compete to bring a relic into a goal on their opponents’ end of the field. You can win by either defeating every member of the opposing team, or running out the clock while the relic is on the opposing team’s side of the map.

The relic can be easily dropped through a complex fighting system. The complexity comes to this: each character has a core attack and three unique special moves tied to cooldown timers. 

What is more, you’ll have the ability to construct “Buildables”, which alter the properties of the map. Buildables can replenish your HP, shoot beams of light at nearby opponents causing an increased rate of damage over time or stall players’ actions.

The teams that invest heavily in Buildables invariably control the entire arena, so it’s part of the deeper meta of the game. You can be very good at combat, you can be very good at team composition, but the team that’s very good with Buildables is going to have an edge on you.

Patrick Gilmore, Amazon Game Studios head

Most upgrades you’ll get are purely aesthetic, though it is stated that there might be further customization options for the better characters’ stats.

Developers say that the game is very easy to get the hang of – actually, it takes only a minute according to the presentation. This easy-to-learn approach was developed after changing game mechanics – from the beginning the game had a far more robust character combat system with blocking, counters, and combos. 

The fighting metas were very deep. We played that with expert players and they loved it. They dived right in. They’d dissect the moves, like those expert guys do. And they would play it with more casual players and the skill gap was just- it wasn’t even a skill gap! It was like a knowledge gap. The barrier to entry was we thought really high.

Accessibility has always been one of the key things that we wanted to drive. So then the challenge was how to you build a fighting system that is deep and learnable, but that doesn’t throw up a wall at the beginning of the game. So the complexity of the game really emerges over time.

Patrick Gilmore, Amazon Game Studios head

Like many other esports titles the game also features downtime for preparation between matches.

We realised that a play-based game like football gave you time to strategise with your teammates, gave broadcasters time to talk about what they were doing, gave time to regroup or huddle in-between matches. We also changed the game field so you could see the entire field at all times. That made it really effective for strategy as a team sport. For a broadcaster streaming the game there would never be an opportunity to miss a key action.

Patrick Gilmore, Amazon Game Studios head

You can get more information on the announced title here.