See How Big Boy Boxing Stepped Away from Punch-Out!! to Become Its Own Game

Introduction

We started our game development-related journey by making Minecraft mods, plugins, and texture packs. After that, we wanted to make a "real" game and our first attempt was a Super Smash Bros. one. It didn't work out in the end, but I pitched to Ludvig Thelberg, our Art Director, that we should convert our Smash Bros. game into a Punch-Out!!-styled fighter instead. I promised it would take no more than two months to get it done; that was two years ago.

Big Boy Boxing

All the animations are hand-pixelated through Aseprite, we worked directly with its creators to make a new system to create animations more modular than we thought of and brought it to life. We tried to emulate the style of old American cartoons like Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes instead of actual retro games, making a lot of people draw comparisons with old LucasArts games like Day of the Tentacle.

Compared to Punch-Out, we removed the blocking mechanic and made the dodges more fluid and "holdable" to make fast-moving gameplay incentivized. Also, we said goodbye to the timer and sudden round cutoffs from Punch-Out. We do have mid-fight transformations that currently serve something similar but we are working on getting the transition across faster and actually making them interactable while changing.

Community

Community is very important to the game. All the bosses will have secret mechanics and tricks to them that can make some bosses harder, and others more challenging. It will be up to the community to find these and share (like in the good ol' days!). A very easy-to-use mod support system is something we also wanted to give the community so they can design their own boss fights and even playable characters with wild abilities! Also, the game has already got a speedrunning community, I think it is great for that!

Plans

The features we have hinted at but not revealed yet are parrying and adrenaline, both will encourage players to engage with more mechanics and increase the risks but with a high reward. Finally, we've shown parts of the Stride system that consist of Perks and Abilities that are unlocked by spending your Stride Tokens, which you gain from completing the Boss Achievements. The strides can do everything from giving you a well-healing ability to making every tenth punch explode and do double damage!

Martin Calander, Game Director at Soupmasters 

Interview conducted by Theodore McKenzie