A game I worked on is out now

Let's have a Merfight

Today is a landmark day for me, my name is in the credits of a full video game release. That game is Merfight: Curse of the Arctic Prince, a fighting game that I served as narrative editor for.

To give the quick pitch: Merfight is an indie 2d fighting game with an easy input system to make the genre more approachable to newcomers. There are twelve fighters themed around different kinds of sea life to play as, either against other players or in the story mode.

What also makes it stand out is its pop system. Like many fighting games it has a meter used for super moves, but filling up a section of it will also grant you a pop. These can be used for special actions while blocking, for a homing dash towards your enemy, or most notably, to cancel any attack so you can immediately do another action. With pop cancels you can turn almost any combination of moves into a combo, and I love the flexibility that creates.

Now I’d like to write a bit about my history with the game and the game itself, with some tips for new players.

Pass or Scale

My introduction to the indie fighting game scene as a whole came from an article series by Andrea Demetrio covering how to make a fighting game as an indie developer. After reading it I followed him on twitter, tried out his fighting game, joined the discord for it, and from there discovered a whole community of indie fighting games.

Merfight was among the first of the games I saw. I gave the free download of the alpha a try, joined the official discord server, and ended up competing in its very first tournament. It was a small round robin tournament where I lost every single match. But, for competing I got to suggest an alternate color for a character.

Of Merfight’s twelve fighters, I initially tried out King Rho, but struggled with him and quickly switched to Arctina, who felt much more smooth to me. I was also drawn in by her solemn demeanor, the story at that time placing her as Rho’s servant who turns against him because he’s gone mad.

Going back to my choice of alternate color, since I played Arctina I decided to pick a color for her that would be a reference to Falco, specifically his red alternate color in Super Smash Bros Melee, since that was what I always used. Though now people see that Arctina color and think Nightcrawler from X-Men, honestly I can see it too.

With my signature Arctina color I continued to compete in the game’s tournaments, and commentate them as well. Eventually I was able to make it pretty far into the brackets. My crowning achievement in fighting games in general came when I won two tournaments in a row. In the first I was sent to the losers bracket early on only to claw my way up to first place, while in the second I plowed right through the bracket straight to grand finals.

However, since the game was in early access I might have done a little too well. A core part of my strategy was using Arctina’s ability to summon an icicle and use it as a shield to hide behind while I poked at the enemy with her spear. Then the icicle was changed to fade shortly after being summoned, disrupting my whole gameplan.

Arctina is still great, but I’m not. I don’t play the game as regularly now either so rust is a factor. But then my involvement went from mere player to active contributor. I had enjoyed piecing together what I could of the game’s story through the various win quotes for different matches, so I was eager when a demo of the story mode was added in a patch.

As I played that first glimpse of the story mode, I spotted some typos, took screenshots of them, and later sent them to the developer with suggested corrections. He then asked if I wanted to be the editor for the game since I was already playing that role, and I said yes. The bulk of my work was on the story mode, but I also looked at the win quotes and even suggested some myself.

Like the rest of the game, Merfight’s narrative has changed course in different ways during early access. Arctina in particular saw some changes, going from a conflicted servant of Rho to outright hating him. She now walks a fine line of being both a tragic character herself and, to put it bluntly, a total bitch. I mean that in a way where I’m excited for people to discover just how cruel she can get.

Of course there was an even greater change to the format of the narrative itself. At first Merfight was planned to have one massive branching story, the planned number of scenes was somewhere in the 200s or 300s. This was hard to track with all the branching paths, and the developer felt it had been started too late in the process for its size. So it got reworked.

The Waves of Fate are Crashing

To describe the Merfight world in one word, I’d call it damaged. Conveying just how badly it was damaged has been one of the challenges with the game, as there’s a whole mythical narrative to get into about the destruction of all land and air based life followed by the exile of ocean based life to the land.

Due to the wildly branching nature of the story there isn’t a scene where the whole ancient backstory is neatly described, instead it has to be pieced together. It’s a bit like a puzzle in that sense.

Setting the immediate scene of the game itself, in order to prevent a repeat of the afore mentioned calamity, a monarch reigning over each element is required. The time for the Arctic King, Rho, to surrender his position to his divinely appointed successor has come. But there are various schemes in place to interfere with this process.

Each character has their own story to play through where they get to be the main character, with two fights that will cause the story to go in different directions based on certain conditions, usually if you win with a super move or not. While there’s no unlockable characters, there are some unlockable stages and costumes to earn through story mode.

No matter what character you pick, you’ll end up facing every other fighter as them in story mode. Nobody is left in the corner with only a few insignificant lines in story mode like in some other fighting games.

The best character to start with is the one that interests you most, but if you want a suggestion, I’d say begin with Gigi, Atlas, or Odon. Gigi is an outsider to most of the drama between characters so she works well to get acquainted with the basic dynamics and setup of the story. Odon and Atlas are more intimately connected to the plot while still being somewhat conventional protagonists.

You can also piece together parts of the game’s narrative with the win quotes in other modes before doing story mode, which is what I did when I first played the game back when story mode wasn’t even implemented yet.

One narrative theme I’ve observed is that most of the roster feel trapped in some way by their circumstances, with many of their actions coming down to trying to escape that, whether it’s literally being sealed in a certain location, a parasitic infection, or a sense of duty. In many ways it’s a story about people fighting to live the life they want instead of what they were dealt by their circumstances.

Heaven or Shell

That’s all for now. You can purchase Merfight on various PC storefronts, namely Steam (where it’s on sale), Itch.io, and Gamejolt. Buying it does not put any money in my pocket, but I would like to see the game succeed because I genuinely enjoy it. There’s a demo version with a rotating selection of a fourth of the cast and access to all multiplayer modes if you want to give it a try.

Also, the community for the game will be out in full force today to celebrate the release, with a variety of events planned for today and tomorrow. I’ll be appearing on a livestream at 5PM EST (may end up delayed to 5:30) with the voice of the game’s announcer, where we’ll make a tier list for the game.