Mattrified Games Blog

It's been about two months since I wrote and posted this on my Patreon.  I was going to publish publicly a few weeks later, but there was some discourse over the future of offline events, so I decided to reread and wait a bit.  Unfortunately, that wait turned into forgetting; so with a few revisions from that Patreon post, here are my thoughts on how showcasing a game at EVO went back in early August of 2023. Besides Battle High and MerFight, I've worked on a several other indie fighting games.  Probably the biggest and most ambitious is Drag Her, a 2D game focused primarily on real-life drag queens and kings.  It's camp, it's stupid, and it's aiming to just be silly and fun.  It's still a fighting game though, and this year, the team was invited to showcase the game at EVO, the biggest fighting game tournament in the US -- possibly the world.  Overall, I think it went well, but I have some thoughts on EVO, its indie showcase, and more.   The Trip ...

This post was original written and posted to my website in August 2021.  Despite this, I feel these are still relevant; I also added an additional section, Uphill Battle #6. So you want to make an indie fighting game? Well, first off, good luck! Indie games are already a tough, competitive market to break into, and the fighting game genre is not the easiest to target. I'm the last person to want to discourage you though. I'm making a fighting game with merfolk in it almost entirely by myself. That being said, I wanted to write about what I see as difficulties and uphill battles that I and others are most likely going to face when creating -- but more importantly, releasing -- indie games in this genre as well as some things they could do to help. Note, these thoughts are my opinion, so take them with a grain of Pink Himalayan salt . I'll upgrade my opinion from normal salt to this.  Why not? Uphill Battle 1: Big & Old Competition I mentioned competition ...

  Early this year, I had the opportunity to showcase MerFight at MagFest (Music and Games Festival) as part of the MagFest Indie Videogames Showcase (MIVS.)  MagFest is a very fun event, and being able to show the game off was a great experience.  The last time I had been to MagFest was 6 years ago to show off my other fighting game, Battle High 2 A+.  I wanted to write a few things about my experience as I had a lot of anxiety going into it originally, and had I written good notes when I did it 6 years ago, I probably wouldn't have been so stressed. Submission & Preparation Before getting to the actual show, I had to submit MerFight for approval.  This was a relatively smooth process, requiring a playable build as well as some screenshots and video, many of which I had since MerFight has been in early access for about 9 months at this point. I think the only thing that stuck out from my submission was some of the judge's feedback.  One comment particul...