Blade Symphony has come from humble beginnings as a mod to a full-fledged game. We’re proud to bring you a preview of an extremely early build of the game. All fully visible names are from Nerd Age contributors.
From the makers of the Dystopia mod, Blade Symphony is quickly becoming an extremely polished game. While still in early beta, the combat flows very well in a style similar to the Jedi Knight series.
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The action is fast and frantic, a departure from many Source games. It’s like a third person fighter, similar to Bushido Blade in practice. It’s a very different taste that we haven’t seen in fighters or Source mods in quite some time.
With that we’d really like to thank Puny Human for having an interview with us. We will be speaking with Blade Symphony team members:
- [urinal-cake] Michael “urinal-cake” Sanders – Studio Director/Lead Producer – urinal-cake started as part of the Dystopia community, slowly moving up to fill vacancies created as members of the original Team Dystopia left for new ventures and ultimately taking charge of Team Dystopia.
- [Flux] Michael Chang aka Flux – Lead Developer on Blade Symphony – Flux is the designer, programmer, and creator of Project Berimbau which is now Blade Symphony.
- [JW] Jeffrey “mindstormmaster” Wong – Web Developer, Sysadmin –
mindstormmaster created the Dystopia Stats and is also leading
development on Blade Symphony stats. He now manages the servers that support Puny Human website and internal development tools. - [AN]Paul “AngryNerd” Nunes – Sound/Video guy – together AngryNerd and Sverek create the audible part of Dystopia and Blade Symphony.
Scholar of Nerd Age:As some readers may know, the people at your company produced the Dystopia mod for HL2. Did you carry anything over, either stylistically or in gameplay, from this mod?
[urinal-cake] I think, stylistically, some of the motivation behind doing Blade Symphony was that it could be the antithesis of Dystopia in many ways. What makes dystopian literature and media so appealing is that it has a drab and bleak tint to it, and we respect that. However, living in that shade for years spurred many ideas creatively that we have put into motion on Blade Symphony. You could say that we had built a box for which to think outside of.
Gameplay varies greatly in every product you work on, Blade Symphony is no exception. We wanted it to be a step back from the qualities of our previous product. Third-person, as opposed to first-person. Swords instead of ballistics and explosives. Moving with these features has allowed us to learn a great deal more than if we were to make just another first person shooter.
NA: Tell us a bit about your influences. While we know about Jedi Knight, I was wondering if any of you had played Bushido Blade?
[Flux]
I did some pretty extensive research on what’s currently out there and
the many attempts other studios made on similar genre. Definitely
checked out Bushido Blade of course, it was one of those games that
people immediately gravitate towards.
Surprisingly, Kingdom Hearts was an influence as well. There are certain fights in that game where it felt like a really good duel scenario, such as the
showdown between Sora and Riku (spoiler?) near the end of that game.
NA:Some members of your team have been quite excited about the competitive potential for this game. Do you think we could someday see major tournaments for Blade Symphony? On the same note, has your company thought about sponsoring some tournaments when this gets going?
[JW]
My main contribution to Blade Symphony (and Dystopia) has been the
global, persistent stats system. I think there’s huge potential for
using this to create a competitive community. One idea we’ve thrown
around is a tournament mode where people could compete in a large
(64/128 person) single-elimination tournament that spans multiple weeks.
The stats system could do all the work of seeding players, notifying
opponents, recording results, and making the bracket visible on the web.
NA: Can you tell me anything you will be doing to increase the depth of the 1v1 gameplay, from blocking to loadout selection?
[Flux]
We’re literally increasing depth by adding jumping to the game.
Previously in our test versions we took out jumping to narrow the scope
of design because we’d have to deal with making attacks that aim upwards
or allow the player to defend on more than a 180 degree plane. Now the
player has to deal with a full 360 degrees of combat when in the air,
though we’ll need to address usability issues that comes with.
To increase breadth, your character and sword selection will define what
works and won’t work in your strategy. Some characters’ attacks are slow
to begin but become viciously fast once they begin landing. Some swords
allow you to control space better by granting you more knock-back, or
give you more chances to combo by having less knock-back.
NA:From what we have seen, AngryNerd (Paul) is going in to some fantastic detail for the audio. Can he tell us anything that stands out about the sound in this game?
[AN]
First of all I have to say that the bulk of the audio work for Blade
Symphony has been done by Sverek (Alexander) and his approach has been
to fill the game to the brim with beauty, variety and life. Tom Stoffel
has come on board for music composition and his work has blown us away
and given a fresh life to the game. My approach has been to follow the
richness that the visual artists developed and drench the player equally
beautiful audio. Ultimately I’m aiming to achieve the kind of audio
that supports gameplay in practical and holistic psychological ways. Not
many people will play the game and go “WOW COOL SOUND”, but I hope
people will close a session satisfied by the fine gameplay we’ve
developed and have a lingering sence of satisfaction from the experience
of beautiful visual and aural art.
NA: What does or what will the Puny Human team be doing to encourage modders?
[urinal-cake]
Our options may be a little bit limited as far as modding is concerned,
but we’ve always made it a point to share third party content with the
rest of our community. More often than not, we’ve even made it a part of
our product.
You mentioned unique moves for each character, can you spoil any of these
without spoiling a character? But hey, don’t worry if you have to spoil a
character. We won’t mind.
[Flux]
So one character I’m animating right now is Phalanx, who’s the red
supersoldier guy with the glowing visor. His “fast” stance is based on
Wu Shu sword fighting, which ends up looking like a whirlwind of stabs,
leaping forward and backward, with the left hand behind his back. This
gives Phalanx the ability to stab and then retract back to a safe
position, all in one move.
We’re also giving each character a special move. This is still in design
stage, but we’re planning to give Phalanx a short range teleport that
works off of a cooldown. It’s going to make Phalanx an extremely
versatile fighter as he can blink behind an attacking player or out of
range of an attack. Opponents fighting against Phalanx will need to
predict what direction they’ll attempt to teleport and strike there.
NA: What sets Blade Symphony apart from similar games on similar engines? As in, what is the unique selling point that you want buyers to know about this game?
[Flux]
There’s a lot games out there with third person fighting, crazy looking
moves, effects, and dramatic aerial combat, but none of those games are
multi-player skill based one-on-one focused games. Blade Symphony is
going to be that game.
NA: What developments (games, mods, etc.) are in the future for Puny Human?
[JW]
As people passionate about games, we always have ideas for new games.
We aspire to make Puny Human into a game studio, so we’re not stopping
with just Dystopia and Blade Symphony. A few ideas have stuck around,
but it’s still way too early to discuss anything specific. Our focus
right now is to get Blade Symphony funded, finished, and released.
NA: Do you believe that Kickstarter will be essential in your future developments?
[urinal-cake]
Kickstarter, for Puny Human, has been exactly that — it has been our
“on” switch. With the wonderful support from the public, we hope that
this can send a ripple effect through our team’s future. By selling
Blade Symphony, we intend to fund our next project, which will fund the
product after that, and the cycle will repeat.
NA:How do you reconcile being pure evil with valuing your fans? Will they be drones in your evil galactic empire some day?
[urinal-cake]
While my impersonations aren’t always the best, it’s important to show
people that you’re not a bunch of misguided, depressing worker drones.
If we’re not having fun, we’re either doing it wrong or we shouldn’t be
doing it at all. However, if I could drive a Super Star Destroyer around
the galaxy, I need only to locate the portion of the contract which
requires my signature..
NA: Can you give any advice for teams similar to yours who have released mods and someday want to make it big?
[Flux] We’ll get back to you on that. BRB trying to make it big.
This game looks pretty interesting. It looks like it’s just going to get better as things progress on though.
Its worthy to note that the screenshots are of a build of 5 months ago, alot has happened since then.
Our evil galactic empire is growing more and more every day. Play our games, drones! 😉 <3