Finding beauty in something simple is a relatively quick task. You take a look and almost instantaneously recognize whether or not there’s something there that you value. This is why a question like “Do you like paella?” can be difficult to answer for some people. “Well, I do. But the rice has to be al dente. And I enjoy chicken, but I rarely eat shrimp. Plus, I’m not a big fan of bell peppers. So it depends.” Ask someone if they like oranges, however, and they can pretty much give you a definitive answer on the spot.
Iron Galaxy Studios’ Divekick is an example of a 2D fighting game that dared to be simple. And I think if you were to walk up to anyone who played Divekick at PAX East and asked them if they thought it was fun, you’d a “yes” one-hundred percent of the time.
Instead of complex fighting mechanics, Divekick’s mechanic is that every character has one move — the dive kick (think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game). Iron Galaxy Studios takes it another step further by giving both players just one hit point, making each bout incredibly short. As a result, you get a 2D fighter that’s compelling enough to gather a large crowd of PAX attendees and have them yelling and cheering as if they were in the crowd when Daigo made his famous comeback against Justin Wong at EVO 2004.
The game only has two buttons: jump straight up or jump back. Pressing either in the air will execute a dive kick, sending your character on a diagonal trajectory towards the ground.
The game also comes with the standard fighting game mechanics that carefully add an extra dimension to this already simple formula. You can customize your character to be able to either jump higher, dive kick faster, or fill their super meter more rapidly (a full super meter speeds your character up). Kicking a player in the head in one round causes a Head Shot which makes the player dizzy for the first few seconds of the following bout.
Each character has their own style of dive kick that lends diversity to the experience. When asked about balance, lead designer Adam Heart said that balance is something you definitely want in a fighting game, but you “try to go for fun first and worry about balance after.” He ensured us that his team has put in a lot of time testing each character to make sure it’s possible to win with everybody.
Divekick is an incredibly fascinating example of a fighting game and is an experience that you have to look out for later this year. Iron Galaxy Studios was brave enough to take a genre that normally consists of games that require hard work and research to compete at the highest level and strips it down to its most basic form. What you get is a 2D fighting game that’s is as thrilling as it is accessible. It’s one of those rare “lightning in a bottle” games that has you saying, “Okay, okay. Rematch! Rematch!”
Divekick is scheduled to be out on PSN for this summer and is on Steam Greenlight.
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