Team Mugshot
Rami Sihvo – Design, 3D
Jari Hirvikoski – 3D and animations.
Esa Nord – Code

Tavern Brawlers

The Idea

Tavern Brawlers tells the story what happens when bouncer tells ‘you are not allowed in here.’ The core of it is a turn-based fighting game using the same dice system than Rajakatse pen&paper RPG. Indeed designing the system was the easiest part of the game.

The most successful Finnish Fantasy IP

Rajakatse Fantasia is one of ‘Top 100 Finnish Games’ that are showcased in Finnish Game Museum. With the permission of the organization, we set out to do game on most successful domestical fantasy IP. Rajakatse is LARP organization, LARP meaning Live-Action Role-Play. Their events are tavern roleplay, hence why the tavern brawl idea came to mind.

 

Art design

The art style was chosen to be more like World of Warcraft like a cartoon with realistic twists. The main body of art and animations was produced mainly from Jari Hirvi, with Rami Sihvo  doing the additional items to levels. With the final build we noticed everything being quite brown. Well, another thing to fix for the next version.

 

Development

We came back rapidly from the grand plans and settled to make it level (tavern) based fighting game. Just dice rolling is annoying, so we added monster infighting and breakable items mechanics. You can knock people back, sending them colliding each other and NPCs starting fight amongst themselves. Esa was hard-pressed to code the game by himself, in retrospect another code would have made his job easier. Same applies with another graphics designer – could have helped a lot. That said, we see a good future with the game and will continue the project in the future.