The game is in essence Dance Dance Revolution with martial arts dummy and anime battles. The dummy will be placed in front of a TV screen, short enough to not obstruct the players’ view. Players interact with the dummy by striking its 2 arms and leg, as well as punching the chest when given the opportunity. These strikes will be picked up by the dummy’s built in sensors and correspond to parrying enemy attacks while in game, as players navigate what’s essentially a cinematic first person music video with a certain degree of interactivity. At certain points of the level, players will be given an opportunity to retaliate after blocking a special attack, allowing them to strike back at the enemy by punching the dummy’s chest. A special retaliation window is presented at the end of each level, where players are given the window of opportunity to finish the enemy off with a barrage of punches. The game consists of multiple levels, each featuring its own music, enemy and corresponding difficulty. The levels are all scripted, and players need to hit specific points of the dummy at specific times in order to finish a level. However, the game does not tell players how to hit them, allowing players to develop their own styles freely. The game is very much inspired by anime and cinema, and will pay homages to popular franchises such as “The Matrix” where a portion of a level can be played using a single arm, just like Neo and Agent Smith. Well, what else can I say… It’s SHOWDOWN time.
SHOWDOWN was awarded Best Art Direction at the Gotland Game Conference 2024.
Team Dreamers’ Guild:
- Jintian Meng
- Nils Eriksson
- Mikael Söderman
- Yunhan Wang
- Emilia Nyström
- Guo Yu
