So you see, we used to have this plan. We were going to take some time using what we had learned to, ya know, revamp our core game mechanics, tweak our animation engine, finish our apps, and add layers upon layers of polish. In short, we were going to make graFighters ready to launch. The plan was to have this happen within 3 months.
Sometimes things don’t go according to plan.
On Tuesday morning CNN posted a video about graFighters they had filmed at SXSW. We remembered filming the video and had been in contact with them, but we were not sure when/if the video would air and to what extent. We really didn’t know what to expect from it.
That same Tuesday, I awoke and noticed our user number had risen significantly from the previous day. It wasn’t until about an hour later we found the video on CNN. The video was followed by an article which included a link and eventually ended up on the homepage of CNN.com.
Our server quickly hit a bottleneck due to the traffic, yet as we scrambled to fix the problem (hooray NewRelic!) the story got picked up by Kotaku. Over the next few days we watched as we signed up well over 100 users an hour as graFighters spread throughout the interwebs.
CNN
http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/11/grafighters-a-game-that-brings-your-drawings-to-life/
Kotaku
http://kotaku.com/grafighters/
PocketNext
http://www.pocketnext.com/news/grafighters-plucked-from-the-kickstarter-graveyard/
We even got a “review” of grafighters from the Portuguese blog Baixaki!
http://baixaki.com.br/download/grafighters.htm
At the time of writing this blog post, graFighters has over
10,000+ Characters uploaded
60,000+ Fights
The response has been awesome, and we are truly amazed at the positivity of our user embrace from using a half done product. Even in its current beta state, you guys have managed to create some amazing things on graFighters over the past few days.
What’s to come?
A New Game
A whole new set of game mechanics. Each move your character will perform is up to you. Each move has a value and type associated with it along with a chance of an epic bonus.
The Marketplace
Finally a place to spend all your hard earned Ink. Upgrade your moves, add weapons, powers, and even buy/sell new characters.
Mobile App
Full featured iPhone app (with Android to follow) that lets you do everything you can currently do on the site, plus more.
An embedabble module for your character that can be posted anywhere, kinda like this, but it will allow them to do cool moves. (If it’s not loading for you click here and it should load, clearly it’s a work in progress )
That’s just the beginning.
How you can help!
We have heard from a bunch of you that you want to help shape this game. How would you like to create your own moves and level backgrounds?
Download the Level Template PSD
Download the Moves Template FLA (Maya file coming soon)
Move Maker Template File (Requires Flash CS5 or later)
Send all game contributions to dave(at)grafighters(dot)com.
Plain and simple, we want to make the game that gets you excited about playing. We want to be able to bring the crazy things in your imagination to life and collaboratively build them a vast and amazing world to live in.
We know graFighters is still very much in beta and not ready for mass adoption. There are tons of things you are probably wondering about the current game. If you have any ideas or bugs to report be sure to post them to our User Voice page here.
http://grafighters.uservoice.com/forums/108191-ideas
And now what we have is some friendly Q&A.
Why does my character get the stats he gets?
Our Cornelius Algorithm mainly looks at the shape of each part of your character. It is judged on Shape, Spikeyness, Curvature, Mass, Taper etc. Right now the Algorithm is low on strength and high on speed. Don’t worry too much about your score because this will all change. We will be doing a full blog post about it soon.
Why does my character lose? How can I make him better?
It’s not your character’s fault, we swear. Think of this as their training days. It will be over soon, and you will be one step closer to world domination.
What is ink for and why do I want it?
Ink is good. You will be able to spend it soon on things in the game to make everything better. Better start saving!
When can I control my fighter?
Soon, let us know what type of games you want to play with your fighter as well as where you prefer to play them on our user voice page. Side Scroller, FPS, RPG, RTS? Xbox? iOS? Android? OMG!!! All the above!?!?
Why does the Android app crash alot?
There are so many devices! We will be putting out an update shortly that fixes the crashes.
Thank you to everybody for your ridiculous amounts of support.