Shadow Fight Arena - State of the Game
[p]Dear Shadow Fight Arena players, [/p][p]We welcome you to the first celebration of Shadow Fight Month and want to admit that only now can we truly mark a key milestone in the development of Shadow Fight Arena. Over all the previous years, we've experimented a lot. [/p][p]We launched the game with a roster of heroes and the 3v3 mode, the first version of the talent system, and basic progression. After that, we expanded the fighting component, improved the progression system, added PvE, and laid the foundation for social interaction within the game. [/p][p]The fighting experience in Shadow Fight Arena is built on the hero roster, their abilities and talents, the core modes, and the matchmaking system. We’ve added new, more thoughtfully designed heroes (believe us, development processes for Shang the Monk and Raikichi were worlds apart), introduced the 1v1 mode and friend battles, and reworked several older heroes along with the talent system.[/p][p]Progression in the game used to be quite demanding, which created intense pressure in every match. We added events, quests (and reworked them many times afterward), story chapters and boss fights, as well as marathons — all to ensure that your progress depends not only on the outcomes of high-pressure matches, but on any contribution you make to the game.[/p][p]For social interaction, it was important to give every player a way to stand out — whether through self-expression with skins, taunts, stances, and victory poses, or by showcasing their skills in public profiles, match replays, and leaderboards.[/p][p]In addition, we’ve been improving the overall quality of the game, making numerous upgrades to its technical foundation, controls, interface, and user experience. We also added character animations in the lobby, combat voiceovers, and much more.[/p][p]Yes, when you play constantly, it may seem like everything changes very slowly. But if you look back, Shadow Fight Arena in 2020 and Arena today are completely different stages of the project. [/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]And yes, believe us — even if you played back in 2020, you simply don’t remember the level of turtling, abusive tactics, connection issues caused by the lack of rollbacks in our game, and so much more.[/p][p][/p][p]After the Steam release, we can confidently say that Shadow Fight Arena is the only cross-play fighting game, and we are now at a point where we can start thinking about the game’s future. But before that, let's take a look at the current state of the game and what will allow us to maintain and improve its quality: [/p][h3]We create high-quality heroes, not half-baked ones[/h3][p]Initially, we assembled all heroes from various pieces taken from Shadow Fight 3—we used existing characters and fighting-style animations and upgraded them to meet our game's requirements back in 2020. This allowed us to have more heroes ready at launch and to unveil more heroes during the first years after release. Later, we realized that this approach was a dead end, especially if we were aiming for PC, and we decided that the quality of new heroes had to be higher. You may have noticed that, starting with the Monkey King, the heroes released looked better and more complex, both visually and in terms of movesets. Raikichi and Nonna represent an even more significant step forward. We want to release new heroes with diverse fighting styles, bring older heroes up to a higher standard of quality, and continuously raise the bar for that quality.
[/p][h3]We love the legendary heroes of Shadow Fight, but they're not the only things we add[/h3][p]We know how much you love the legendary heroes of Shadow Fight, and we love them just as much, so we will definitely keep adding them again and again. Now let us explain our approaches to hero development. The first approach is selecting the most iconic heroes of the universe, considering how to bring them into Shadow Fight Arena, and then creating these heroes from scratch while striving to preserve their legendary image. At the same time, as we mentioned earlier, our own standards for visual detail and moveset quality continue to rise. Understanding our responsibility to our legacy and to players, we cannot rush the release of new iconic heroes from Shadow Fight 2 and Shadow Fight 3 — we take as much time as necessary to do them right. Additionally, the most requested characters often have movesets similar to already existing heroes, which is why our second approach is to release heroes that have never appeared in the Shadow Fight universe before. Here, we have more creative freedom in designing movesets and visual styles, and we can schedule their release ahead of the next iconic hero to introduce something new and unique to the game. So, when you see a new hero released who isn’t on the list of the community’s most requested characters, it’s not because we aren’t working on those heroes — it’s because we want to diversify the current gameplay more vividly. Our goal is to release exciting heroes from our universe more frequently, so you can meet a wide variety of characters and fighting styles, rather than sticking only to the familiar and iconic.
[/p][h3]The game should be accessible to players everywhere in the world[/h3][p]At the moment, many players in China are not able to fully enjoy the game, so we are preparing Shadow Fight Arena for publication on local platforms. We plan a full release in China in 2026. In addition to China, there are several other regions where access to our game needs to be ensured, and we are treating this as a high priority.Â
[/p][h3]We will engage more with the community[/h3][p]You may have already noticed some messages and voice chats on Discord from a certain joemorkv. He was previously involved in the launch of Shadow Fight Arena but later had to leave the team. Now he's back and will help us establish a dialogue with the community. We will communicate more with players, gather additional feedback and show how we work with it, host joint gaming sessions between players and the development team, and organize community events. [/p][p]With this, we'll conclude the section on the current state of Shadow Fight Arena and move on to our plans for next year. The main component of Shadow Fight Arena is PvP, and the key contributions here come from new heroes, ranked matches and modes, seasons, PvP events, and friendly battles. As we mentioned earlier, we are working on heroes—one of them has recently moved from the research stage to the start of work on visual style, moveset, and animations. There is still a lot of work ahead, so the release of the next hero will take a while. Regarding ranked battles, we've noticed that, instead of serving as the main competitive component, they have become somewhat stagnant: few players are actively fighting for ranking, and many simply collect rewards passively with different heroes. This is partly due to how Insignias are distributed and the lack of incentives to compete within a season. Now, you will be able to spend Insignias as you earn them during the season, without having to wait until the end of the month to purchase something new. We want players to be motivated to climb the rankings, so we’re redesigning the seasons to make higher positions more rewarding, and we’re adding a seasonal leaderboard to earn additional Insignias. The rating reset system at the end of each season will remain unchanged. [/p][p]As part of our work on friendly battles, we will be developing the social aspect of the project, and the main element here is, of course, clans. We are still at the beginning of developing clans within the game, and our primary focus is to build on the experience of other projects where clans have already been implemented, so that we can incorporate existing player feedback into our development. But we want to start forming clans together with players even before release, as well as collaborate with existing clans. We will create a clan ecosystem within our social networks, primarily on Discord. We will support official clan competitions and reward the best, and then gradually integrate everything into Shadow Fight Arena. And, of course, it’s very important to visually stand out from other players for the PvP and social components of the game. We see how much players love legendary skins, and we want to create them more often. This will also allow us to test some cool in-game features. In addition to skins, we want to experiment with weapons. We take fair gameplay very seriously, so the details of these experiments will be presented later and discussed together with you. [/p][p]And of course, we continue working on the overall quality of the game. The Story improvements we announced are currently in development, and they are primarily aimed at the role of this mode within Shadow Fight Arena. Stories largely serve as an introduction to the universe, so we want to better integrate them into the overall gameplay loop for new players, while specifically focusing on improving the fighting aspects for veterans. [/p][p]And of course, information for PC players: we are carefully reading your feedback and preparing a set of in-game improvements.
[/p][p]That's all for today. We want to thank you for playing Shadow Fight Arena. Stay tuned for more blog posts—a blog about the future of the entire Shadow Fight franchise will be coming soon![/p]