Two Strikes News

We've been 𝐝𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 to tell you this news! 👹

Two Strikes duels will happen in person for the first time beyond the seas, all the way to Los Angeles next December 8th at the 11th edition of Day Of The Devs!

We want to thank Double Fine Iam8bit for the opportunity!

On other notes, we are still working on the final game modes and two new characters. More news about that soon!

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another installment of Road to Release, the DevLogs series of Two Strikes! Today we pick up right where we left off last time, speaking again with the mastermind behind the work, the one and only Danilo Barbosa! Today is about delving a little deeper into the setting of Two Strikes, so let’s dive in!


Hey hey Danilo, how’s it going? What do you say we skip the introductions this time and go straight for the jugular; Why did you base Two Strikes specifically in the Sengoku period? Danilo: The Sengoku period in Japan is one of the most convoluted periods in Japan's history. From the country's unification to the cradle of many legends like Goemon and Yasuke. Samurai still ruled and the common folks suffered under endless wars.

And where does the Shinigami Tournament come from? What is its motivation? Danilo: The Shinigami tournament is an idea from our lead artist, Gerson Oshiro. Big fan of Japanese darker artists and culture, he wanted to bring this to the game and his idea was to basically kill everybody in the game for that to happen. Even the characters from the first game. At the time I thought it was quite fitting and explained why they kept fighting even though they're being killed every 15 seconds. The Shinigami's motivation changed throughout the years. Initially started being just the cliché that was depicted in many manga and anime, from the god of death being bored and looking for some souls to torment, but nowadays is more about bringing more conflict and despair to not only the lives of the warriors in the tournament, but for all those that cross their paths.

Wow! And tell us, what are the references for the artistic style? Danilo: 7 Samurai is the ultimate reference, but Jojo's bizarre adventure and Darkerstalker are also great influences and to compliment all that, a little bit of Tarantino.

You mentioned that the Sengoku period gave birth to many legends, tell us, are the characters of Two Strikes based on real figures? Danilo: Yes, Goemon and Yasuke are the characters that were based on real historical figures in the Sengoku era. Of course, our lead artist created his own version of them, and we are crazy to tell their stories in the new mode we are working on at the moment.

What were the main references, both visual and playable, to land the message? Danilo: Since our main reference is movies, we wanted to keep the gameplay completely without UI. The main reason behind it is to keep the player involved in what they were seeing, a duel. In the movies, there's no life bar for Samurai 1 and Samurai 2. So, if we wanted to create a game that could succeed in creating a movie + game experience this has to be gone.
But of course, removing it and expecting players to simply accept it is difficult and confusing when talking about game design. So, to solve some of the issues, we added some visual cues to help the players understand every that was happening and that it could add to the feeling of a duel. So, for example, instead of a life bar, we added the blood spurts for players with one hit already. This way they know they are about to die for any strike, they have to be careful.

Any character idea you haven't been able to carry out? Danilo: Coming from my experience in One Strike, one of the things I learned for games with one or two hits is that ranged characters are incredibly complicated to balance, but even this limitation got solved with some ingenuity, making them release projectiles that don't cover the whole screen, like Goemon.

How have you tied the gameplay of the characters to themselves? Danilo: This is a difficult process. Designing a character and implementing it to be able to make it feel right with his movement set and what he offers to the players is probably the biggest challenge that designing a fighting game has to offer. My biggest struggle was definitely with Yasuke. I ended up designing him to be a very defensive character, so his move set followed that. The problem was that he was bigger and stronger than most characters, why would he be holding back on his brute force if he could overpower the others? That's when I decided to use some discarded animations to make his gameplay very aggressive and change his special ability to be a parry breaker.

Why new characters compared to One Strike? Danilo: Because I wanted our lead artist to have more freedom with the designs especially because One Strike designs aren’t the best, I created them and I'm no artist. I just asked him for a version of Kenji and Tomoe, my favourite characters from the first game.

And tell us, are the fighting stages based on real places? Danilo: Some places are. Kenji's scenario has Mount Fuji in the background. Ayai's scenario is also a reference to an old Ainu village. There are many more, but you have to play the story mode to discover, hehe.

What are the main references for the stages? Danilo: The biggest references are definitely old samurai movie posters. If you look closer, they even have some old marks, like they are old.

And finally, let’s talk a little about the music! Tell us, what are the main musical references? Danilo: The sound designer Benimaru used especially an instrument called the Sakuhashi to create a unique sound "pallet" for the game. It is delicate but can also be powerful and exciting. Quite perfect for the game. I didn't really have a specific source. When we initially started, Benimaru, Gerson, and I chatted heavily about the styles of Samurai Champloo, Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill's composer), and Sekiro. I suppose those formed a basis.

Well as always, thank you very much, Danilo for answering all our inquiries, and thank you very much to all of you who have read up to here. Make sure to follow us on our social networks (@EntaltoStudios and @dmbarbosa1) to stay updated on all the news related to Two Strikes, and see you in the next installment of Road to Release: The DevLog Series; Part 4 – Born to Fight!

Hello, fierce fighters! For today's release notes, we have some really good news.

Translations
Adding in-game translations for French, Italian, German, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (BR), Portuguese (PT), Spanish, Swedish.. and very soon simplified Chinese!

And that also goes to our Steam page!

SFXs completely remixed.
The game's sound designer Beni finished mixing ALL of the game SFXs and we basically updated 190+ of them, wow! The game sounds and feels so much better with the changes! I'm looking forward to hearing your impressions on it!

Continuing on the path we blazed last week, today we talk again with the mind behind the game, the one and only Danilo Barbosa, and take a look back in time to see where we've come from!

Hi Danilo! How you doing? Ready once again? Danilo: Very good! Excited to talk a little bit more about the history of Retro Reactor Games!


Great, let's get started then; for those who don't know, Two Strikes is the sequel to Retro Reactor's previous game, One Strike, a game that was incredibly popular at the time especially on Nintendo Switch. Tell us, Danilo, what are the main differences between Two Strikes and One Strike?

Danilo: Well, One Strike was where it all started. The idea for the game came after watching the movie 7 Samurai by Akira Kurosawa and it was an attempt to translate one of the scenes into a game, which wasn't easy at all, it took me 8 months of hard work at night, as I always made the games in my spare time, until today. It was also my first commercial game, and I did it completely on my own. Not because I liked working like that, but because I had no choice. Nobody believed in a kid who only had ideas. If I wanted to finish my game, I would have to do it myself. So, One Strike is an ultra-casual game with pixel art, 8-16bits, that only one hit finishes the fight. It was released with only 6 initial characters and later went up to 10.


Why did you decide to make these changes?

Danilo: The success of One Strike was quite important for all the changes that were made in the second one, mainly because it allowed me to fund artists, musicians, testers, voice actors and so on, so the production level went up exponentially.
Also, speaking of gameplay, I already had the experience from the first game, so I knew more or less what would work and what wouldn't work, for example, characters with projectiles; in One Strike it was really hard for me to balance the only character that had those skills because, of course, in a game where you can kill with one hit, an infinite range attack is quite powerful.
Other important changes also happened because of the community that came from the first game and actively participated in the development of the second game, thanks to them, I was able to test ideas and make design changes more quickly.
And finally the main gameplay change: different from One Strike which was ultra-casual, to make Two Strikes a medium-casual game because important things of fighting game designs were lost with the simplicity of the first game like the backflips, and moments of tension that are built up little by little in each duel.
 

What can a One Strike veteran expect when playing Two Strikes for the first time?

Danilo: They will be blown away by what they see at first glance, but after that, they will feel at home. Both games provide the same core gameplay which puts the players in a duel. Your life is at stake, the tension is the same when you are playing Street Fighter and both fighters can die with a single hit. In other words, the game starts, and the tension is already high. What changes is that to get that hit, there are other tools, and to avoid that hit, there are also other tools, so the game feels similar, but it's not, it's much more strategic but it stays fast and tense.


Are there any characters that travel from the first game to the second? Why those in particular and not the others?

Danilo: Tomoe and Kenji are the only ones I decided to carry over from One Strike to the second game. The reason was because the lead artist wanted independence with the character designs and being a great artist, it seemed like a good idea. The second reason was because I wanted the freedom to create new types of characters without just copying the first game. But nothing prevents me from bringing more characters from the first game in the future, with their updated and unique design for Two Strikes.


One thing that really stands out about Two Strikes is the amazing artwork, what is the reason behind the evolution from pixel art to the hand drawn style?

Danilo: Initially, I was looking for an artist to make the second game also in pixel art. My studio was always focused on making retro experiences, but as the graphic quality of the first game was a limiting factor for it to also be a success on consoles with more powerful graphics engines, I was open to try something in HD, that's when I met the lead artist, Gerson. I had the opportunity to work with him briefly on another project that I didn't finish, but I already admired his art. So, the decision was made to have the opportunity to work with someone like Gerson who would definitely do something special.


Is there anything from One Strike that you would have liked to include in Two Strikes, but it wasn't possible?

Danilo: Mechanically nothing, but I would definitely like to bring more characters to Two Strikes in the future.
 

From the launch of One Strike until now it has been almost 6 years, what has been the most difficult thing you have encountered in the development of Two Strikes during these years?

Danilo: Definitely running a team. Although they all worked as freelancers, organising their tasks, accompanying them, making changes, knowing how to interact with their problems and availability was quite difficult. It took me a long time to understand how to solve problems and how to improve our process. But there is no way to do a project like that, with that quality and the help of good people, so it was a process that even though it was very difficult, it was a great learning experience for me, and I would not go back.


It's probably too early to ask, but... seeing the evolution from One Strike to Two Strikes, what do you think you would add for a "Three Strikes"?

Danilo: 3D hahaha. I wouldn't make another 2D fighting game. Animations are expensive, take a lot of time to make and once you have them, adjusting them to the game is often impossible without making more changes, meaning you have to be very creative with what you have to make it all work.


As always, thank you so much for your time, Danilo, and thank you so much to all of you who read all the way through!

Be sure to follow us on our social networks (@EntaltoStudios and @dmbarbosa1) to keep up with all the news related to Two Strikes, and we'll see you in the next installment of Road to Release: The DevLog Series; Part 3 - The Bloody Sengoku.

The new fighter is available right now to play! Two Strikes' seventh character just arrived at the after-death fields of battle. The Shinigami couldn't be happier!

[h2]Who is Miyo?[/h2]


Miyo originally did not intend to become a swordsmith. She originally wanted to join the Shinto priesthood. Due to the war, this proved to not be possible. As an emergency backup, Miyo ended up working with her father, swordsmithing. This went on for several years, and they slowly dragged themselves out of poverty through superior craftsmanship, specializing in creating tanto and tachi for middle-class samurai. However, due to a freak accident, Miyo was forced to step in to become the only smith of the family.

For the rest of her story, you have to find out when the Story Mode is ready!

[h3]Miyo's Gameplay![/h3]
Miyo is a master at dissimulating her attacks. For each of the swords she owns, comes a different attack, but they all start with the same animation, making it impossible to predict from the few initial frames what is coming out next! Mixing that with her above-average combination of cancels, she can't be very hard to anticipate.

[h3]Miyo's move set[/h3]
Weak Attack [Little fox]: This is a very basic sword slash with a short-range but fast delivery. This uses her mid-size sword named Little Fox.

Strong Attack [the sword of ten fists]: This attack begins with her jumping backward and can be used quite well against overly aggressive characters, and while having quite the long range, this attack can be used in many ways with the canceling and feinting. I will let you all find out by yourselves. This attack uses her longest sword the Sword of Ten Fists, named after the swords owned by Shinto gods.

Both of his attacks can be canceled.

DashForward [The sword of life]: This is also an attack. Can be used in many ways to cancel both weak and strong attacks. Miyo uses her smaller sword to perform this attack called The Sword of Life, inspired by Susanoo's sword.

DashBack: Miyo is an aggressive fighter, always putting pressure, because of this, her dashback is a dash forward that can be used to cancel both weak and strong attacks, setting up new weak attacks or the dash forward attack.

The feints also work a little bit differently for her. I invite you to try it out!


[h2]General Changes:[/h2]
[h3]New voice actors:[/h3]
Miyo comes completely voiced and this time, our old friend Hozoin will finally be able to speak his mind as well! Super happy with the results for both of them!

[h3]New scenario and music![/h3]
Miyo comes with her stage, named the Paper Furnace, and a brand new OST gives life to it.

[h3]A new stage selection menu and random selection were added![/h3]
Since now we have 7 scenarios, the old selection was too small. For that reason, I decided to redo it with 10 spaces now. Two for the last scenarios that are missing (Shenyan and the Shinigami) and a space for random selection of the scenarios.

[h3]Game mode description added![/h3]
One of the things I noticed could confuse some players was the fact that even though the game modes have simple names, it wasn't 100% clear to the players exactly what they did. Now they have a small description that will help them navigate better.

[h3]Round Counters Replaced[/h3]
The green flames were removed and a newly animated, bigger beautiful flames were added in place to make the round counter clearer to all players.

[h3]Nerfs:[/h3]
Ayai was the only one affected this time around. She was heavily nerfed thought. Both of her attack recuperations are now 40% longer. The reason for this is that she was able to come out unscattered after being perfectly parried since her recovery was so fast, so no risk and all reward for her.

Let me know what you think of this change in the comments, please.

[h3]Bug Fixes![/h3]
Not a lot of bug fixes in the version. Some sound effects were fixed and pressing confirm does not play them twice, which was pretty annoying.