Skullgirls 2nd Encore News

The Skullgirl herself is finally here - Marie is now playable in her Alpha state for Season Pass holders!

NOTE: The Linux version of Marie's Alpha is not available just yet due to some final bug fixing and polishing that is needed for that build. As soon as that build is ready, Marie will be available on Linux too. Thanks for your patience.

In classic Skullgirls tradition, Marie will arrive in an unfinished state with a few work-in-progress "sketchy" frames. As mentioned in our "State of the Game" post shared earlier, Marie is much further along compared to previous characters due to her fully releasing on Skullgirls Mobile first before the Steam alpha.

Read more details about her release and other changes below!
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[h2]HOW COMPLETE IS MARIE?[/h2]

Marie has all of her moves, voice acting, and sound effects in this build. Some of her moves still don't have fully cleaned up frames, but everything should be pretty functional. We expect she will need additional tuning, bug fixing, and balancing just like every other character during their Alpha period.

You can report bugs in our official Discord, or our official forum in the Marie section.

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/skullgirls

Skullheart Forums: https://skullheart.com/


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[h2]HOW DO I SELECT MARIE?[/h2]

Characters in their Alpha phase are currently only available to Season 1 Pass holders. If you don't own the Season 1 Pass DLC, you won't be able to use Marie yet. You can pick up the Season 1 Pass here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557981/Skullgirls_Season_1_Pass

Once you have the Season 1 Pass DLC, launch the game in BETA mode by pressing the green PLAY button on Skullgirls 2nd Encore from your Steam library page, then selecting "Skullgirls Beta (Marie Alpha)". You can also launch the game in BETA mode by navigating to the in-game Options menu, and pressing "Switch To Beta".

In BETA mode, you can pick Marie on the character select screen as normal!

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[h2]HOW CAN I BUY HER DLC SEPARATELY?[/h2]

Once Marie's Alpha phase is over, her individual character DLC will go live in Early Access on the Steam store. This will allow you to play Marie during her Early Access Beta phase without owning the Season 1 Pass.

For Marie, we expect her Alpha phase to end and her Early Access (Steam only) phase to start once all of her animations are fully complete and colored. We're currently targeting December 2023 for this date.

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[h2]WHEN WILL MARIE BE FULLY RELEASED ON ALL PLATFORMS?[/h2]

While we were originally targeting December 2023 for Marie's full release on all platforms including consoles, it is likely that her release will be pushed back to sometime early in the new year of 2024.

The finalized version of Marie with all her bells and whistles needs to be submitted to all console platforms much earlier than December 1st in order to have a chance at releasing before the holidays, since most platform support teams will be unavailable. It's very unlikely that all of her art will be fully finalized by that date, so Q1 2024 is our anticipated release date at this time.

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[h2]WHEN WILL BALANCE PATCH CHANGES START?[/h2]

You may have noticed a lot of buzz about balance changes on our official forums or in various online communities. The balance patch discussion is humming along and we're making changes as we speak to prepare the first build that will contain them.

We don't have enough of these changes ready at this time for a substantial first balance patch build, so we're going to wait a little bit longer until we have more changes to release all at once. You can expect to see changes start to arrive before the end of the month.

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[h3]Full Update Notes[/h3]

Marie

• Added Marie as a playable character.
  
• Added 19 color palettes for Marie, with many more to arrive in future updates.
  (... Note that since palette 7 is unlocked by completing her story mode, it cannot be obtained at this time, and is just a duplicate of her original palette for now.)
• Added Marie's stage, Hilgard's Castle.
  
• Added Marie's stage music, "All That Remains" composed by Darren Malley.
  

Other

• [BETA ONLY] Adjusted visual effects and lighting when characters are impacted by palette adjusting VFX, such as Parasoul's fire effect, Annie's galaxy space dust effect, Robo-Fortune's electrification effect, Black Dahlia's freeze effect, etc. Flickering lights involved with these effects should be less distracting, and character's themselves are no longer impacted by stage lighting conditions.
  
  
  
  
• When declining a match in Quick Match, or recently finishing a match with a player, you will no longer match with that player again for a few minutes.
  
• When kicking a player from a lobby, kicked players can no longer join the lobby again immediately after.
  
• [BETA ONLY] Integrated some previously unused voice lines for older characters when fighting against Marie. Some are used for boss Marie, playable Marie, or both.
  
• [BETA ONLY] Fixed a bug where Black Dahlia would not flinch when getting punched in the face by Cerebella during pummel horse. She's tough, but not THAT tough.
  
• Adjusted the position of the timer on character select when playing online.
  

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(Build version 3.6.0)

Hey everyone,

It’s time for an update on all the Skullgirls projects we’ve got cooking currently, specifically some details on Marie’s upcoming releases!

Here’s a preview of what to expect below:


[h3]MARIE[/h3]

• Skullgirls Mobile
  
• Skullgirls 2nd Encore - Playable Alpha
  
• Skullgirls 2nd Encore - Full Release
  

[h3]OTHER 2ND ENCORE UPDATES[/h3]

• Balance Adjustments
  
• Story Mode Updates
  

[h3]SKULLGIRLS GLOBAL DOMINATION[/h3]

• Skullgirls Championship Series 2024
  
• Eighty Sixed Merch
  
• Skullgirls x Webtoon
  

Enough intro! IT’S SHOWTIME!
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Have you been following our daily Marie development posts on our socials? No? Why not?! There’s over 100 days of behind the scenes animations, gameplay, concept art, development insights, and more for you to read up on! Find all our socials here.

Updates on our socials are great and all, but I’m sure you really want to know one thing: When is Marie being released?

For every character in the Season 1 Pass, we’ve been experimenting with different development schedules to see what works best.

• ANNIE released first on Skullgirls Mobile, then went straight to Full Release a few months later on 2nd Encore.​
  
• UMBRELLA had a full Alpha, Early Access and Full Release in 2nd Encore before she released on Mobile.​
  
• BLACK DAHLIA started her Alpha very early, followed by her SGM release, then her Full Release in 2nd Encore.​
  
• MARIE will launch first in SGM, followed by her Alpha, then her 2nd Encore Full Release.​
  

As you can see for Marie we’re going to be running a similar development timeline as we did with Annie.

Why are we doing it this way? If you recall from way back when we developed Annie, Skullgirls Mobile characters require less overall development time than 2nd Encore. This is because they require significantly fewer completed animations and general attack data compared to their more technical cousins in 2nd Encore.

Over the course of the Season 1 Pass we have found that it makes the most sense for us to prioritize the Skullgirls Mobile character releases, then switch fully over to Skullgirls 2nd Encore where we can give their playable Alpha the full attention it deserves.

However, if you’ve been following our socials, or visited our booth at Evo this year, you’ll have seen that plenty of work has been done on Marie for 2nd Encore! Skullgirls 2nd Encore and Skullgirls Mobile run on such similar engines and pipelines that we actually implement everything at a basic level in 2nd Encore first, then port that work to Skullgirls Mobile where it is further tuned and polished.

This means that even though some parts of Marie are much further along than Black Dahlia or Umbrella were in their early Alphas, other parts are not developed enough to be released as a publicly playable Alpha.

With that said, here is our current plan for Marie’s rollout:
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Marie is currently planned to release in September on Skullgirls Mobile!

In addition to Marie, we’ll be ramping up the Skullgirls Mobile reveals in the coming weeks with trailers and posts about all of the new stuff coming in the 6.0 update. Be sure to keep an eye on our socials for all the latest!

Download the game today to get yourself ready for her big release! If it’s your first time playing, or you haven’t played since before 5.4 released there’s a big free package for you too!
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A time honored tradition in Skullgirls is the playable Alpha! During this phase of development, an unfinished build of Marie will be playable on the Beta branch of Skullgirls 2nd Encore of Steam. This build may feature unfinished ‘sketchy’ animation frames, and much of her combat data will be untuned.

This playable Alpha phase allows players to get their hands on Marie early and give feedback on how she’s shaping up. We’ll be releasing frequent updates to the Alpha with new art and gameplay tuning as time goes on.

The Marie Alpha will start sometime soon after Marie’s release in Skullgirls Mobile. Stay tuned for more info!

What will be included in the Alpha:

• Marie will be partially complete, with some temporary art and not completely tuned gameplay.​
  
• A partial set of palettes.​
  
• A new stage (with music!) - Hilgard’s Castle.​
  
• Additional features will be added to the Alpha over time.​
  

The playable Alpha is exclusive to Season 1 Pass holders on Steam, so pick up yours today!
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Once Marie is fully completed, she will be released on all systems roughly simultaneously.

We’re aiming to release Marie around mid December 2023. For full transparency, there is a chance this date will slip into 2024, but for now that is the date we are targeting.

Full Release will come with all the usual bells and whistles:

• Marie will be fully complete!​
  
• The new Stage - Hilgard’s Castle - will be fully complete with final music.​
  
• A brand new story mode for Marie.​
  
• Marie will be available as stand-alone DLC separate from the Season 1 Pass.​
  
• Final Marie balance pass.​
  
• A full set of 30+ palettes.​
  
• Character tutorials.​
  
• A new alternate voice pack.​
  

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[h2]BALANCE PATCH[/h2]

We want to give the other characters in Skullgirls some attention too, and so we’re planning to do a general balance adjustment for the rest of the cast in the near future!

As we mentioned in a previous State of the Game post, juggling multiple console releases, character development with Marie, plus additional general balance adjustments has been a challenge. We’re excited to finally dig into this in the coming months.

We are currently planning to start general balance adjustments at the same time Marie’s Alpha starts, or shortly after. We’ll announce more details about these adjustments in the near future.

Thank you for your patience and feedback!
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[h2]STORY MODE UPDATES[/h2]

When Marie gets her full release she will come with her own Story Mode that delves deep into her relationship with the Skull Heart. After Marie’s story mode is released all of the Season 1 Pass character story modes will be updated with full voice acting in an independent update.

The full voice update will not be until after Marie’s release because we are still organizing recording sessions for the LARGE returning cast that we need to voice the myriad of characters that appear across Skullgirls 2nd Encore’s 18 Story Modes.

Also please note that due to ongoing actors strikes in the US there is a possibility that any story mode recordings may be very significantly delayed. Marie’s English combat voice over will not be affected as it has already been completed.
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Aside from direct updates to the games themselves, we have lots of other Skullgirls projects in the works!
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[h2]SKULLGIRLS CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES 2024[/h2]
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During our Evo 2023 Community Showcase, we were finally able to announce the return of the SKULLGIRLS CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES!

We’re partnering with a completely new production team, and the SGCS is going to be bigger than ever!

We’re excited to share more news in the future, but take it from us that 2024 is going to be BIG for competitive Skullgirls!

Be sure to follow our socials for updates about these events!
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[h2]EIGHTY SIXED MERCH[/h2]

Are you looking for official Skullgirls merch and apparel? The fine folks at Eighty Sixed have you covered!

They already have an expansive Skullgirls collection available, but there’s even more new additions on the horizon!
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[h2]SKULLGIRLS X WEBTOON[/h2]

The Skullgirls series on Webtoon has released 20 episodes so far. Due to some scheduling challenges, production of each new chapter has taken longer than expected. We’re currently on an extended hiatus while we build up a backlog of episodes so that when the series returns we will have plenty of episodes ready to go without interruption.

When the series does return it will also come with a Webtoon Fast Pass, meaning everyone gets the latest episode for free every week, or you can spend Fast Pass Coins to read three episodes ahead.

We can’t give a firm date yet, but we’re aiming for a return in September!

Catch up on all the previous episodes here before our big return here or search for Skullgirls on the Webtoon app!
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That’s a wrap for today!

We’re aiming to release these State of the Game posts more frequently going forward just to generally keep everyone apprised on the goings on in the world of Skullgirls.

Thanks as always for your support, and we’re excited to get Marie into everyone’s hands as soon as possible! Keep an eye out for those updates in the very near future!

[h3]- All of us at Hidden Variable Studios and Future Club

Decade-old fighting game Skullgirls has been hit with more than 600 negative Steam reviews in just 24 hours because of a patch that mostly tweaks and removes artwork that the developers say doesn't reflect their current "values" or "broad vision" for the future of the game. The overall Steam rating for Skullgirls remains "Very Positive," but its recent review average has tumbled down to "Mostly Negative."..
Read more.

Skullgirls Content and Revisions Update [6/26/2023]

As part of a global Skullgirls content update, we have adjusted several art assets in Skullgirls 2nd Encore and the Digital Art Compendium on all platforms. You can find the full list of changes in this update here: Skullgirls 2nd Encore Content Updates Notes

You can read the full details and rationale behind these changes here: SKULLGIRLS CONTENT UPDATES & REVISIONS

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