Melee Masters is an easy to pick up, fun to play, hard to master platform fighting game. With its cross between a classical era theme and elemental incarnations, there are a wide variety of characters to choose and enjoy. Each character when played should feel unique, this isn't to say that skills between character will not transfer over, however all character have some aspect to their moveset and special abilities that will really allow people to dig in to the specifics of their favorite characters. Where Melee Masters really stands out is it's character's play-styles Which can do things from switching up the short ranged slow hard hitting character archetype, to a ranged one. Alternatively, Umbri and her clone whom the player can swap control of at will, overwhelming your opponent with a barrage of attacks. Stages will also play a unique role. In combination with the platform mechanics of the game, platforms in general will favor some characters more than others. Similarly, stages with close and far elimination-zones will offer benefits to heavy characters over lighter characters which can be KO's much easier. As for specific mechanics, based on the game's inspiration, using the directional airdodge system allows for a lot of smooth control over position when used at the right height above the ground. the official lore is still in the works and will be released alongside with the characters themselves.
Older gameplay
Basic Movement
Movement in Melee Masters is very fluid. Pressing the control stick slightly to the left or right instantly turns the character while not moving them. Pressing the control stick slowly to the side or halfway results in a fast walk. Pressing hard to the side results in a run. You can also slow down from a run to a walk at any time, and go from a walk to a run at any time. Running and turning directions before your stride is finished allows you to instantly turn around and dash the other way, aka: The Dash Dance.
Ultimates
All Characters in Melee MAsters have ultimate abilities. A bar on the bottom of the screen fills up as you take damage. Once full, character can activate their Ultimate abilties. Ultimate for all character were designed to not be automatic kills, each ultimate has some aspect of skill and reactability to it that means it's not a guaranteed kill, but when executed properly, will usually lead to a kill.
Airdodge/Wavedash
While in the air you can activate an air-dodge by pressing the shield button down. This can be angled to any angle in a circle, and leaves you invulnerable for the majority of it's duration. When done close to the ground, the move is canceled instantly, but you maintain some of the momentum. The Wavedash.
Ledge Options
While on the ledge, you have a few options. The normal getup, a ledge roll, a ledge jump, and a ledge attack. You can also drop off the ledge and act instantly by holding down. By smashing the control stick away from the ledge, you can drop off and walljump, allowing you to edge-guard while maintaining your double jump.
Landing Options
When landing an aerial attack you have some options of what do to. There is the default landing animation for every move. By pressing the shield buttons shortly before hitting the ground, you can cancel half of the landing animation, allowing you to follow up with whatever you choose. Alternatively, there is a "Landing Special" move that each character has. This move can only be activated when you did NOT cancel the landing animation. These moves can vary between each character, each with their own style and use-cases.
Movement Edge Canceling
A new mechanic to Melee Masters is Movement Edge Canceling. Normally, when performing an attack while on the edge of a platform, the ledge stops your movement so you can complete the action. By pressing the shield button down, you can instantly cancel the attack that was stopped on the ledge and slide off, allowing you to act immediately.
Recovery Ledge Canceling
A different type of Ledge Cenceling is Recovery Ledge Canceling. If you land with enough sideways velocity near a ledge, that momentum will carry you off the ledge, canceling the recovery animation and allowing you to act instantly.
Listeing of current stages, to be updated soon. Most maps will also feature a night version! More to come as models get finished.
- When will the Alpha be available?
- Where will the funds go?
- How big is the dev team?
- What Platforms will this be available for?
- What makes this different than just regular melee besides being just PC? (or other smash-style games)
- Well if you removed technical movement doesn't that just make the game easier and have less depth?
A bare bones alpha will be available in likely 2-4 weeks. Along with it there will be a refined Kickstarter or some other term of funding support. This will function essentially the inverse of early access on steam, instead of paying for an early build of the game and then not liking it. you will get to play the game with basic features (i.e: no online play, extra game modes ect) and then if you enjoyed it, you can choose to support the game in order to improve it. There will be in place areas for feedback to be read and addressed.
The vast majority of the funds will go towards hiring and commissioning animators in order to improve the animations, as those area very critical aspects to the FEEL of the game and how characters will perform. that along with sound design and general art improvements.
Not counting commissioned artists and sound, there is only a single developer doing all of the programming, design and implementation. With support this will change in the future.
For now, until we can hire additional people to help with the game, PC will be the main concern. developing for the Xbox One and PS4 is definitely on the radar though. The game is built in Unity, which implicitly has the ability to build for numerous platforms.
Although we've taken steps to accurately re-produce the magic that is SSBM, we've taken our own steps to add elements to the game and simplify others to change the average level of play in a more fun, movement heavy direction. The pivot system is the most notable change, In SSBM when you want to turn around, you need to pivot, this places you in an unmovable movement state for a few frames, after which you will begin walking. Tapping the control stick hard in the same direction again will skip this and allow you to start moving immediately (Assuming you were standing still when we started).
In Melee Masters, there is no pivot system, if you want your character to turn around, pressing the controller in the opposite direction you are facing you will instantly turn around. this means the basic ground movements are generally less intensive, allowing players to dive deeper into the harder mechanics of the game and master those. The sensitivity or "deadzone" of the controls sticks is a configuration option that will allow you to turn around and not more if the default sensitivity leads you to turn around and move a bit before using moves.
In the general sense yes it would if we had not added more mechanics in other areas to compensate. Read over the mechanics section in order to better understand how we've made changes in other areas.