Sclash: Our interview with Bastien Bernand about this unique fighting game


During our last AG French Direct, Sclash has split a new trailer presenting its atypical system, which presents itself as a fighting game where each blow is fatal. To find out a little more about this project, which also stands out thanks to its singular artistic direction, we were able to talk to Bastien Bernandwhich details his role in the game.

Genesis of the project and relationship with Abiding Bridge

  • First of all, thank you for accepting our interview! Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your duties within the studio?

We are delighted to do this interview as part of the AGFD. I’m Bastien Bernand, and I work with two other people on Sclash. We have been working on this game – basically a student project, for 3 years. The smallness of our team makes us very versatile.

For my part, I mainly take care of art, animation and sets, but also of integration, development and communication. My teammate, Héloïse, takes care of the concept arts, the characters and the narration. Victor for his part takes care of the development and artificial intelligence part.

  • You mentioned it, Sclash is initially a student project; can you tell us more?

Indeed, this is often the case for students in game design school. For our part, it was a real desire, born during our second year of study. After multiple prototypes and demos, we wanted to finally create a complete game. The idea was quite simple: a fighting game where you kill yourself in one shot. We wanted to know what such a game could look like.

We thought we’d release it on Steam fairly quickly, and then finally, we continued to work on it during our third year of study, and beyond, since the marketing aspect turned out to be much more complex than we had imagined. , knowing that we are not a studio strictly speaking, but rather a collective of author artists.

  • In this regard, can you detail the operating model that you maintain with Abiding Bridge?

We have a partnership with Abiding Bridge. It is an independent video game publishing house that allows author artists to be able to market a game without having to create a studio themselves – which represents a lot of time, money and a lot of effort. ‘administrative.

Abiding Bridge works and remunerates us in the same way as a music label, with a certain percentage, and above all, it offers support in the search for partners, by offering sound advice. Given that we are beginners in the field, this partnership allows us to be well surrounded and to benefit from the mutual aid community that exists around Abiding Bridge. The publishing house makes it possible to make the link with the whole industry, while allowing us to remain free as regards the creative and decision-making aspect which surrounds the game.

  • Have you thought about setting up crowdfunding like a Kickstarter?

Yes of course, it was even the basic idea, except that developing a Kickstarter represents a monster work, time that we could not have devoted to the development of the game.

It would have required a huge communication effort and to have a large community, which we didn’t have at the time. This is why we preferred to turn to Abiding Bridge.

A fighting game where the first touchdown loses the game

Sclash

  • Now that we have fully understood how you operate, what if you introduce us Sclash ?

Sclash is a tense, one-shot, 2D samurai fighting game. This is the phrase that sums up the very essence of the game.

  • The graphic universe strikes the spirits as soon as one is confronted with the game. What were your main inspirations for the artistic direction of Sclash ?

As the development of the game progressed, we simply assembled the animations without having any common thread concerning the artistic direction. We wanted to push further and assume our brushy style, made of strokes of paint, with a very soft side to the paint and drawing on the concept art and the spirit of traditional Japanese painting, even if we went beyond this side.

  • Why this choice to do the artistic direction in color, very colorful? The very recent Trek to Yomi for example preferred the choice of black and white to stick to the traditional aesthetics of samurai films.

Concerning us, we are closer to an anime and not a samurai film, very clearly. We wanted to assume that side, more colourful, more fantastic, which looks very good in our opinion and because we found it more selling and eye-catching.

A pretty game is not necessarily a good game, but a good game if it’s not pretty, it doesn’t work. That’s why it was important for us to accentuate this artistic touch.

  • And on the gameplay side, what games did you draw your inspiration from?

The most obvious and highly visible inspiration is Nidhogg – a fencing game where you go into the base of the other and where you kill yourself in one shot. But our inspirations were also One-Striketraditional 2D fighting games like street fighterbecause we wanted a basic fighting game, accessible to everyone, but which was more simplified and not complicated.

We can also cite Divekickwhich aims to be accessible and simple, Smash – complicated but accessible, and the couch party games and the couch fighting gamesas Tower Fall Ascension, Samurai Gunn or Stick Fight: The Game.

  • This desire for a very accessible game translates into gameplay that is based on only three keys, with no possible combo. This choice contrasts a lot with the classic mechanics of 1v1 fighting games. Has this bias always been at the very heart of the project?

The initial idea was even based on just two keys! Of course, it quickly seemed interesting to enrich everything with a touch of punch, but still without a combo; we wanted something simple. We have been underlined this point, moreover, to have few attacks while we use samurai; however, we are not in a fighting game in which you have to chain the keys correctly to place combos at the right time.

We use the stamina mechanic instead, which regenerates over time. You must therefore think carefully about your actions so as not to run out of stamina and be killed by the opponent. The arenas are very large, so the confrontation is punctuated by pauses, retreats to recover stamina, which energizes the fights like a solemn duel of samurai.

  • Can you let us know how many characters the roster will contain?

Sure ; there will be five, and they are all already there!

  • Will these characters have very marked singularities, such as visuals, statistics, or even a specific move?

These five characters are not too different from each other, and it is a choice, always of accessibility. Once you understand how it works, you can use any character easily. Variations exist, with different timing or range, but they play the same way.

  • There is a story mode, which contrasts with the 1v1 side where you can face a player or an AI. Other game modes – arcade mode, training mode for example – are they in preparation?

A training mode could be interesting and easy to do, but for now no other game mode is planned. We had thought of mini-games for the story mode, maybe one or two will be integrated elsewhere, but the game is not designed for anything other than dueling at this stage of development of the game.

We prefer to focus on what works and stay minimalist in the important game writing that still needs to be done.

The story mode should be a maximum of 2 hours of play, in order to be able to offer solo content for the players and thus have a little narration. This allows you to get attached to the characters and to know more about the universe.

It’s also an opportunity for us to make the best use of the DA with moving around in the scenery, situations with several enemies, staging boss fights, etc. It’s not the heart of the game, but it’s still a fun part!

The future prospects of the project

Sclash 2 e1651147484277 3

  • Have you planned more advanced audio dubbing, Japanese in particular?

We would love to! If this is not possible it will be dynamic text. The first wish is an English dubbing, for obvious reasons to internationalize the game. A Japanese dubbing would of course fit the game perfectly, but it’s much more complicated to achieve it.

  • Where are you on the development side of the game; when can we expect to see it released?

The game is quite advanced so far. Duel mode is over and working. We still have to finish the story mode, which we are actively working on. The characters are all there already, the online mode works, but is very rudimentary and very buggy. A lot of work is still to be done on it.

  • And will this release be only on PC?

Yes quite. Only a PC release is planned so far. We are thinking about a possible Switch port, which would perfectly match the type of game and has been the most requested by the community, but nothing is done for the moment. Any platform is good to take.

  • Before leaving, do you have an anecdote that occurred during development to tell us?

Nothing remarkable… although we can mention something funny that happened during the playtests. The playtesters had pointed out the strangeness of seeing that when they increased the number of rounds to win, the sound became saturated; we didn’t know why.

And in fact, we had to use copy-pastes of sound sliders, to make the sleeve slider, and we had forgotten to remove the component that regulates the volume. The voices of the characters were like nothing, it was really rubbish and we had a good laugh at the time.

  • A last word to share with the readers of ActuGaming?

Wishlist the game on Steam, it’s super important to us. Above all, we hope you enjoy the game. If you find fighting games complicated, with Sclash, you will see that this is not the case; it’s a game to play on the sofa with friends, a quick game to play in 5 min, without loading, a nice way to decide who will do the dishes for example [rires].

We thank Bastien Bernand for his time and the answers given. Sclash will soon be available on PC, and a demo is already available on Steam.



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