Magic Battle Royale is a popular concept in the world of fantasy and gaming. It combines the excitement of a battle royale format with the added element of magical abilities and powers. Participants in a magic battle royale are typically wizards, sorcerers, or other magical beings who fight against each other in an arena or a designated area. The rules of a magic battle royale vary depending on the context and the game or story in which it is set. Generally, the objective is to be the last magical being standing. Participants use their magical powers and abilities to attack and defend themselves against others.
It's currently in pre-alpha, and you can sign up to test it here. It doesn't yet have a release date. If you want to find out more, the best place is developer Proletariat Games' imgur page, where it posts developer updates.
There are 11 classes that deal different types of damage so far there s fire, ice, lightning, stone, wind, and poison damage, and you can combo them, casting a poison cloud and then setting it on fire to create a giant poisonous inferno, for example. At a high level we ve tried to create a strong hierarchy of detail color contrast in our shaders materials that works well for gameplay and mimics the aesthetic of 2D animation.
Participants use their magical powers and abilities to attack and defend themselves against others. These powers can include spells, elemental control, summoning creatures, and other fantastical abilities. Magic battles often involve a wide variety of spells and magical techniques, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
Spellbreak: Developing a Magic Battle Royale RPG
The team behind Spellbreak talked about the development of their game: art style, environment production, texturing, VFX, and more.
The team behind Spellbreak, a new battle royale RPG featuring epic magic combat, talked about the development of their game: art style, environment production, texturing, VFX, and more.
About the Team
80lv: Could you talk a little bit about the team? Where do you guys come from, what do you do, what projects have you worked on? How did you get into games?
Our team comes from all over! The founders were all previously at Zynga and a small startup called Conduit Labs, though previously they also had games like Rock Band, Resistance and Dungeons and Dragons Online under their belt. Since then the team has only grown, and the portfolio of games has as well!
As for the road to get into games, that’s a very different path for everyone. Our CEO started outside of games at Disney Imagineering and then transitioned into gameplay engineering to start his game development career. Our CTO started in games very early, focusing on tools and engine work. Our Director of Engineering spent five years building tech for finance. We think a broad range of backgrounds only helps in building these complicated long-running service based games.
The Start of the Project
80lv: Let’s talk about how the project started. Spellbreak obviously had a longer story before it went public. What were the main influences and goals? How long have you been working on this idea?
After Streamline, we went into a period where we just prototyped a lot of different games. We had one that was more like a Viking Battle Royale, where people used melee weapons to fight. We had another that was actually more of an isometric game that allowed people to find gear and abilities. After a lot of time on both, we decided to take the best from each and ultimately ended up with Spellbreak (about a year ago or so).
Gameplay
80lv: We’d love to talk about the main gameplay. You promote it as a new take on Battle Royale, but it would be amazing if you could discuss it a bit in more detail. What’s so innovative and different about it?
Spellbreak is entirely oriented around making you feel like a powerful battlemage, where your spells affect the world and can be woven together for even more powerful results. As we built it up, we also integrated gear and skills that would make battlemages more effective to allow for a level of dynamic specialization you typically only see in RPG games. This is why internally we’ve referred to it as a BR-RPG for most of its development.
Art Style
80lv: Could you talk a little about the way you’ve figured out the style for the visuals? What’s the technology behind it, how do you achieve this look? How did the earlier prototypes for the game look?
When we were prototyping we had a very different style for the game, that really worked but was more medieval than magical. When our Art director rebooted, he specifically stated he wanted to go with more of an animated, heavily stylized approach that was more reminiscent of titles such as Avatar: the Last Airbender and The Dragon Prince. Working with the rest of the art team, we’re still approaching a lot of this look. We even made our own Kuwahara shader expressly to allow things in the distance to appear more painterly.
Environment Production
80lv: Can you tell us how you generally work on the meshes and the environments in the project? You’ve got to have quite spacious arenas here. We’re super interested to learn how to make these large, visually rich places, and fill them with interactive objects. What’s a good tool for it?
Ironically, we really just use the Unreal Toolset for populating the spaces, and Maya for modeling the assets themselves. Fortunately, our environment artist is extremely seasoned, but this is no substitute for planning out what you want to build. With a solid set of plans, you would be surprised by how efficiently you can populate a map, even one as large as the Spellbreak map.
Texturing
80lv: Could you tell us a little bit about the way you’ve been working on the production of the textures? We’re really interested to learn your general pipeline and especially talk about the shaders you are using. All the textures look very cool and soft, creating this lovely atmosphere of a cartoon.
At a high level we’ve tried to create a strong hierarchy of detail/color/contrast in our shaders/materials that works well for gameplay and mimics the aesthetic of 2D animation. In order of visual primacy – Combat VFX > Characters > Environments. Almost every surface in Spellbreak uses some form of toon shading. We developed a shader for use in Unreal materials that makes use of a ramp-like texture to define how the lighting wraps around surface normals. This material can smoothly blend between an artist-controlled cel-shaded look, standard PBR lighting, and any indirect lighting contribution. Characters are almost always completely cel-shaded, omit indirect lighting, and use very flat textures to reinforce a 2D look. The background/environments are also cell shaded, but we tend to use the PBR blending a little more case by case. Environment textures contain more detail than the characters and are more heavily sculpted with chunkier, impasto-like shapes. We also use some styled edge highlighting and distance thresholds for extra detail, but we use more muted color palettes and try to avoid a lot of noise and high contrast specularity.
There’s often a player expectation of amazing detail up close, but that detail can turn into a lot of noise at a distance. Many of our materials contain distance thresholds to simplify color palettes, alpha masks, and other details so that they can sit properly in the game’s visual hierarchy at any distance from the player. This is probably most noticeable with tree foliage. We set some distance thresholds that simplify the alpha masks at controlled distances so that we can get simpler looking styled tree silhouettes that feel a bit more painterly than if we simply relied on basic texture mipmaps.
Visual Effects
80lv: Another big feature of the game is those stunning visual effects! The explosions are both massive and incredibly well-made. Could you talk a little bit about the way you’ve approached this part of your production? How did you work on the stylized volumetric effects? Did you do everything in the engine or did you use Houdini? What way did you scale the effects and adapt them to the gameplay features?
At the beginning of the project, we didn’t have much experience creating VFX, but we knew that we wanted to capture the look of 2D animation. We spent a while exploring methods entirely in Unreal that could achieve this look, that would be fully 3D, that would eschew time-intensive processes (like actually drawing things frame by frame), and that would allow for a lot of iteration and design changes. For the final results, we’ve developed a handful of tricks all in service of evoking the look of hand-drawn aesthetics.
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Some participants may specialize in offensive spells to directly attack their opponents, while others focus on defensive spells to protect themselves. Strategic thinking and resource management are essential in these battles, as participants must choose when and how to use their powers effectively. Magic battle royales can be found in various forms, including video games, tabletop role-playing games, and fantasy novels. In video games, players control a character and battle against other players or computer-controlled opponents. Tabletop role-playing games allow players to create their own characters and engage in battles with friends or fellow players. In fantasy novels, authors often depict grand magical battles with high stakes and epic consequences. One of the main appeals of magic battle royales is the creative possibilities they offer. With a universe of magical powers and abilities at their disposal, participants can come up with unique strategies and surprise their opponents. This adds an element of unpredictability to the battles and keeps them exciting. In conclusion, magic battle royales are an exciting concept that combines the thrill of battle royale games with the fantastical world of magic. Whether in video games, tabletop role-playing games, or fantasy novels, these battles offer a unique and thrilling experience for players and readers alike..
Reviews for "Clash of the Mages: Unleash Your Magic in the Ultimate Battle Royale"
- Jessica - 2 stars - I was really disappointed with "Magic Battle Royale". The gameplay was clunky and confusing, and the graphics were outdated. I also found the character customization options to be extremely limited. Overall, it felt like a poorly executed game. I don't think I will be playing it again.
- Mike - 1 star - I have to say, I was not impressed with "Magic Battle Royale" at all. The controls were unresponsive and the gameplay felt repetitive and boring. The concept of a magic battle royale sounded promising, but it fell flat in execution. The game also had a lot of bugs and glitches, which made it even more frustrating to play. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
- Sarah - 2 stars - "Magic Battle Royale" was a letdown for me. The game had a lot of potential with its unique magic-themed concept, but it didn't live up to my expectations. The matchmaking was unbalanced, frequently pitting me against much stronger opponents, and the progression system felt slow and grindy. The game also lacked variety in terms of game modes and maps. It just didn't hold my interest for very long.