Development studio Odyssey Interactive has announced that they are working on a hybrid prototype Smash Bros-platform combat style with 40-player battle royale gameplay. Moreover, it is releasing this prototype to the public (thanks, Eurogamer player).
Byte Breakersas the developer is now calling it, initially looks a lot like Smash when it first appears in the reveal trailer above. But, as the screen gets bigger, you’ll see that this is a significantly larger affair than anything we’ve seen in Nintendo’s beloved fighting series to date. Forget a brawl, this is all-out combat.
Right now, the team is very open to the fact that this game may not be made (after all, what we’re seeing is just a prototype), but they’re opening up an early build for those interested. Steam This Friday to get feedback and see if this concept is a good fit.
“We hope you can see its potential,” the developer notes in the newly released video, “some parts of it may be familiar, but we hope that when viewed as a whole, this will be a new experience.”
Like any platform fighting game, the comparisons to Smash Bros. are pretty obvious from the get-go, but the studio believes this is to be expected: “We’re not trying to make a better Smash, we’re trying to build an evolution of the genre that Smash started when we were kids.”
It’s a commendable mission that we’re excited to see in action when the public beta begins later this week. Smash has been a staple of the genre for so long, you can’t help but wonder what would happen to reinvent it at this point. The public beta is a bold move, yes, but as the studio puts it, “we’d rather try something crazy and fail than just make a game you feel like you’ve played before.”
The trial will be open to “a few thousand” people requesting access on Byte Breakers Steam PageWho knows, maybe one day we’ll see a Smash-inspired fighting game appear on a Nintendo console.
