CheesiMoon's Dev Talks #5: Fighting Platformer? What's that?

It's been a while, but welcome back to Dev Talks! Dev Talks will be a time to talk about my thoughts on the current game being developed and anything else that's potentially relevant. Each episode is self-contained, like a slice-of-life show. Since it's been over a year (geez, already?) since the previous one, let's get right into it.

 
Also, I don't currently plan on having a consistent schedule for this, but I would like to write more frequently, as I'm especially treasuring my older episodes from an archival point of view, I would like to give more insight for future me (and you, the beautiful reader that you are!) to look back on and see what was going on in that brain of mine.

 
I recently began calling this game a "Fighting Platformer," after going being generally clueless on what to call this game for a while. I initially stuck with Action Platformer years ago, then Action-Sandbox Platformer, and finally, Fighting Platformer. Why Fighting Platformer? Why all these genre changes to begin with? Let's answer one at a time. 

 

What, How, and Why Fighting Platformer?

Fighting Platformer is meant to be related to the Platform Fighter genre, a name that cropped up more recently relative to other genre names like first person shooter and metroidvania, describing games like Super Smash Bros and Rivals of Aether. Games with a huge focus on combat with a lot of vertical and horizontal space, alongside freeform mobility and progressively increased knockback, making positioning much more important and variable compared to a more traditional fighting game. They are basically a cross of fighting games and platformers, hence the name. 

Then, why not just call Astropods a platform fighter as well? There is one pretty big distinction between us and platform fighters. Platform Fighters, like Fighting games, are primarily Player vs Player (or PvP) games, being the most enjoyable when fighting another human opponent. The singleplayer content that is available in these kinda games are very secondary, as they wanna focus on that PvP experience, which is perfectly reasonable. 

PvP is ingrained into the experience of fighting games, so what happens when you have a fighting game that is primarily singleplayer? Could it even be called a fighting game anymore if there's no human player to beat up? Maybe, but video games genre names are very particular, as we like to associate a specific kinda experience with a game genre name. That's why we have genre names like Metroidvania compared to Platformers, while they may look similar from the outside, the way we play these games are completely different. 

So, we're now caught between a rock and a hard place. There aren't that many games like Astropods, and even a game similar to mine called Declines Drops had a lot of trouble with their genre name. Singleplayer platform fighters are very much uncommon, and there is currently no established name for these kinds of games, so we're very much on our own here.

Why not just call it an Action Platformer? That is a very broad genre name, covering games from Mega Man (the platformer ones at least), to Kirby, and many others. These are platformers that also focus on combat. The amount of focus on combat varies, but generally, these games don't focus on combat as much as platformers. These games will usually use combat to augment and add additional tension to platforming, which is really cool. I would say Kirby is more of an exception, due to infinite jumps, the combat tends to get more focus, as platforming's challenge is greatly diminished. Even then, the combat is kept more simple (intentionally so as a beginner friendly game series), with its combat depth being in the number of options you have. While Action Platformer is a broad enough feel where I would feel comfortable enough to call it, I feel like it could be more accurate, because the combat is basically a platform fighter, which means that fights, both bosses and regular enemies, play out pretty differently from other Action Platformers. Combat is way more involved in Astropods, so I wanted a different name. 

If you look up the game, some sites will call this game an "Action-Sandbox Platformer." That's what I called the game during its time in SAGE 2024. I thought it made sense, and sounded cool. There's definitely sandbox-like elements, such as the extremely high movement potential, alongside the nonlinear structure of the game, and the customizable badge system. Yet, I think once again, sandbox gave the wrong idea. Usually, ppl think of games like Minecraft and Terraria as sandboxes, something where you can truly do whatever you like in these worlds. Astropods is...not quite like that. 

I then realized just how important it is to understand player expectations when labeling a game. The reason that game genre names are so vast and specific is because the way you interact with a game changes the play experience. You can't just call all games with combat an "action game" like you could do with movies. The way you control "action" is so different between games, that's how we end up with annoying names to explain like Metroidvania or Souls-likes, their specifics are just that unique amongst their peers.

While I was lost on what to truly call this game, I started to set up the Steam page, wanting to do something else while in a bit of a slump. There's a feature to tag your game, and see what other games are most similar in terms of tags. I clicked around some of the games, and one of them called themselves a "Fighting Platformer." After staring at that screen for a few seconds, I then realized just how genius of a name that was. A fighting game within a platformer structure, that exactly what Astropods was! This gives a singleplayer vibe, but featuring a lot of the intricate combat mechanics of a fighting game! Wow! And to think that all we needed to do was flip the words platform fighter around.

That will wrap up today's episode! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. Have a blessed day out there, everyone!