Royalty Free-For-All

A breath of fresh air in the genre. A lot of love has been poured into this, from the art design to the controls to the UI. The movesets are deliberately simple with some clever nuances, like changing properties with repeated uses, interacting with other moves or changing properties with a full charge. What's here is already very well polished, and I hope they get to expand on it more.

I think it's acceptable to recommend a game while also wishing it could have been so much more than what it released with. Although it's technically feature complete, I feel like what I was looking for from the game wasn't fully realized, though I played just enough to bring me past the fated 2-hour mark. Like so many others, I checked out the game when it was at PAX and I really dig how much respect AAAA Games has given specific thanks to the specific [i]people[/i] that gave platform fighters its own genre such as Dan Fornace and Ramsey Kaid. The game uses the Platform Fighter Engine (middleware for GameMaker), something that's fairly new to my ears but has been long in development with awesome amounts of documentation and use cases in and of itself. In addition to that, Royalty Free For All were able to overdeliver on their stretch goals and get both David Wise and Grant Kirkhope to do the soundtrack. I like the art style, which stays "Saturday Morning Cartoon" consistent all the way to the DOS-computer like settings menu (although it still functions 100% the same, the style clashes with the rest of the game). I also like the particle effects and explosions that aesthetically resemble Smash Bros. Ultimate, though functionally everything else is different. I also like how they implemented Screen Wrap, a feature that replaces an out-of-bounds ring-out with one determined by damage points. In particular, this means you will only get knocked out if your damage reaches 200 or greater. Going out of bounds will inflict some damage (15), but you'll return to the antipodal side of the screen from where you departed. With all the glad-handing out of the way, I think my biggest complaint is that Royalty Free-For-All feels like it betrays its own intentions. It markets itself to new players who haven't played a Smash game or a platform fighter, and its deliberate simplification of the controls would make you [i]think[/i] you're not going to go toe-to-toe with the sweats. However, the remaining mechanics of Smash and platform fighters, such as stage hazards and items that damage you or others, are still there. Removing directionals doesn't do many favors beyond laying bare the suspicion that they were cut for convenience rather than a desire for greater accessibility. Note, I didn't play online/LAN multiplayer with my purchased copy. I just played against CPUs and through Arcade Mode, similar to Smash 64's 1P Game. When it comes to fighting, many of the CPUs are incredibly competent, but they will struggle with pathing if they find themselves on an unexpected part of the stage. Here are some additional things that iffed me: 1) No announcer for any of the matches/characters 2) Spritework lacks sufficient frames for several characters' moves. Some things look animated on threes versus ones, which is a stark difference. 3) The Target Test stage has a different layout for each character. However, Platform Run has the same stage for every character, leading to some interesting situations, such as the fact Lilith's hair move can't catch any ledge here, so you have to be extra precise with your movement. 4) The "It's cool! Rights are cool!" in the credits is ironic when licensing restrictions are what prevent the international non-US audience from experiencing the full content of the game. [url=https://youtu.be/_P97TBeVn14?t=318]There's a significant amount of content affected.[/url] This game is a lot more like Smash than anyone, creators included, want to admit. While the game and overall stage layout are similar to Smash 64, some characters from Smash Melee had their movesets cloned and reincorporated for the characters here, such as Lancelot for DK, Col. Bleep for Mr. Game and Watch, Quick Brown Fox for Fox, and Big Bad Wolf for Ganondorf. All the same, I appreciate the experimentation with unconventional movesets like Nessie, Lilith, and Oliver Twist. I hope they continue to flesh this title out, but this will only happen if enough people purchase and support the game. Give solo players like me more things to spend time on.