Stefan Gagne's Fiction Factory

25+ years of novels, games, and other creative fiascos.

The Uncomfortable Fist

by

Fist of Discomfort. Named such because it feels like a fun bad translation from Japanese. Also I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy. Let’s talk FoD today.

FoD is the ‘game within a game,’ a fictional eSports focused game within the world of Arcade Spirits. Since much of our lore revolves around FoD competitions, including possibly the story of a sequel, we wanted it to be easily recognizable and understandable. (Not QUITE sure if we got there but hey, if we do base a sequel on this we can rejigger things.)

Here’s the amazing pixel art by Justin Baldwin of Sleep Ninja Games, and what it’s meant to represent.

FoD is a combination of three games:

  • The side-scrolling brawler genre (Final Fight, Double Dragon, TMNT)
  • The fighting game genre (Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Mortal Kombat)
  • And the MOBA genre (League of Legends, DOTA2, SMITE)

MOBAs are played from a top down perspective, and have you fighting your way through NPC baddies and player-controlled baddies down three different “lanes.” At the end of the lanes are the enemy base, which you must destroy to win the game. Beating up NPCs gets you money, money gets you consumable items.

Fist of Discomfort is a two-lane MOBA, not a three-lane, because instead of team play it’s one-on-one. You can see the MOBA genre represented in the lower left corner with your current item stock (throwing stars, a scroll, throwing knives) and the lower right corner with the minimap that shows the current position of enemies. Heck, we even have the “enemy base” in the form of the wise sensei standing there waiting to fight you.

Actual fighting is done through a hybrid of brawler action and fighting game inputs. It’s similar to Capcom’s late stage brawlers like Dungeons & Dragons, where you have special moves similar to Street Fighter despite fighting waves of mooks and minions. Keeps the action light and arcadey despite being partly a strategy game.

Of course, this is all a fictional game design document, to provide what should resemble a fictional hybrid of modern eSports and classic arcade action. Fist of Discomfort does not actually exist.

But man, I kinda wish it did. Don’t you?

Comments

  1. Can you make it inside Arcade Spirit?
    If not can you make it as an addon like if you install both games then FoD will be playable inside Arcade Spirit?
    If not can you make it as a stand alone game?

    • If I knew how to make an action-strategy game as complicated as this, I’d definitely be making it! Sadly, it’s beyond my expertise. Ren’py does allow for minigames via the PyGame extension but I’m not sure that can handle something this intense.

      Since I’m CURRENTLY planning to have FoD take a more prominent role in the sequel, I’m considering a more narrative-driven version of FoD where you pick your overall strategy and the little sprites animate accordingly. We’ll see! Who knows?