Hey guys. Obligatory memo at the beginning of each of my posts: no, Zabuyaki is not dead yet, and neither are we. Life has just been very busy for me (new house, new job, side project…). No doubt, things are going much slower than we’d like, but we try to learn from our mistakes to keep going forward.
So, what’s up with Zabuyaki?
You might have seen on our Twitter account a while back that we decided to add a 4th playable character to our game. We were missing a classic big guy (or “grappler”) in our roster, and wanted to fill that gap. Also, I felt like our character lineup was a bit too serious and needed to be more fun and unique. I tried to think of several big guy designs, but honestly, all of them were boring. Also, I’ve always had this idea at the back of my mind that a playable bear could be cool. So I came up with Yar:
He’ll fill the big guy role without looking like a bland Haggar or Zangief clone, and I feel like he’ll also bring both humor and badassness to our game. Another reason that pushed me to create a 4th hero, despite all the extra work this is going to mean for us (especially since it’s such a special character), is that I felt we needed it make Zabuyaki more relevant, to stand out and compete better with other beat ’em ups.
Anyway, as I mentioned ages ago, our first big milestone is to make the first stage fully playable. In this context, we’re putting Yar and Kisa on hold, and will keep focusing on Rick and Chai, to make sure it doesn’t take forever. So yes, sorry but Yar is going to hibernate for a while.
