Hello everyone of the Touch Arcade community. My name is Alex Ergas, the creator and developer of Combo Queen which is currently in development. What is Combo Queen? Combo Queen is a fast-paced, hack and slash, action RPG for the mobile device. Your main objective is to plow through thousands of monsters by performing crazy combos with our lovely character Queen, the cute, psychotic killer. Combos and parries are all performed by precise, timed hits: one finger taps for attacks and two finger taps for parries. You'll be able to level up, purchase combo sets and upgrade Queen with new equipment. Combo Queen was inspired by numerous games I've played over my lifetime. I'm sure you can guess some of them. Here's our trailer: Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel Gameplay Actions in Combo Queen are based on timed hits. There is a gauge that closes in to help you time attacks. You must be precise to land your hits and maintain your combo. One finger for attacking: Two fingers for parrying: As you successfully combo and parry attacks, the Combo Burst Bar will build up. When full, you can then initiate a Combo Burst by tapping the screen with three fingers at once, which will enable you to tap the screen as many times as you like to perform an endless combo before your bar depletes. The only way to survive is to successfully parry attacks from monsters. Queen is extremely strong offensively, but when it comes to taking damage, she's as fragile as glass. A single hit from the enemy will kill her, but as you level up she'll be able to sustain more hits. You will also receive items and equipment to help survive longer. What's the goal for this game? I decided that I wanted to make a game that I personally thought would be cool, fun to develop, fun to play, and have beautiful *correct* pixel art. I also wanted to make it a semi-hardcore game that would appeal more to hardcore gamers and not casual gamers which is what led me to thinking of the gameplay and controls for this game. We're basically trying to beat the tiring trend of "Flappy Bird clone" types of games, which has saturated and taken over a large chunk of the mobile marketplace. We plan to release in December 2014 if our Kickstarter is successfully funded, which is currently live. I'm open to any feedback or questions. Please let me know. Thank you for your time.
Adorable visual, as well as an interesting game style, it seems. Unfortunately...i can handle one- and two fingers on screen (who can't?), but three fingers at the same time is only a way to pause a game for me, too inconvenient otherwise. (Might work well on ipad but not on iphone) No other solution possible ? You don't want more buttons on screen, right? Another big no-go would be this stroboscopey flashing. Ouch, my eyes simply can't handle this at all. I checked Kickstarter and it looks not too bad that you'll reach your goal. Good luck with everything !
I agree about the 3 fingers thing. Completely disagree about the strobe flashing. If nothing it needs more strobe. Is this game at all music based? It seemed that the tapping went along with the music.
Thank you so much for the kind words. The controls are much easier than they sound. There haven't been any games (that I know of) that use these kind of controls so it will seem foreign to people. It's the animated gif and video that causes this misconception for the flashing. When you're playing the game in real-time it doesn't bother the eyes at all. It adds to the effect of the Combo Burst. Thanks for the feedback. -- Thank you for your feedback! In the trailer I just wanted to match the music with the hits to kind of give it more of an impact. The game is not based off of timing with the music. But listening to the in-game hit sounds will definitely help you memorize the combo set which will help you with timing your hits correctly.
The art is just gorgeous and I love tje sound, the gameplay sounds intriguing. Just one question, is there movement? Any sort of exploration, adventure or platforming? My only complaint would be the flash is a bit heavy on the eyes.
Thank you very much! There's no real moving. Queen automatically moves to keep that simple feel since it's a mobile game. We don't have the budget yet to make it more of an exploration and adventure type game. We wanted to release a base of the game and see how the public reacts. A lot of people are misunderstanding the flashing. It was really just the animated gif and video that's giving it that bad effect. I guarantee it's not like when you play the game.
Hmm, this looks pretty cool. I like the art style and the game play looks pretty solid. I agree with others that the full screen strobe flashes in the video seem to be too much, but, as the dev stated, we'll have to see how it looks in person to make a full judgement. I'm curious what "correct" pixel art means, though. The pixel art definitely looks good, but I'm not savvy enough to know that there were "correct" and "incorrect" ways to do pixel art. Looking forward to seeing how this develops and giving it a spin when it comes out.
This game is definitely not a QTE game. You're basically pressing an attack button at a certain time which is just like any other game with combos. There are no crazy cut-scenes that make you wait 5 seconds or so in between each attack. Not a QTE game. Thank you for the kind words! Yes, please be rest assured about the strobe flashes. I hope you can give the game a chance when it's released. We feel that a lot of developers out there try to re-create pixel art for games using low budget designers that have no experience in making pixel art which end up butchering the art style. The mobile marketplace is flooded with these types of games.
Saw this i pocketgamer earlier. This looks amazing. I love female characters as the protagonist. the art looks amazing
Thank you for the kind words! Follow me on Twitter or follow our Kickstarter if you'd like to get news about the game! https://twitter.com/AlexErgas https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexergas/combo-queen Thank you so much! We wanted to have a character that could kick some butt and show some style. Our pixel artist is great!
The aesthetic is awesome - both art and music. I'm also skeptical of the controls but they actually might work quite well. Good luck with this!
Thank you so much! The controls seem foreign but give it about 5-10 minutes of playing the game and you'll realize that these are the type of controls needed for this type of game.
