Last week, the mobile version of Punch Club, following the version for desktop devices, received a new – easy – passing mode. We talked to the authors of the game about why this was done.
On December 20, an update to the Punch Club manager was released on iOS. The main feature of the update is an easy mode in which the physical characteristics of the character do not fall if he stops swinging.
The drop in characteristics is one of the most important in–game rules of Punch Club. It forces players to take pumping more seriously, to think through actions a few steps ahead.
If a character skips classes at the gym, his characteristics (strength, agility, endurance) fall, if he does not go to the diner, hunger grows, does not sleep – loses energy, and so on. To win in the ring and complete the game, you need to constantly monitor all the parameters.
The refusal to drop characteristics, in fact, changes the whole game.
We talked with Svyatoslav Cherkasov, a game developer from the Lazy Bear Games team in St. Petersburg, about the goals of such an innovation.
What is the reason for this decision?Svyatoslav Cherkasov
It was one of the most frequently requested features and something that people were terribly dissatisfied with.
Despite the fact that removing the stat drop goes against our vision of the balance of the game and looks like a cheat, the players liked this feature (the new Steam mode was released in early November).
Do you think it made sense to do it right away (at the start of sales)?Definitely yes.
Apparently, if we had done it right away, our reviews would have been much better. On Steam, the ratings rose to 95% (and there was a time when this figure was about 70%).
Indie projects today often appeal to retro gaming, which made more demands on players than the current one (more effort was needed to succeed). How much, in your opinion, do you need a choice in complexity in such projects?Here we got such a thing – the game, thanks to an interesting setting, art and references, hooked a much wider audience than we expected at the beginning.
And it is for such (more casual) players that the choice of difficulty is necessary.
The second part of the game is done without falling characteristics.
On December 20, a deep–fried version of the game was released without a plot and grind – Punch Club: Fights.
The original game earned more than $2 million.