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UPDATE-MARCH 2020: This game is on hiatus for now. If enough people wish for me to finish it, I will. Until then, I'll leave this game's pre-hiatus post un-edited below.
What is Fake Fights?
A cartoon combat card game in active development: Pick your fighter, shuffle your moves and have the sort of scrap you couldn't have in real life!
I'll let my initial Fake Fights pitch from Twitter do the talking:
"Other games have you beat the crap out of things, plan savvy tactics and embarrass opponents, but in Fake Fights, you do more: you don't just fight the fight, you stage it moment-for-mad-moment, thrilling onlookers with wars as epic, silly, hard-hitting and hilarious as your infinite potential/insanity will allow them to be.
Fake Fights will take over your life. Why? The battles are deep, intense and wildly unpredictable. The decisions you're given to make are hysterical. You'll form powerful bonds with your combatants as you bring them to life, craft their stories and build their abilities. You'll long to gather new moves in the pursuit of a perfect deck and you and your friends will delight in the endless ways to combine moves and gang up on opponents two-on-one.
What's the most fun way to hurt your friends?
Get into Fake Fights and find out!"
What do you need to know about Fake Fights?
As Patreon was going to be YesMode's leading revenue stream (at least until I could sort out a way to sell physical goods), I needed a new game concept that would drive YesMode's Patreon campaign. I explored several ideas, the strongest being a game based on a wrestling saga I had spent years writing as a hobby: the ARC (All-Round Combat) saga.
Wrestling was a big part of my youth. In the late 90's, the WWF (World Wrestling Federation, now WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment) hit it's pop-culture peak. Everyone in high school knew wrestling and lived for it, myself included. By 2002, wrestling's peak had passed and I stopped watching for twelve years.
As a one-off, I watched WWE's WrestleMania 30 in 2014, just to amuse myself with how much wrestling had changed. I was baffled. Modern wrestling felt banal, sanitised and lacking in direction, yet it made a lot of money and had profound support from fans. Why, I couldn't say, so I began writing notes to explain it to myself. To keep my notes informed, I began watching wrestling regularly again, rarely enjoying myself, but satisfied that my notes weren't based on assumptions.
Within these notes, I gave examples of what a modern wrestling company could do to take the world by storm, more so than WWF did in my childhood. Before long, I was fleshing out this hypothetical company with details such as wrestlers, event names, iconic matches, etc.
I was gripped in this intense need to deconstruct wrestling: What kind of fighters would EVERYONE love to follow? What battles are the most thrilling to watch? Can wrestling lead pop culture in ways that it hasn't yet attempted? In addressing each question, I learned more about how wrestling's best stories should be told.
By late 2016, I had written and re-written the timeline of ARC, as I would name my fictional wrestling promotion, to such a point where I could proudly advertise it as a BETTER company than WWE at it's peak, it's stars the ULTIMATE stars of professional combat (wrestling brings out your inner-brag like you wouldn't believe!). The question then became "Why not advertise it, then?" I needed a game concept to build YesMode Patreon around. Why not build it from the stars and stories of ARC?
What sealed the deal and made me officially commence work on Fake Fights was a drawing I doodled of ARC star Amber Stone, which I then neatened on my PC. I didn't care how Amber looked, whether her body looked too square or her hands too unnatural, just as long as she looked FUN and DIFFERENT to how wrestlers were typically presented. This was the result!
The moment I looked at the finished Amber, I thought "Put her on a card. Sell the card on Patreon." Bullseye! I had the exact concept I needed.
At first, I couldn't think of a strong name for the ARC card game, so I called it "WrestlePOP" as a working title. Each time I read this silly name, it made me smile, so for a long stretch of it's development, the game remained "WrestlePOP." I had my mind set on making a game just for wrestling fans, since they were, overall, one of the most passionate fanbases to make things for. Plus, I doubted that the ARC story would mean as much to non-wrestling-fans. I felt the game would benefit from having "Wrestle" in the title.
Since WrestlePOP's wealth of details would be lost on all but wrestling fans, I gave the game it's own blog instead of discussing it on the YesMode Blog. I no longer update the WrestlePOP blog, but feel free to explore it if you're interested!
>VISIT THE WRESTLEPOP BLOG<
wrestlepop.blogspot.com
By 2019, I grew frustrated with wrestling fandom. With each view of wrestling I voiced on open forums, fans would hound me with a stream of abusive messages. After years of this hostility, the point was made clear: my opinions on wrestling aren't welcome.
No longer seeing fun in the word "Wrestle," I changed WrestlePOP's name to "Fake Fights" and repurposed the game as something ALL could enjoy, not just wrestling fans.
Visually, WrestlePOP sought to combine South Park with Pokemon Cards, two cultural crazes that peaked at the same time that wrestling peaked, 1999. Once the name changed to Fake Fights though, I felt inspired to give the game bootleg-T-shirt visuals: awful, hand-scrawled, unprofessional renders of what were, obviously, much-better-looking franchise-icon cartoon characters. Not that those much-better characters existed. There was no "real" Fake Fights franchise. Why would there be? The name was "Fake" Fights, so why not accentuate the fake aspect?
Since January 2017, I have developed as much of Fake Fights as I can. I am still honing the rules, mechanics and fun factor of the card game to a point that I'm happy with. I will have said-game physically manufactured as soon as possible. For now, Fake Fights exists mainly in crude scribbles!
As a game, Fake Fights is structured to create the strangest, wildest and deepest combat ever. Each turn of play sees you adjust your fighter's battle statistics with energy cards, arrange sequences of move cards based on those stats, then try to execute that sequence against your opponent without being countered. Reduce their stats to zero and you'll be ready to play your game-winning gambit.
At first, Fake Fights requires deep cerebral investment as you focus on weaving the savviest strategy out of your hand. The next moment, the game has you on the floor laughing as your sequence succeeds, and you realise you just punched your friend in the face, poked them in the eye, threw them over your head into the referee, did an unnecessary backflip and kicked them in the teeth. You monster! Or perhaps it fails, and your friend counters smartly with the card you hoped they wouldn't have, BIG SWING, which allows them to grab your leg mid-kick, trap you in a long spiralling swing and throw you through the ropes out of the ring! ...Through the windshield of the car they just happened to have parked at ring-side!
Fake Fights is equal parts deep strategy and mean-spirited silliness, which only intensifies once three or more players get involved. Let's say that Player A lifts Player B onto their shoulders... Player C at THAT moment (if they time their moves right) could spring off the ropes to smash their knee into Player B's face, which B cannot dodge because they're caught on A's shoulders! Then, JUST after knee hits face, Player A drops B into the floor neck-first! EVERY move in Fake Fights can be combined two-on-one in ways such as this! With enough technique, you COULD pull this sequence off atop ladders or a cage wall!
Just make sure you keep track of each player's stats and what kind of cards those stats allow use of. What if Player A throws Player B over the ropes out of the ring... just in time for Player C to whip a trash can out from under the ring to send Player B crashing into? Well, with the right stats intact, Player B could turn their being-thrown-out-the-ring to their advantage, catch Player C's head mid-fall and force Player C face-first into the trash can!
This should give you some insight into what kind of game Fake Fights will be. Upon launch, you will be able to buy starter decks to pick up Fake Fights' rules with. Following launch, Fake Fights theme decks will be gradually released based around each of the game's cartoon combatants. These decks will include pools of new move cards. The more you collect and arrange, the better your combatant will perform!
At first, I planned out Fake Fights as a digital card game. You would acquire new cards by backing my Patreon. As of now though, I aim primarily to make Fake Fights a physical product. It's too good of a game to not be played with friends gathered around a table! At this stage, I don't specifically need to sell Fake Fights cards via Patreon.
I DO have a Patreon-centric fighting game for you to enjoy though! Well, it's more of a comic- wait... I should discuss it in my next post!
Can't wait that long? Then go right now to patreon.com/lenaray - That's...
...and donate to play DEMON TOY DEATHMATCH there!
Any questions, confusion or compliments about Fake Fights? Leave a comment below!
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