One of many 2025 Xbox Showcase’s most stunning reveals was Invincible VS, a brand new three-on-three tag fighter from Skybound and a brand new startup studio known as Quarter Up Video games. Do not let the “new startup” descriptor idiot you, nonetheless; this can be a staff steeped in combating sport expertise, because it was chargeable for bringing again a cult traditional to a legion of appreciative followers over a decade in the past.
This time, Quarter Up and Skybound are set on respiration new life not into only a franchise, however a concept–Invincible VS invokes the highly-praised Marvel vs. Capcom type of 2D combating video games that use a tag-team system to swap between a number of characters, which is a tall process to strive replicating. Primarily based on our hands-on gameplay throughout a current go to to Skybound in Los Angeles, it appears that evidently Quarter Up is properly on its approach to answering the decision.
A Killer origin story
In 2013, developer Double Helix introduced Uncommon’s Killer Intuition collection again to the lots on Xbox One. The 2013 installment’s gritty, impactful combating system made it an prompt fan favourite, however quickly after it launched, the studio was snapped up by Amazon Video games. Lots of KI 2013’s key builders went on to different initiatives, however Mike Willette–KI 2013 producer and the voice behind the long-lasting “c-c-c-combo breaker!” sound impact within the reboot–wasn’t performed with combating video games but. He needed to get the band again collectively.
“We felt like we had unfinished enterprise,” Willette informed GameSpot on a current Zoom name. “I nonetheless had that itch, so after working [as lead of the world design team] on New World [at Amazon], I reached out to a complete bunch of the oldheads and mentioned, ‘Look, I am enthusiastic about beginning a studio. Would you guys have an interest?’ Instantly, a bunch of them have been in. ‘Yeah dude, I had a lot enjoyable. We love the folks, we love the neighborhood. If you may make it occur, Mike, we’ll present up.'”
Not lengthy after, Willette discovered himself within the workplaces of Skybound, creators of the darkish and gritty Invincible superhero franchise. “Skybound asks me, ‘Mike, what sport would you need to construct right here?’ and I instantly mentioned, ‘I need to construct an Invincible combating sport, and I will construct a tag combating sport,'” Willette recalled. “I used to be an enormous fan of the present and the comics, and there is simply a lot wealthy materials there. It is violent. It is brutal. It has the stakes of what occurs with superheroes. I simply linked with them on such a degree that I mentioned, ‘That is it, that is what I need to do.'”
Making a three-on-three tag fighter was a no brainer for the staff, as Invincible’s pantheon of superheroes, in accordance with Willette, lends itself completely to that type of combating sport. Tag battle combating video games are hype. They’re unimaginable,” Willette mentioned. “The quantity of creativity, the combo techniques, the totally different archetypes that allow you to construct your personal staff, as a substitute of simply utilizing a single character… There hadn’t been an actual large sport since Dragon Ball FighterZ, both, so we carried over from our days in KI, plus all of the learnings from the previous 10 years, and that is the genesis of Quarter Up.”
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Changing into Invincible
Invincible VS employs a simplified model of Marvel vs. Capcom 3’s four-button management scheme for assaults: There are 4 assault buttons–light, medium, heavy, and special–and every has a number of particular assaults which might be used relying on which path you progress the left thumbstick, a la Tremendous Smash Bros. Tapping the sunshine assault a number of occasions additionally affords an auto-combo that can chain into a brilliant transfer, ought to the aggressor have the meter to make use of it.
Fortunately, the staff has balanced that simplified management scheme with a system that gives loads of depth and superior ways to find. These frightened about gamers mashing the combo button again and again, for instance, can take solace within the return of one among Killer Intuition’s defining options: the combo meter, which is able to drive a participant to drop a combo in the event that they use the identical transfer too typically.
Core combating mechanics resemble these from different combating video games: Heroic Increase provides additional energy or hits to particular assaults just like EX strikes in Road Fighter, tremendous meters enable for extra highly effective strikes as you cost them up by attacking and blocking, and so forth. Some are tailored in new and fascinating methods, nonetheless: “snapback”–moves that drive an opponent to swap characters–can additionally blast an opponent into a wholly totally different stage in Invincible VS. In doing so, the character getting knocked into a brand new stage will lose entry to their help characters for a quick moment–because, from a storytelling perspective, these characters should “catch up,” whereas the offensive staff is able to go.
Incorporating the Invincible franchise into this format, in the meantime, has been extremely straightforward for Willette and his team–easier than his earlier initiatives, in reality.
“In comparison with Killer Intuition’s historic recordsdata, I’ve much more entry with this property,” Willette defined. “The issue once we labored on KI was that the entire earlier builders have been gone; we did have [Xbox partner creative director] Ken Lobb, and I may all the time go to Ken, however right here I can go proper to the properly, and it is a deep properly.”
This comes by means of within the pre-fight character intros, the place each character pairing within the sport could have distinctive dialogue with each different character–even in the event that they’ve by no means interacted in official Invincible media.
“We have got entry to many years price of comedian references, entry to the present staff,” Willette mentioned, “and we’re all the time spitballing concepts forwards and backwards with one another. It’s extremely cool to work right here.”
Battle scars
That authenticity additionally bears a extra grisly facet by means of Invincible VS’ blood-and-gore issue, a trait not usually related to tag fighters like this. The obvious implementation of that is in Overkills, the place sure particular and tremendous strikes will decapitate, dismember, and even detonate an opponent’s physique into items if used as the ultimate hit.
Willette says this degree of violence was essential to convey what Invincible has all the time been about, however there’s a restrict.
“Our purpose is to be brutal, however not hyper-grotesque for shock worth,” he defined. “We need to present the sheer brutality of those superheroes combating, like the bottom getting torn up or costumes getting ripped and splattered with blood. In case you did a killing blow, it is actually essential for us, particularly to be genuine to the [intellectual property].”
Willette additionally reveals that the staff has put a singular spin on the battle harm idea by means of “offensive” and “defensive” variations of it. If one character has a giant lead over one other, the main character will nonetheless have blood spots on their costumes or fists caked in red–it’s simply the different character’s blood slightly than their very own.
“We’re actually acutely aware of how this stuff would have an effect on each fighters,” Willette mentioned. “If a personality is at low well being, for an additional instance, their idle animation will likely be totally different to point out how drained they’re. They’re saying, ‘All proper, I am tousled, however I will hold going.’ We actually needed to have these as a part of the storytelling of the combat motion.”
The staff at Quarter Up Video games desires Invincible VS to attraction to as many gamers as potential, and it hopes to realize it by means of one easy strategy: Make every participant really feel like an absolute badass.
“Once you decide up that sport pad for the primary time and you may simply mash and you are feeling superior, that is nice. Meaning you are going to stick round longer,” Willette mentioned. “In case you’ve by no means performed a combating sport earlier than, I would love for this to be your first combating sport. And if lapsed, we would love so that you can come again for this as a result of we love combating video games. We need to make you followers.
“This can be a love letter from us saying, ‘Yeah, we love Invincible, we love combating video games and we would like you to return play.'”
Invincible VS is ready for launch in 2026 for Xbox Sequence X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.
