André Amorim started developing indie games with the project of Bunny Battle Arena for iOS in 2014, project signed as Donut Coffeeshop Studios. But the path of acquiring knowledge began many years before. André is self-taught from the age of 11. That interest in digital design continued to grow until now, at the age of 29. Now, he tells the story of his newest creation based on a real story: Cruz Brothers.
An idea was born
A friend and student of the boxing coach Marcus Luz and André created a web series. They used amateur footage filmed by Marcus Luz himself while traveling to Cuba in research for boxing knowledge for a project called “Marcus Luz Cuban Quest”. There he was hosted by one of the best boxing coaches of the world: Isidoro Nicolas.
Despite being a low quality homemade vídeo, it was rich in content about boxing techniques, specifically Olympic Boxing, which is a style that approaches the fight with more footwork and defense thinking. From that, both André Amorim, that was working on Bunny Battle during this period, and Marcus Luz came up with the idea of developing a game, initially for mobile, with a fight system based on Olympic Boxing.
Besides the technical part of the project, any good game needs a good storyline, something that awakens great emotions. And Marcus Luz had a good story in his own boxing team. This story is about two brothers going through the fight world to reach its peak: Felipe Cruz the older one and Igor Cruz the younger. So they decided to tell these guys’ real and emotional story through the game.
It is not present in the pre-alpha version, but it will be in the full game.
First Concept
For the first concept, we used a character from the previous game that boxed a boss called Ivan.
The concept controls are mobile friendly, and the attack combos vary as the distance varies. In the game, the player was already able to customize which combo went to which distance, a feature that we kept for the PC/console version.
The deeper we went in the project, the more complex and richer the game became in content, and therefore less mobile friendly. The game started to take the shape of a PC/console game, harder to master and generally harder to play.
Partnerships
During the development process, I (André Amorim) got in touch with the University’s DesignLab director Milton Vieira, presenting what we had been working on and the future project Cruz Brothers. Milton was more than pleased to start a development partnership. That partnership created some opportunities both for the project and us as indie developers. Cruz Brothers will participate as a subject in a master’s degree study. This partnership also made possible contact with the current development team artists and illustrators: Lucas Villalva Machado and Gabriela Zanella Leal.
The team kept growing in size with the entrance of Taynan Quintino, who started as a 3D modeler and ended up being a partner of all Donut Coffeeshop Studio’s projects. Taynan is also currently working on the level design.
No longer being developed by only one person, Cruz Brothers quickly took shape to its current pre-alpha version.
Simulation X Arcade
Despite being a boxing game, Cruz Brothers never had the intention of becoming a full simulation game. Like, for instance, following the exact real boxing rules making the player fight tedious 12 rounds, or slowing the fight’s action by stamina reduction and damage taken.
Animations stand for the simulation part of the project. They aim to be realistic through real references. This is the same as the walking system, that does have a delay in each step, same delay you would have in real life.
Other features are completely arcade style. The rounds are based on the classic best of three rounds system, the fight action will never get slower by fatigue, each fighter will have a special attack and many other features.
One thing we’re going to change in the future, based on feedback from our pre-alpha release, is the way boxing works in the game. If the boxer gets knocked out in the first round, we won’t have a second round. But we already have a game design plan to fix this and make it even more fun between fight rounds.
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Future of Cruz Brothers
Now we are aiming our Steam Greenlight campaign and applying to become Sony and Microsoft developers. PC and console are our main priorities. Currently in pre-alpha, the player can participate at four game modes, Sparring Tower, Sparring, VS Mode and Practice. In full version all of these game modes will be interlinked through the player’s main character, that they will be able to customize and improve. Other game modes will be available as well, such as History mode and Multiplayer.
In History mode the player will be able to practice sparring through boxing gyms spread around the world and participate in tournaments. The player will be able to evolve their own boxing gym, and everything will affect the fighter’s attributes.
A future mobile version will also be released after receiving a simpler control and overall game system.
It’s already possible to try Cruz Brothers pre-alpha for free - it can be downloaded for PC and Mac from the company’s website.
