Here's the link to my interview with Divekick's artist, Anna Kooiman:

http://cqcsteve.podomatic.com/entry/2013-04-21T14_07_34-07_00

The big talk in the fighting game community and at conventions like PAX has been Divekick. During the first day of PAX East, I couldn't walk 50ft in the Boston Convention Center without someone I knew asking if I've checked out this hilarious and weirdly legitimate fighting game from Iron Galaxy. Even when playing other developer's games, the conversation somehow went to Divekick.

From a distance, the game looks like a joke. Well, it was a joke at first. Before playing it, Divekick looked like some dumb flash game you would play on Newgrounds. To my surprise it was more than that. The folks behind the game somehow took that intense last 10 seconds of any close fighting game match and made that a videogame. Everyone has 1,000 health and attacks do a million points of damage.

The “Kickboxes” make the game and communicate everything you need to know. It's a two button fighting game. This means no stick either. I've been curious about fighting games from a distance ever since I can remember. The arcade era was a few years before my time so I feel like I missed my window to get in the genre. Fighting games seem to work best when a personal community is around it and any attempts to break into the genre has boiled down to me playing Street Fighter alone.

One of the loading screen messages in Divekick says, “It's better to master 2 moves than to know 20,000.” That sums up the entire game's philosophy. Even a guy like me that isn't well-versed in the genre can pick up a Kickbox and win matches. Don't take this to mean there isn't skill involved. Each character will take time to master and despite everyone having the same two moves they still all handle distinctively different.

Some of the Divekick team came to Arcade Legacy in Cincinnati this weekend to have a tournament. Surprisingly, everyone already knew about the game and have even had chances to play it previously in other venues. I didn't expect random Street Fighter fan at the arcade to know about some indie fighting game, but the crowd was stoked to get their hands on it.

It's insane that a game that was built to be a joke at the Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament in Chicago became not only a real game that you can buy this summer, but a game that's actually being taken seriously and that folks are screaming to spend a bunch of money on Kickboxes.

Something that didn't make it in the interview is that according to Kooiman, there still isn't a buisness deal made to get Kickboxes to retail.

-Steve

@stevenbeynon