Summary
- Dotemu has mostly been known for taking known IP and putting a retro spin on it over the years.
- That all changes with its next big game, Absolum, a beat ’em up that features roguelike elements.
- We had the chance to chat with the team at Dotemu and Supamonks to find out more about the next big thing for the genre.
Ever since Dotemu burst onto the scene back in 2008, the French publisher has made a name for itself by focusing on a single core strategy – taking beloved and, more often than not, dormant IP and giving them a new lease on life. Dotemu has had a hand in several different genres over the years, but it’s best known for retro-style beat ‘em ups, which it has unarguably come to master.
In the past five years alone, Dotemu has released two of the most critically acclaimed beat ‘em up games of all time in the form of Streets of Rage 4 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. With those licensed legends under its brawling belt, you might think the next step would be something in the same vein. But, to my surprise, you couldn’t be more wrong.
Related
Absolum Preview – The Next Big Thing For Beat ‘Em Ups
Dotemu has already mastered the beat ‘em up genre, but Absolum’s roguelike influence makes it feel like a breath of fresh air.
How Absolum Came To Be And Why It’s Not Using A Known IP
Absolum, Dotemu’s recently revealed fantasy beat ‘em up, bucks that trend by acting as the publisher’s first completely original IP. Instead of taking a well-known series that could easily fit the familiar medieval aesthetic like Dungeons & Dragons or Golden Axe, Absolum’s new and unchained world shows that Dotemu is ready to do its own thing.
“We were talking with Guard Crush Games about how we should work together after Streets of Rage 4 and build on what we did with that title,” Dotemu CEO Cyrille Imbert tells me. “We asked what we should do next and had several IPs in mind in the same spirit as Absolum, but I pushed the option to create something new. Strategically, that could be interesting for Dotemu, not to put all our eggs in the same basket and try new things. That’s what drove us for the past years, trying to renew ourselves and not doing the same thing all over again.”
There’s a sliver of irony in Imbert’s statement, as doing the same thing over and over again is a key part of Absolum’s DNA. Beyond being a stellar beat ‘em up with mechanics somewhere in the middle of Shredder’s Revenge and Streets of Rage 4, Absolum is also a roguelike with shades of Hades in which you embark on runs, die, improve yourself, and do it all over again.
So how can you make it different? Roguelike mechanics are usually the answer, but how you execute that and do it is really the key there, and it took us a long time to find the right formula for that. – Cyrille Imbert
Dotemu Wants To “Renew” Beat ‘Em Ups With A Focus On Story
We’ve seen Dotemu dabble with the roguelike genre in DLC for both its previous beat ‘em ups, but this is the first time such a loop is a core part of the experience. The end result is a side-scrolling brawler with more variety and a bigger focus on storytelling than beat ‘em up are usually known for.
“The main idea basically was to renew the genre,” Imbert admits. “We’re not the first to do it, but we wanted to do it our way. One of the perks of [roguelikes] is that you tend to redo it over and over again the same way. The fact that you can do different builds was a way to make it different for every run. And with that you have different characters, which in other roguelikes could be different weapons, basically giving you a different gameplay style.”
Imbert notes that another big reason Absolum went for a roguelike approach was to support the game’s fantasy narrative. While most of its previous games have been purposefully light on story to mimic the arcade era, Absolum features a world rich with lore, detailed locations, and layered characters that the team wants players to uncover throughout their runs.
Combining the core gameplay mechanics of beat ‘em ups and the narrative flexibility of roguelikes sounds like a tall order but, as I discovered in my preview, it’s a match that works surprisingly well. It’s an evolution that seems to have come about naturally for Dotemu, who even coined a term for the type of game that Absolum might inspire.
“Recently in the games industry, the lines between genres are getting blurry,” Dotemu lead producer Micke Moisa tells me. “Each genre is going to pick from another and try to find elements to put into their own game to make something new. We were thinking about how to name this genre, and we thought of rogue ‘em up because it’s also a mix of different things. That’s what we call evolving the beat ‘em up genre.”
The story adds another layer to beat ‘em ups because when you’re redoing a bit that many times and there’s no actual story, it just becomes background. – Micke Moisa
Supamonks Talks Creating Absolum’s Unique Hand-Drawn Artstyle
Absolum’s attempts to evolve the beat ‘em up genre aren’t just unique to Dotemu as, much like Streets of Rage 4 and Shredder’s Revenge before it, development is being shared between multiple studios. Guard Crush Games, a familiar face to Doteumu, is behind most of the gameplay elements, while the striking hand-drawn visuals are being handled by Supamonks, a team that’s almost completely new to gaming.
This French production and animation studio has previously created trailers and graphics for games like Clash of Clans, but has never worked on one to this extent. Absolum’s unique combination of dark inking and bright environments is both a far cry from Supamonk’s previous work and what we usually see in the predominantly pixel-art genre.
“There was a legacy with Streets of Rage 4, which was already done in hand-drawn animation,” Supamonks lead artist Maxime Mary tells me. “Because of that, there was no question about whether to do pixel art, since we wanted to follow that same path. We used a lot of references from beat ‘em ups in pixel art, though – a lot of sprites from Capcom fighting games. Vampire Survivors was a good reference for me, and Golden Axe was a reference from the start of the project.”
Golden Axe being an inspiration for Absolum seems apt considering the similar medieval fantasy settings, but it’s not the only well that Supamonks dipped into. Mary notes that Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is a good starting point for comic book styles for video games of this ilk, but Supamonks more specifically looked at French authors like Christophe Blanc and cartoons like Asterix and Obelix.
This is our first time as a co-developer. The backgrounds, the characters, the special effects, and the cinematics – everything that you see visually is made by Supamonks. – Maxime Mary
Going from Hellboy to Asterix and Obelix in the same breath might give you tonal whiplash, but Mary says that the general vibe that Absolum is aiming for is cartoony and colourful like The Legend of Zelda albeit with a somewhat macabre twist.
Absolum’s Focus On Movement Is Mostly Thanks To The Art Team
Incorporating a hand-drawn style into a beat ‘em up is a tall order as is, but Absolum’s varied and open-ended roguelike structure with tons of secrets and scenarios to find adds even more challenge into the mix.
“The worlds of animation and video games don’t work in the same way,” Mary notes. “In video games, it’s very organic – you have to test what you do, and sometimes it doesn’t work. When we did the first vertical slice of the project, we finished everything. And when we decided to do something else with the gameplay, it took a lot to see every frame and every ink colour be put in the trash. After that, we decided to work with a rough pass between the developers and the designers.”
While Supamonks found out the hard way how much changes during a game’s development compared to other mediums, its artists played a major role in why Absolum changed so much. During early development, the game was slower-paced and more akin to Streets of Rage with more purposeful movement.
The current and near-final version of the game possesses a faster pace with more emphasis on movement, juggling, and dashing around. In my time with the game, it felt close to Shredder’s Revenge, a change that was brought about due to a desire for more fluidity in the animations and to make Absolum stand out from the crowd.
“Very early on in development, we started with the classic beat ‘em up where the characters are just walking and have a very short range,” Mary reveals. “As animators, we asked, can we run? Can we dash? Can we jump? Supamonks wanted this part to make it much more dynamic. We pushed the explosivity of the poses in the animation and the fluidity of the animation to make sure the gameplay was a step up compared to classic beat ‘em ups.”
Absolum Has Given Dotemu More Freedom Than It’s Ever Had
Absolum’s focus on storytelling and its unique hand-drawn art style are already unique considering how rarely both have been utilised in other beat ‘em ups, but it’s especially interesting considering Absolum’s uncharacteristically IP-less blank slate.
“From a game design standpoint, it’s also very interesting,” Moisa says. “When you’re working on an IP, you have to follow some rules and be true to the IP that you’re working with. In this case, since we are the owner of the IP, we are able to do whatever and to have this actual game design freedom that we may not have when working with other properties.”
While Dotemu is clearly excited about finally being able to unleash its own creativity and let players dive into a world they haven’t been familiar with since the ’80s, Imbert notes that it’s just one part of the publisher’s strategy. Dotemu is still focusing on “IP-based titles” and has a stacked lineup of games in the works, but it hopes to further develop Absolum’s world to be its own franchise.
“Because it’s a new IP, we’re thinking about the future – if that works out then we’d like to propose different things with the IP,” Imbert says. “We had to create a whole universe that’s coherent, that’s rich, and that’s deep so we can propose things for the future. That’s the cool thing with your own IP – everything is open and you can do whatever you want.”
Despite the similarities to Hades, Imbert confirms that Absolum was never considered as an early-access release, and that the team wanted to “give it our all” at launch.
Next
PSA: Split Fiction Is Not As Casual As It Takes Two
Split Fiction is an elevation of It Takes Two, not a continuation, and it will leave some players behind