In 2020, announced during the Dungeon Fighter Online (abbreviated DFO) fan festival in South Korea, a teaser dropped for a new fighting game in collaboration with developer ArcSys, DNF Duel. The trailer was short but striking, showing off a flashy and exciting adaptation of DFO. And after nearly a year of silence, an official YouTube channel popped up, dropping character announcements and teasers, leading up to the surprise announcement of a public beta between December 17-20, 2021. While I never really engaged with DFO in the past, there is something about this game that has me quaking with anticipation. It’s not the fancy graphics or cool characters that has me excited. No, it’s the involvement of Japanese video game developer 8ing.
Knowing that 8ing has been tapped for the design of this game has me unbelievably excited. I have played several fighting games from 8ing, and every single time, I come away with something unique and special. I remember staying up past midnight playing Tatsunoko vs Capcom the night it was released, being blown away by the way this game played. I even organized a tournament at my college between the anime club and video game club, and I remember when one of the school officials, who had little experience with video games before, lit up with joy. 8ing games, to me, bring out the pure fun of video games like no other company can. After playing the beta this weekend, I am confident that 8ing will nail it once again.
Before working on games like Tatsunoko vs Capcom and Fate/Unlimited Codes, 8ing broke into the fighting game scene with Bloody Roar. While it was never the most popular 3D fighter, you see the design philosophy that would be brought into later fighting game projects. Beyond the wild character designs and fantastical story, at the heart of Bloody Roar are systems and practices that 8ing would develop as they grew more experienced. 8ing’s systems make me feel like I am a kid again, staying up late at night playing with LEGOs, where my messy bucket of mis-matched pieces lent itself to a world of possibility and creativity. I can try out just so many options and ideas, each idea considered valid and most importantly, fun to do!
There is nothing quite like making Alice the Rabbit flip kick opponents over and over again and ending it with a big spinning uppercut. 8ing games make me feel the same way that I felt when I discovered that, with a well placed Vertical Attack with Talim in Soul Calibur 2, you can spin kick your opponent off of the stage in a single combo. Where doing that in Soul Calibur 2 makes you feel like you’re cheating and the other kids in the video game club got mad at you, 8ing looks at those kinds of moments and runs with it. This kind of design would later be seen in what is easily their most popular and successful game; Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3.
This iterated version of the popular 3v3 fighting game is still played at major tournaments to this day. Earlier in December 2021 at CEO (Community Effort Orlando) in Florida, 161 participants entered. Not bad for a game over a decade old! This game inspires a passionate fan base of all ages, and I feel the key to its success lies in its systems. Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 is a game of expression and over the top nonsense, giving players the tools to express themselves in neigh-infinite permutations. This title would be a standard bearer for the genre for years to come, with its fast and loose tag engine and combo fluidity. This is a fighter where, in its professional history, low-tier characters have rocketed up the charts because one player found some new way of playing that character, finding some unique synergy between characters, or just flipping the character on its head with a unique play style.
Sure, characters like Virgil from Devil May Cry and Phoenix from X-Men would dominate the meta, but players would find teams that expressed their unique play styles and attitudes, making the game feel positively alive with possibility. Players like I<3Justice and ApologyMan would find success with the likes of Phoenix Wright and Super-Skrull respectively, showing off tactics that made me feel giddy every time I saw them fight in a Top 8. And even if a character isn’t strictly good or viable, each character is flat out fun to play. I mean, really, shouldn’t that be what fighting games are all about? 8ing finds ways to communicate the essence of each character in not just how they look and sound, but how they encourage players to interact with the game’s systems. It’s baked into the very way players interact with the game as a whole. This skill at finding what makes a character fun to play with and expressing that in systems is one of 8ing’s greatest strengths.
In my short time with the DNF Duel beta, every single character was just a joy to play. I could feel myself grinning ear to ear as I pulled off short but simple combos as Striker, and that if I had more time with the character, I could get lost in the possibilities of her kit. Divekicks, hurricane kicks, and one-inch punches lend themselves to a unifying character philosophy: solid fundamentals leading to explosive damage. All of this is supported with universal mechanics such as Conversion and Cancelling, making me feel like that kid who just found a massive LEGO bucket. 8ing tapped into each of the characters on the roster of DFO and found the essence of what makes them engaging.
Going back to Striker, her moves communicate not only a proficiency and confidence in the martial arts, but they feel right at home with the kinds of characters that her design exemplifies. Striker is cut from the same cloth as Miyako (Melty Blood), Jam (Guilty Gear), and Akatsuki (Under Night In-Birth); characters with solid fundamentals and explosive damage potential. However, Striker stands out with her ability to string together specials into a flurry of fists that can leave your opponent’s head spinning. She feels like the distilled essence of what a, well, Striker should be. And every character on the roster is like this! In spite of a limited roster, or maybe even because of it, each character feels extremely well crafted to express the archetype they represent.
Not only are the characters extremely well rendered, communicating in an instant what they are all about, their actual moves feel like the logical extension of their visual design. Their moves reveal something deeper about their personalities, and help in getting the player up to speed on what makes the archetype they represent so engaging. The roster is made of archetypes, in a way: their simple naming structure communicates very plainly what kind of character they are. You want a big guy who has lots of damage with a wild look in his eye? Play Berserker! Want to get down to business and execute your opponent with efficiency? Look no further than Hitman. Wanna play a cocky gunslinger who has no respect for anyone other than himself? Ranger has you covered. Having adapted so many anime games with ballooning rosters with wild variations in the past, it is clear that 8ing has a knack for expressing the appeal of a character through their play style. It’s not just that 8ing is the best choice to adapt the wild characters and action of DFO, their entire career seems to have led up to this moment.
I have some worries about this game, but most of my worries are things that tend to get ironed out in development. Servers were a little broken, rollback wasn’t the most optimized, sound mixing issues, etc. But I am not that worried. 8ing is developing this game with ArcSys, who have made plenty of polished, well received fighters in the past. By allowing 8ing to do what I feel they do best, which is creating engaging characters that capture their essences and designing systems with boundless creativity, DNF Duel is going to be something incredibly special. Not many games can make me feel like I have that box full of LEGOs, staying up into the wee hours of the night creating my own fun. 8ing designs games that spark joy inside of me. Set to release in Summer of 2022, I cannot wait to see what comes next.
