HomeFeaturesEntertainmentNY-Based Game Company Releases "Blade Ballet"

NY-Based Game Company Releases "Blade Ballet"

When former Rutgers University biochemist-turned-game-company-market-analyst Cindy Mallory reached out to Best of NJ about an upcoming game called Blade Ballet, we saw an interesting story in the making. Cindy is part of a New York-based indie startup called DreamSail Games, and Blade Ballet is their debut title. We spoke to the team about the company and their premiere game launch.

Blade Ballet is a multiplayer fighting game. Players can choose from a selection of ten robot characters, all of them offering distinct personalities and special abilities. The robots then do battle across the game’s nine levels, each designed with increasing hazards — ranging from lava and avalanches to lasers and falling tiles — that force players to restrategize and adjust tactics. Blade Ballet includes three match types: A traditional Stock match (the first person to win a set number of rounds is the victor), a Timed Death Match (the player who scores the most kills within a set time limit wins), and a Soccer variant.

To find out more information about the game, and DreamSail Games in general, BONJ spoke to company Co-founder and Blade Ballet Producer Kevin Porras.

Best of NJ: What was special about New York when deciding to create your startup? How has the game development scene grown in recent times?

Kevin Porras: The absolute best thing about New York, and the Tri-state area in general, is that no matter what, you can find someone who has the knowledge that you need for your team. It was actually pretty easy to find people to work with that had the skills we needed at various points during development. There are also a lot of strong programs at the various colleges around here — shout out to the NYU Game Center where [DreamSail Games Founder, Blade Ballet Artist] Justin Sanders and I graduated from — where you can recruit from.

BONJ: There are a number of other emerging party-brawlers in the indie scene. What would you say is the hook that will draw players to Blade Ballet?

Porras: The stand out thing for Blade Ballet has been the different robots that you can fight as. Each bot has a unique personality that is reflected in their design and in their special ability. It really comes through and we have seen so many people become attached to “their bot.” It has come so far from the original prototype of the game, where all players were just different colored cubes. Our soundtrack was also created completely in-house and people seem to really like it. The amount of love that our composer, Alec Galambos, put in it really shows.
Blade Ballet

BONJ: Can you give some examples of the specific personalities and abilities that a few of the bots possess?

Porras: My favorite for a long time was one of the early bots named Torque. He has these stubby blade arms and his special ability is to hop into the air and rip into a tremendous spin. His entire bot persona just really meshes so well and you feel like this whirling dervish of destruction. All the bots have this personality that comes across very strongly. I attribute this mostly to the fact that many of the bots were designed by a programmer, artist and designer working hand-in-hand on small teams. I think that let them go crazy with their ideas without having too much influence from the rest of the larger group, resulting in bots that really each made a statement.

BONJ: When it comes to level design altering battle strategy, were there other games you took inspiration from? I fondly remember the first few Bomberman games being endlessly replayable, because each level introduced a new game mechanic players would then have to accommodate.

Porras: The most important touchstone, in my opinion, has been the Mario Party series of games. There is this feeling the moment a minigame pops up in Mario Party where all the players must very quickly process what the object of the minigame is and how they should go about achieving this goal. We tried to build this moment into as many of our levels as possible; for example, there is a spinning laser on AI Core that is off by default. New players on that level don’t go out of their way to figure out how to turn it on, but eventually, someone hits it by accident and chaos ensues. The entire level then becomes all about controlling this central point of the map, making for a brutal and chaotic level compared to some of our more open and spread out levels.

Blade Ballet
AI Core stage

BONJ: A lot of multiplayer games have been focusing exclusively on online multiplayer and excluding local multiplayer. What makes local play important to Blade Ballet?

Kevin: I can’t even imagine Blade Ballet without local play. I think this comes from the fact that most of the team grew up in the era of Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 2. We all have these fond memories of sitting around a single TV set together, screen-cheating and punching each other between rounds. [Software Engineer] Andrew Chester and I actually grew up together, so we have a lot of those memories over Bomberman, just like you. Those are some of my personal best memories of games and I hope we create more for our players.

Blade Ballet was released on Aug. 9 on Steam and PS4. For more information, visit the DreamSail Games website. You can also follow the team on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for news and updates.


Hero (Top) Feature Image (& Additional Media Assets): © Blade Ballet / DreamSail Games

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