Interview with game developer Keene about Arcane Fist

What happens when you mix a lifelong passion for Muay Thai, a deep love for Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the chaotic, high-octane competitive energy of Rocket League? You get Arcane Fist, an upcoming independent brawler on Steam that grounds spectacular elemental magic in realistic, impactful martial arts movements.

I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with the game's developer, Keen, to talk about his journey into game development. In this exclusive interview, he opens up about bringing a 2D anime art style into a 3D space, the brutal challenges of balancing unique character abilities, and how a community-driven playtest is shaping the future of the game.

Dive into our full conversation below and find out how you can join the action yourself in the upcoming open playtest!

Keene, how would you describe the unique combination of 'Arcane' (magic) and 'Fist' (martial arts/action) in the gameplay? What makes this dynamic stand out from existing games?

Arcane Fist has unique elemental magic combat that feels heavy and realistic by grounding each move in real martial arts movements, such as Muay Thai. There aren't a million buttons to press or combos to remember, you have a limited set of tools that offer a wide range of playstyles depending on how you choose to utilize them. Some fire users will use their fire jet to fly in close, harrass you with kick attacks, and launch a fireball into your face when you try to run away. Others will pepper you with fireballs from a distance, using fire jet to keep distance and kite opponents. How you want to combine your abilities is up to you. It's all about mastering timing, fluency, and awareness. Playing Arcane Fist is easy, the moves are straightforward and quick to learn. Mastering Arcane Fist is the challenge, and your play style is up to you.

Which specific games, movies, or stories served as the biggest inspiration during the design process of the mechanics and the world?

I've put a lot of my personal passion and interests into this game, specifically my love for martial arts, anime, and competitive gaming.

I've been training Muay Thai, a martial art from Thailand, for years and it influences every ability in the game. When I'm creating new moves I'll often just punch and kick my way around my apartment to figure out how I want the abilities to feel.

I grew up watching Avatar: The Last Airbender and to this day it's still one of my favorite shows. I've lost count of how many rewatches I've done at this point. I'm sure everyone is sick of me talking about it by now, but I'm still mesmerized by the beautiful elemental combat. Whenever I feel stuck I just start watching Avatar until more inspiration hits. I'm generally a huge anime nerd, but I think Hayao Miyazaki's work (particularly my all time favorite Princess Mononoke) is exceptional and I use a lot of his movies as references for how to draw textures in an anime style.

On the gaming side, Spellbreak was a big early source of inspiration for how elemental fighting should feel. I also played a lot of fortnite to figure out how I wanted the third person camera to look. They have some really clean movement abilities that I used as early inspiration. Completely unrelated, Rocket League has also been a huge influence for me in terms of how I want gameplay to feel. Rocket League is fast, chaotic, and rewards mastering the mechanics of the game. My development process usually consists of playing a bunch of different games, taking the pieces I love, putting some more on top, and hoping it all blends together into something cool (and sometimes you just make a blob of random nonsense instead).

To what extent do players need to rely on pure, fast reflexes, and how much strategic thinking and planning goes into effectively using the magical powers?

This is a great question because it's something I'm actually in the middle of working on. At the micro level, Arcane Fist is less about twitch reflexes and more about timing, patience, and accuracy. The best Arcane Fist players I've seen are very good at understanding how to keep their distance, get their opponent in an uncomfortable position, and then punish with brutal accuracy. At the macro level, teamplay is about taking as much space as possible from the enemy team and isolating players. When you die there's no respawn, so the most competitive teams are the ones that are aggressive in taking map control, forcing the other team into a cramped space, and then hammering them with fireballs or ice spears.

I'd like to add even more high level decision making into the game, so I'm working on different map variants that gives players more decisions to make. I like to come up with lots of different ideas and just playtest everything. Since I'm still so new to game dev, I like to just try all the ideas I can come up with. You never know what players will like, and I'm lucky to have such a cool community of gamers who are up for trying all my wacky ideas.

The graphic style immediately catches the eye. What conscious choices were made to convey the atmosphere of this specific world to the player through the visuals?

Trying to create this art style has been all about trial and error. When I first started making Arcane Fist I had no idea how game art even worked, so I just tried everything. Different models, art styles, toon shaders on the Unity Asset store, everything. My biggest emphasis has been on the abilities. Most of the elemental abilities are made by layering hand drawn 2D textures, which makes them feel big and impactful while giving them a really unique style. If you look at the explosions, you'll see the same technique. The layering makes them feel natural in the 3D world, but they're still hand drawn textures that give them a beautiful anime style. It's really difficult to try and create a 2D anime style in a 3D space, but the hard work has really paid off.

What has been the most difficult mechanic or feature to implement so far, and how did you eventually overcome that challenge?

Oof, every mechanic feels impossible until I finally figure it out. But so far, the most challenging has been Nile's surf ability. The idea is that Nile could surf on a stream of water through the air, feeling like you're riding one big wave. I wanted to make a mechanic that you could technically use forever, but naturally would run out of speed. As you surf forward you slow down, you can move downwards to gain speed, but surfing up will slowly slow you down again. It was relatively easy to implement, and it felt so smooth to just be surfing through the air. But the balancing was absolutely brutal. Nile is largely a long distance character, with a ice spear he can throw long range and a whip of water he can control for close-mid range. Combined with the surf ability which came out a little too good, Nile turned into this slippery impossible to hit menace just zipping around the map shooting death beams. The problem is, if his surf was too slow it just wasn't fun to use. So either it was completely overpowered, or felt awful. To fix this, I changed the mechanic to largely activate on the ground. Instead of a wave you surf through the air, it's more like a hoverboard on the ground with temporary waves you can use to gain air time. This still gives him some good movement to escape in a bad spot, but doesn't let him just fly away forever. We'll see if this actually does what I think it will in the next playtest!

How did you approach your progression system to keep players engaged over time, and what does that progression system look like?

I'm still working on this so it may look a little different by full release, but the idea is to have two main game modes - ranked 3v3 and 1v1. 1v1 is constantly running and matches you with players based on your performance in the session. So if you just want to jump in for some fun quick games there's always one available. If you feel like sweating, the 3v3 mode will let you played ranked tournaments to win trophies and cool unlockables for your profile. You unlock new outfits, titles, and other fun stuff for reaching new heights in the game. Each character has outfits you can unlock for winning matches or pulling off cool moves in-game.

What do you hope sticks with players the most after their very first play session, and are there already plans for post launch support?

I hope people fall in love with the fast paced high octane brawls that reward you for mastering your arsenal. Like I mentioned earlier, Rocket League is a good reference for how I want this game to feel. When I watch people play my game my favorite thing is hearing the yelling, whether it's happy or sad I just love to see people enthralled by something I made. If you like games that get your heart pumping and make you sit up in your chair, Arcane Fist is for you.

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Please, add Arcane Fist to your wishlist on Steam.

Keene will be hosting an open playtest on Discord for anyone who wishlists the game on July 17-19 where he will be making the Earth character Tai available to play for the first time.