One of many 2025 Xbox Showcase’s most surprising reveals was Invincible VS, a brand new three-on-three tag fighter from Skybound and a brand new startup studio known as Quarter Up Video games. Do not let the “new startup” descriptor idiot you, nonetheless; this can be a workforce steeped in preventing sport expertise, because it was liable for bringing again a cult traditional to a legion of appreciative followers over a decade in the past.
This time, Quarter Up and Skybound are set on respiration new life not into only a franchise, however a concept–Invincible VS invokes the highly-praised Marvel vs. Capcom model of 2D preventing video games that use a tag-team system to swap between a number of characters, which is a tall activity to attempt replicating. Based mostly on our hands-on gameplay throughout a current go to to Skybound in Los Angeles, evidently Quarter Up is properly on its solution to answering the decision.
A Killer origin story
In 2013, developer Double Helix introduced Uncommon’s Killer Intuition sequence again to the plenty on Xbox One. The 2013 installment’s gritty, impactful preventing system made it an instantaneous fan favourite, however quickly after it launched, the studio was snapped up by Amazon Video games. A lot of KI 2013’s key builders went on to different tasks, however Mike Willette–KI 2013 producer and the voice behind the long-lasting “c-c-c-combo breaker!” sound impact within the reboot–wasn’t executed with preventing video games but. He needed to get the band again collectively.
“We felt like we had unfinished enterprise,” Willette instructed GameSpot on a current Zoom name. “I nonetheless had that itch, so after working [as lead of the world design team] on New World [at Amazon], I reached out to an entire bunch of the oldheads and stated, ‘Look, I am eager about beginning a studio. Would you guys have an interest?’ Instantly, a bunch of them have been in. ‘Yeah dude, I had a lot enjoyable. We love the individuals, we love the neighborhood. If you may make it occur, Mike, we’ll present up.'”
Not lengthy after, Willette discovered himself within the places of work of Skybound, creators of the darkish and gritty Invincible superhero franchise. “Skybound asks me, ‘Mike, what sport would you need to construct right here?’ and I instantly stated, ‘I need to construct an Invincible preventing sport, and I will construct a tag preventing sport,'” Willette recalled. “I used to be an enormous fan of the present and the comics, and there is simply a lot wealthy materials there. It is violent. It is brutal. It has the stakes of what occurs with superheroes. I simply linked with them on such a stage that I stated, ‘That is it, that is what I need to do.'”
Making a three-on-three tag fighter was a no brainer for the workforce, as Invincible’s pantheon of superheroes, in accordance with Willette, lends itself completely to that model of preventing sport. Tag battle preventing video games are hype. They’re unbelievable,” Willette stated. “The quantity of creativity, the combo methods, the totally different archetypes that allow you to construct your individual workforce, as a substitute of simply utilizing a single character… There hadn’t been an actual large sport since Dragon Ball FighterZ, both, so we carried over from our days in KI, plus all of the learnings from the previous 10 years, and that is the genesis of Quarter Up.”
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Changing into Invincible
Invincible VS employs a simplified model of Marvel vs. Capcom 3’s four-button management scheme for assaults: There are 4 assault buttons–light, medium, heavy, and special–and every has a number of particular assaults which might be used relying on which course you progress the left thumbstick, a la Tremendous Smash Bros. Tapping the sunshine assault a number of occasions additionally gives an auto-combo that may chain into a brilliant transfer, ought to the aggressor have the meter to make use of it.
Fortunately, the workforce has balanced that simplified management scheme with a system that gives loads of depth and superior ways to find. These frightened about gamers mashing the combo button time and again, for instance, can take solace within the return of one in all Killer Intuition’s defining options: the combo meter, which is able to power a participant to drop a combo in the event that they use the identical transfer too usually.
Core preventing mechanics resemble these from different preventing video games: Heroic Enhance provides additional energy or hits to particular assaults much like EX strikes in Road Fighter, tremendous meters enable for extra highly effective strikes as you cost them up by attacking and blocking, and so forth. Some are tailored in new and fascinating methods, nonetheless: “snapback”–moves that power an opponent to swap characters–can additionally blast an opponent into a completely totally different stage in Invincible VS. In doing so, the character getting knocked into a brand new stage will lose entry to their help characters for a short moment–because, from a storytelling perspective, these characters should “catch up,” whereas the offensive workforce is able to go.
Incorporating the Invincible franchise into this format, in the meantime, has been extremely straightforward for Willette and his team–easier than his earlier tasks, actually.
“In comparison with Killer Intuition’s historic recordsdata, I’ve much more entry with this property,” Willette defined. “The drawback after we labored on KI was that all the earlier builders have been gone; we did have [Xbox partner creative director] Ken Lobb, and I may at all times go to Ken, however right here I can go proper to the properly, and it is a deep properly.”
This comes by within the pre-fight character intros, the place each character pairing within the sport could have distinctive dialogue with each different character–even in the event that they’ve by no means interacted in official Invincible media.
“We have entry to many years price of comedian references, entry to the present workforce,” Willette stated, “and we’re at all times spitballing concepts forwards and backwards with one another. It is very cool to work right here.”
Battle scars
That authenticity additionally bears a extra grisly facet by Invincible VS’ blood-and-gore issue, a trait not usually related to tag fighters like this. The most blatant implementation of that is in Overkills, the place sure particular and tremendous strikes will decapitate, dismember, and even detonate an opponent’s physique into items if used as the ultimate hit.
Willette says this stage of violence was essential to convey what Invincible has at all times been about, however there’s a restrict.
“Our aim is to be brutal, however not hyper-grotesque for shock worth,” he defined. “We need to present the sheer brutality of those superheroes preventing, like the bottom getting torn up or costumes getting ripped and splattered with blood. Should you did a killing blow, it is actually essential for us, particularly to be genuine to the [intellectual property].”
Willette additionally reveals that the workforce has put a novel spin on the battle harm idea by “offensive” and “defensive” variations of it. If one character has a giant lead over one other, the main character will nonetheless have blood spots on their costumes or fists caked in red–it’s simply the different character’s blood reasonably than their very own.
“We’re actually aware of how these items would have an effect on each fighters,” Willette stated. “If a personality is at low well being, for one more instance, their idle animation shall be totally different to indicate how drained they’re. They’re saying, ‘All proper, I am tousled, however I will preserve going.’ We actually needed to have these as a part of the storytelling of the battle motion.”
The workforce at Quarter Up Video games needs Invincible VS to enchantment to as many gamers as potential, and it hopes to realize it by one easy method: Make every participant really feel like an absolute badass.
“Whenever you decide up that sport pad for the primary time and you may simply mash and you are feeling superior, that is nice. Which means you are going to stick round longer,” Willette stated. “Should you’ve by no means performed a preventing sport earlier than, I would love for this to be your first preventing sport. And if lapsed, we would love so that you can come again for this as a result of we love preventing video games. We need to make you followers.
“It is a love letter from us saying, ‘Yeah, we love Invincible, we love preventing video games and we wish you to come back play.'”
Invincible VS is ready for launch in 2026 for Xbox Sequence X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.