Review Fix chats with Steve Miller, Lead Programmer of Okinawa Rush, who lets us know what makes this sexy retro side-scroller a must-play.
About Okinawa Rush:
Okinawa Rush is an intense and uniquely fluid beat-em-up, 2D side scrolling fighting game, inspired by the by the retro 16-bit era with its classic late 80’s, 90’s arcade style design and gameplay experience. If you enjoyed playing them back then and currently still enjoy retro games like The Last Samurai, Street Fighter 2, Tekken, or Mortal Kombat, and want to relive that experience and more in Okinawa by battling enemies, avoiding traps, fighting bosses, discovering secrets, collecting loot and saving hostages, then this game will surely enthrall you.
Review Fix: What has development been like?
Steve Miller: Development has been an interesting process that has taken many years now, partly because we both work regular jobs (so cannot work on the project constantly, as we’d like) and also because there has been no restriction to the creative side; so the game evolved many times, both in terms of graphics and the core-gameplay.
Okinawa Rush began as quite a simple “time-attack” style game, where you just kill stuff as fast as possible and get through the stage quickly. You can still do this but now there are many more layers and playing on harder difficulty settings means the player must learn a variety of moves and the parry system to survive!
Review Fix: What games does this one borrow from the most?
Miller: “Dragon Ninja” arcade, Castlevania SOTN, the Street Fighter & Tekken series are all quite big influences on the game in various ways.
Review Fix: How do you want this game to affect players?
Miller: We wanted the player to initially have fun just mashing and killing stuff, messing around in the stages, finding hidden rooms, breaking walls etc. But then, when they want to achieve a higher score (in the online leader boards) or better rank they must learn some fundamentals such as how to block, how to smash the traps and how to fight each boss in a tactical way (the bosses can be killed without being hit, if you know the “counter” to each attack – very much like the “Punch Out” games)
There are other, hidden ways of generating a high-score in each level such as finding the hidden “spider room” in stage 1 with the Goddess of Peace statue – bringing her a weapon will result in it being transformed into a giant gold bar!
Review Fix: How do you think it forces people to take notice of you?
Miller: The game has quite intense action and some shocking death animations, the “parry anything” system is quite interesting- if you are skilful enough you can parry lots of ninja-stars very quickly and then counter-strike!
Review Fix: This game would be a blast on the Nintendo Switch. Any chances at a port?
Miller: That is certainly possible. Depends on how well the Kickstarter performs.
Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?
Miller: There is a playable demo available with newly added multiplayer coop mode, but as with most early-access games; it’s not perfect yet and we are ironing-out bugs on a daily-basis.
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