Toribash

Fighting with Rag-Doll Physics
Slamdance Guerilla Games Festival Finalist
IGF Finalist for Design Innovation

One phrase we love to use but don't often get to is: You have never seen a game like this before. Yea Toribash.

In Toribash, you control a jointed 3D model. You select a joint, and tell it how to move. When you've issued your instructions, you advance the game, one or more frames at a time--and when you want to change the motion of your character, you change the forces at various joints.

So far, so 3D Studio Max. But of course, this is a game: you begin facing another character, who is doing his best to kill you. Your objective is to move your character in such a way as to kill him first--punching, kicking, dodging his blows, and so on. Of course, this is hard, at least until you've gotten a fair bit of experience controlling your character. Indeed, the first few times you try it, you will probably do something utterly stupid, like sit down and disqualify yourself, or kick and then fall helplessly. There are no 'procedural motions' here, except for those you create yourself.

Indeed, this is Toribash's greatest flaw as a game qua game; there's a steep learning curve for new players, and it will take you a fair bit of experimentation and study to get halfway decent, and probably weeks before you can compete online at the highest levels. But then, the same is true of, say, Chess. There are some similarities, in fact; despite the fact that this is a brutal and somewhat gory combat game, it is, at its base, a game of pure strategy.

It does come with more than a dozen 'replays,' so you can see what can be done with the models, and there are tutorials on the developer's site to teach the basics of hitting and kicking, as well as more help on their forums. There are also more than a dozen 'mods' that come with the game--different models and starting positions--and more available at the developer's site.

You can play single-player, of course--and probably will for quite a while, since who wants to be embarassingly bad in front of other people? But the online, two-player version is where the game gets interesting.

There's no time limit on the demo--indeed, all good people should download the demo and give it a look-see, if only to see what innovative game design looks like. So you can get quite a bit out of it without paying--but of course, if you get seriously into it, you'll want to upgrade to the full version, so you can set up your own online sessions (demo users can join sessions set up by others, but not initiate them), save and replay your best matches, see your name on the leaderboard, and so on. A very gamer-friendly business model, here.

The developer says:

Toribash is a turn-based fighting game. Create your own martial arts movies in single player sandbox mode, or join the competition in the multi player modes.

Focus is on tactics rather than reaction and button mashing. The game features
physics, full dismemberment, decapitation and comic style blood.

Features:

• Full multi player access, including registered only servers with 'buddies' system, protected nicks and head skins
  
• Join the competition in the online top 250 ranking system
  
• Realtime Belt grading system. Get yourself a Toribash Black Belt
  
• Custom mods, such as the official sumo mod
  
• Alter the rules of Single player and hosted Multi player games
  
• Host your own TCP or LAN server
  
• Your own custom head texture included in the official releases
  
• Autosaving of matches
  
• Export screenshots and animations to POV-Ray
  

Reviews

"I don’t have a lot of negative things to say about Toribash. It’s a remarkable implementation of a very solid concept. The controls are a little difficult to learn—give up on the keyboard keys and use the mouse wheel and right button—but on the whole the game is very approachable."
   - Fun-Motion

"Any fan of fighting games will enjoy the brutal action of Toribash"
   - Out of Eight PC Game Reviews

"..Toribash demonstrates that it is still possible to come up with innovative new game concepts within the game industry"
   - Gamer.no

Awards

Finalist, Best Game Idea Category 2006 Swedish Games Awards