Here I will expand on my idea for this game while reiterating the main premise while adding some other stuff.
The base idea stems from the animal styles of Kung Fu where humans mimic and imitate animals for fighting, but for this game, I thought how about how animals mimicked humans for fighting and how will they do it.
The game would have the basic fighting game elements of a character selection screen, having a 1 v 1 fight, stage selection, etc. It will specifically play like a 2D fighter. The selectable characters would be animals but in the uniforms of the martial art, they are trying to imitate.
Some of the characters I have thought of now are a Flamingo mimicking taekwondo, and a Gorilla mimicking sumo. Though playing this game the player will become familiar with some of the moves used in the respective martial arts as the player animations would be moves that are used in real life while having some goofiness as they are animals attempting these moves.
Essential Experience -
The player must defeat their opponent whether it is against another player or AI in a best-out-of-3-round system.
Different characters will have different move sets from each other.
Gameplay loop -
Activity/Risks​:
Choose to play against another player or AI​
Select a character to fight against the opponent ​
Risk: you lose to your opponent
Rewards:
Self-gratification that you're better than your opponent​
Learning about a new martial art while using your character
Opportunities:
Finding out different combinations with the moves given to you​
Play against different people for a different challenge
Combat
For the combat, I am quite inspired by the fighting game series Tekken, as in the game there are 2 animal characters that fight using Martial arts. The characters are Roger Jr (a kangaroo who boxes) and Panda/Kuma (a bear who uses karate). My aim for the characters for this game is to have a similar premise to these 2 characters from Tekken as they have a realistic anatomy to their real-life counterpart while the animations are so close as possible to the real-life moves that they mimic their anatomy.
The characters that I want to include and the martial arts tied to them will be:
Flamingo - Taekwondo
Gorilla - Sumo
Snake - Capoeria
Monkey - Kung Fu
Chicken - Wing Chun
Octopus - Karate
Below are some quick sketches of some of the animals in their respective uniform.
Art Style
The art style of this game will is similar to Octodad, as it is fairly low poly with a simple art style. The 3D look will help tremendously in trying to convey what move is actually happening as if it was 2D it might be difficult to tell what is happening.
