During GDC this past February we met up with Lucky Kat Studios mostly to check out the progress of their upcoming collaboration with TurtleBlaze called Road Warriors, but during that meeting they also showed us a very early prototype of a game they were working on which we now know as Beat Street. The idea was to make a side-scrolling beat ’em up like those popularized in the late ’80s and ’90s but one that could be played in portrait orientation and controlled entirely with one hand on a touchscreen. That’s a lofty goal, but the prototype I played actually felt excellent, and a few weeks later they officially announced Beat Street to the world. In early April they started a hunt for beta testers and since then they’ve been plugging away at Beat Street. Yesterday, Lucky Kat posted their first ever video developer diary where they talk about the process of finding the right control scheme for the game and go over some of the concepts that they eventually scrapped. It’s really interesting, check it out.
In case you haven’t been following along with the Beat Street thread in our upcoming games forum, the feedback from the recent beta has been extremely positive, with everyone loving the control system and the feel of the fighting. The only negatives I’ve seen have been in regards to the free to play system, but none of that has been finalized yet anyway so it’s not representative of how the actual game will be. With the core mechanics nailed down Lucky Kat is free to work on things like the monetization model and additional characters and levels. I usually try to refrain from playing beta versions of games just so I can be completely objective when the final product comes out, but in the case of Beat Street I’m just too excited so I went ahead and signed up for the beta myself. It’s not clear if Lucky Kat even has room for more beta testers but it doesn’t hurt to sign up just in case, and you can find all that info in the afore-linked forum thread if you’re interested as well. Look for more on Beat Street as its development continues.
