00:17I've been in game development for about 15 years and I've always worked on cool teams, cool people at big
00:22companies and I figured it was time to do something small.
00:25Like a lot of guys we started working sort of nights and weekends while we had jobs just doing this
00:31for the fun of it.
00:31We were going to just do something simple and it just sort of got bigger and better and bigger and
00:35better until we realized that we didn't have any choice but to quit our jobs and dedicate everything to Skulls
00:40the Shogun.
00:42So the game in a nutshell is a mashup between tactical turn-based strategy games and arcade button mashers.
00:47So Street Fighter versus Advance Wars. Meets chess meets Halo meets football.
00:56So this game is different than other strategy titles in that it's much more accessible, it's much more fun to
01:01play, it's got great characters, great music, it's very live, very dynamic, very fast-paced, it feels almost more like
01:07a sports game than a strategy game.
01:09It's got a very simple interface designed to be picked up and played by anybody and it's just a really
01:13fun atmosphere and very quick, fast-paced, competitive, awesome gameplay.
01:19The story is you are a very famous samurai general who's kind of a powerful warlord who gets betrayed on
01:24the field of battle on the eve of his greatest victory.
01:29So he wakes up in the afterlife dead and it turns out he was betrayed by one of his inside
01:33guys who's also betrayed him again in death and taken his role there.
01:39So he basically has to wreak havoc throughout the afterlife breaking in and kind of busting all the rules to
01:45go after this guy and get revenge and reclaim his honor.
01:49The purity of the classes really comes into play with the different strengths and weaknesses of the character classes.
01:54You've got, you know, snipers versus the grunts. It's really all about taking advantage of your different positions. It really
02:00is a lot like football.
02:01You've got your linebackers, you've got your wide receivers, your quarterback. Everyone has a role to play and they're not
02:07good at something else.
02:08So you really need to support each other and work together as a cohesive unit to take down the enemy
02:12general.
02:17If you love any sort of brawler with an intelligent slant to it, watching your back, moving forward at the
02:22right time,
02:23it's all about spacing and timing and just sort of taking advantage of the situation.
02:27It's not a big long drawn out fight. It's a series of punches that are blocked and brawled.
02:32It really is sort of like a really good fighting game, basically in slow motion.
02:37The goal of Skulls the Shogun was to make great party games that feel like multiplayer games of days gone
02:42by.
02:42Like Mario Kart, Bomberman, the kind of stuff that you just pick up and play with your friends, you have
02:46a great time.
02:47You can play two to four player, you can play online, you can play offline.
02:50It's a great game to just get some friends around, sit down on the couch.
02:54You know, the alliances are constantly changing. The dynamic battlefield is always changing.
02:58It's just a really great fun to sit down and play socially with your friends.
03:01At E3 this year we won two best strategy games of the entire show awards from GamePro Magazine and 1UP.
03:07Best of show awards from Destructoid, Electric Playground, IGN.com.
03:12It was a really great show. We got a lot of great press.
03:14And a lot of people just, when they play the game, they freak out.
03:17They've never played anything quite like it. And they start slobbering immediately and they're just like,
03:20When can I buy this? And I said, Not yet. I'm sorry. We're still making it better. So, just wait.
03:28Skulls the Shogun offers a really dynamic new gameplay experience.
03:31I think a lot of people are getting bored of the same old shooting games and the same old sort
03:35of stuff.
03:35This is a different look. It's a different take on a classic type of gameplay
03:41married with other types of classic gameplay that work really well together.
03:44No one really knew. It's like chocolate and peanut butter. It works out.
03:47All right.
