If you’re one of those people who hates the word “toons,” you’re not gonna like what this one’s called. In fact, if you’re also one of those people who hates battle royale, this whole post is about to pee in your Wheaties!
That’s because it’s all about Fantasy Toonz, a in-dev game we just learned about a few days ago. Developer Brat Gaming is calling it “the battle royale MMO,” and rather than offering a BR mode inside an MMO or promising a massive thousand-person fight, this game is adding arenas in the open world, with different map styles for solo players and groups according to the region. There are a few quirks too, like a gear-based skill system, no leveling, a contracts and bounties system, losing a single piece of gear to your killer when you’re bested in an arena, inventory shared across characters, and a reputation system linked to matches. Apparently, while the game isn’t focused on more traditional quests and leveling, the open world will feature other PvE content like crafting, gathering, dungeon-delving, and player cities. And the “toonz” in the game’s name? Well, those would be the premade NPC characters you can play – if you can figure out how.
On paper, at least, it sounds almost impossibly ambitious – doubly so for a small indie team.
Brat Gaming’s Robert Schug told us he’s planning a relatively short $75,000 Kickstarter at the end of January (there’s a countdown on the site putting it for the 28th), though you can navigate through the official site and preview it right now, and he’s also apparently applied for an Epic Megagrant. (The Kickstarter has more info on the game than the official site, but it’s still a gloss of what should be intricate systems.) Schug writes that the game’s biggest challenges for “polishing Fantasy Toonz into a true AAA game” are combining the two genres, which… yeah sandboxes with any type of PvP are hard as heck to get right, even if you’re sitting on a giant pile of money.
“We have accomplished a lot of things in the last year and at this point most of the technical challenges have been ironed out and we are ready to go into full development,” he writes. “[I]n April 2020 we will be releasing a Demo that everyone can check out!” He also promises that the game will be finished, eventually, regardless of the Kickstarter’s success.
There isn’t much video footage up yet, so it’s hard to get a feel for how much of the game is really ready to go, though there’s a short video of a spellcaster engaging in battle.
