Retro Inspired: Wulverblade
History is bloody, especially if you live it through Michael Heald’s beat-’em-up. Join Martin Hinson as he gears up to defend the land
What happens when a love for beat-’em-ups and ancient British history collide?
Michael Heald spent most of his youth playing videogames, particularly games that involved beating people up. You could suggest this might have had a negative influence, but a healthier obsession was born: Michael wanted to make his own videogames.
“I grew up during the dawn of gaming and got hooked in the Commodore 64 days. From that moment, games became my biggest passion,” he tells us. “I’ve been obsessed with side-scrolling beat-’em-ups since day dot.”
Final Fight had huge influence within the genre back in 1989, and it certainly left its mark on Michael. “I broke down all my favourite games to the individual frame timing of each animation so that I could find what worked best and use that as a foundation for my own game.”
Michael’s didn’t just want to mirror his favourite games for his beat-’emup, however. “We wanted to fuse together everything that made the great games great and sprinkle in more,” he explains. “So beyond the basic moves that we all know in beat‘em ups, Wulverblade, introduces a wealth of new mechanics to master. We have blocking, countering, combos, rolls, dodges, heavy weapons, air combos and rage!”
One aspect of Wulverblade that isn’t rooted in retro game design is the outstanding audio that was supplied by Verbal Vigilante. “They came out with me to do ‘on location’ sound recordings,” Michael enthuses. “As you go through the game you’ll hear things like trickling streams that are live recordings from the actual locations.”
Whilst the formation of Wulverblade had a clearly defined background of influences, the path to its creation was a long and gruelling one. “By the time I was at college my focus was my art. Once qualified it was a good decade doing design and illustration commercially before I finally broke into the games industry and then almost another decade before I got to dig into Wulverblade,” Michael remembers.
Once Michael had his foot in the door, though, the path was clear. “I wanted to work with passionate games developers and the best
route to that source was the indie industry,” he laughs. “I got into the indie scene before the boom and just as mobile was about to explode. Before I knew it, I had given up my full-time design job and launched Fully Illustrated as a business.”
Wulverblade is the first project Michael has designed by himself completely from the beginning. “Wulverblade started out as just a concept on paper for the first couple of years of the gruelling six-year development period,” he grins. “It began as me doodling and laying out the game in its basic form.” Michael soon realised he had to find a way to convert his ideas into actual content. “I spoke to Darkwind Media and they agreed that this was something they wanted to be part of.”
Darkwind took the technical reigns, leaving Michael free to do what he does best, lead from a creative perspective. “I couldn’t believe my luck as I could never afford to hire a team as experienced as them, and by sharing my game 50/50 I was now partnering up with a powerhouse of development.”
Michael handed the majority of the core animation work over to the Denis Davidov and the cutscene art to Jon Sommariva (known for his work on the Turtles comics). “For me to hand over creative tasks to others was a struggle as this was my baby,” Michael admits, “but both Denis and Jon are amazing and their work really was the icing on the cake.”
The rest is history… speaking of which, that’s a particularly important facet to Wulverblade as it is deeply rooted in historical fact. “One of my other big passions is ancient British history. It’s an era that is filled with some of the most amazing tales. Stone circles, Roman forts, you name it, these locations blow my mind when I start to think about what they would have been like at the time. Taking the feel of Golden Axe and smothering it in the rich historical setting of Roman Britain was just a perfect fit for me.”
Six years after development started, Wulverblade was released first on Nintendo Switch. “The Switch was announced and the world was going bonkers for it. After meeting at PAX East we built a close relationship with Nintendo and they were really interested in getting the game as a timed exclusive.”
Now available on other systems, Wulverblade proves that history can be fun. And very, very bloody…