Over the weekend, the reveal of Invincible VS got fans of the long-running comic and ongoing Amazon Prime Video series excited for frantic 3v3 fighting action. The trailer showcased the same brutality that fans of the series have come to expect, which predictably caused it to draw comparisons to Mortal Kombat. However, I recently had the opportunity to travel to Skybound Entertainment’s Los Angeles offices to get my hands on the game and speak with the development team. It turns out there’s much more reason to compare it to another well-liked fighting game.
In 2013, a development studio called Double Helix Games released Killer Instinct for Xbox One. Though it was initially criticized for its lack of content and monetization methods, the core gameplay, which emphasized combo-based tactics above all else, and the first season of content Double Helix provided were praised by fans and critics alike. However, after developing the title, Amazon acquired Double Helix and merged it into Amazon Game Studios. Now, several of those veteran developers who worked on Killer Instinct are back together under Quarter Up, a studio under Skybound.
The team pitched a fighting game based on the Invincible franchise, of which many development team members were fans, and Invincible VS was the result. “We really wanted to get back to fighting games,” game director Dave Hall says. “We’ve been talking about this for about a decade behind the scenes, and once this came around, we were just like, ‘We’ve got to get this. This is amazing. This is the perfect thing for us.’ Bringing together Invincible, which is an incredible IP just made for fighting games with all these characters, and then being able to bring this destruction and the gore and the blood and all this fun stuff into it was just so exciting.”
Hall says that, as fighting game fans, the studio looked at the landscape and noticed a 3v3-shaped hole in the genre. “Dragon Ball FighterZ was probably the last main 3v3 to come out there; We wanted to bring that hype back,” he says. “We love the hype of a 3v3 game. It’s kind of what we used to do with Killer Instinct with the combo breakers, counter combo breakers, and all that stuff. We just love having the crowd erupt when we play, so we’re trying to bring the same thing back in our game right now.”
The 3v3 approach is fitting, as the roster has three main archetypes: Grappler, Striker, and Ranged, before other subsets are introduced under those umbrellas. The build I played only had four characters – Invincible, Atom Eve, Bulletproof, and Thula – but several other empty tiles were on the character select screen, hinting at a large launch roster. I made up a team of Invincible, Eve, and Thula and took to the city streets to duke it out.
Quarter Up challenged itself to deliver a diverse roster of characters with distinct abilities while remaining true to the source material. As it turns out, that was more difficult than initially expected. “Some of the characters took a little more time, just because a lot of them punch a lot in the universe, and that’s totally cool, but in a fighting game, you don’t want everybody just punching,” Hall says. “It’s really important for us to have those distinct differences in our characters, so then, when you’re making your team, you get to play and have the characters that you want to play and the styles that you want to play.”
The result was noticeable balance across the four fighters available in the build I played. Invincible is a rushdown character that is great at getting in his opponent’s face, while Eve works best at range. Meanwhile, Bulletproof feels more technical with high-low offense, and Thula uses her hair blade to be highly effective at mid-range.
The fighting mechanics are approachable, whether you want to use the auto-combo functionality or not. Chaining together strikes of different severities into a combo is simple, and punctuating your assault with a Special feels great. True to the tag nature of a 3v3 fighter, you can call in assists, including directionals that bring different cooldowns depending on their power, and active tags in the middle of your combo.
Invincible VS has two types of stages: Devastation Arenas and Destination Arenas. Each time a new character comes into the match, they clash with the preexisting fighter, resulting in a shockwave of destruction that progresses in the background as the match goes on. If you pull off a certain attack, your opponent briefly falls to their knees, giving you an opening to land an attack that sends them flying to a Destination Stage, which appears to be randomized.
On top of damage in the arenas, characters also wear the effects of battle on their faces and bodies. Even the victor will be covered in blood spatter by the end of the bout; Quarter Up and Skybound are not toning down the gore for this adaptation. There are even Overkill moves, which can dismember the character on the receiving end.
The Invincible series, whether through the long-running comic or the relatively young show, has displayed enduring popularity, which Skybound hopes will encourage non-fighting game fans to check this game out. “I hope that this game is a lot of people’s first fighting game,” Skybound Games executive vice president and general manager Chris Paulson says. “A lot of those people come through the IP because they love Invincible and want to experience what it’s like to be Mark and to punch someone’s head off. There’s something in there for comic fans, for people who entered from the show, and for people who haven’t heard of Invincible yet, but will through the game. We’ve talked to a lot of people, and I think there’s a surprising overlap between Invincible fans and fighting game fans.”
But it’s not just Skybound higher-ups saying it. Quarter Up designed the game to be played by a wide range of players, from the most skilled members of the fighting game community (FGC) all the way to first-time fighters, an initiative other franchises like Tekken and Street Fighter have implemented with recent entries. “We really want everybody to be able to play it,” Hall says. “We don’t want the control scheme to be something that holds you back from having a good time. So this is also why we put in the auto-combos and things like that for people to just get in, press some buttons, and have some fun. And there’s so much depth behind that with the people that really know how to play fighting games are going to be able to excel. It’s just one of those things we’ve always wanted to do.”
Hall says that Quarter Up worked closely with highly skilled fighting gamers to ensure the game rewards even the best players. “We do constant testing with the FGC,” he says. “It’s one of our biggest things that we do; it’s just part of our process. We’re always making sure we cater to the FGC, and make sure our game is competitive. We build in a lot of different intricacies, even with the combo meter and things of that nature, the meter management, when to do something, when not to do something. We’re very competitive. We love competitive games. That’s our primary goal, but we wanted to make sure everybody else could jump in and play it and have fun too.”
Though the team remains tight-lipped on the story mode, the developers insist it will be an Invincible story within the universe, written by the team working on the popular show. “The unique thing about Skybound is that we have all the parts of the circle under one roof,” Paulson says. “We’re actively working with the animation studio here to build content for the game. We’re going to have an authentic Invincible story as part of the game. We’re not talking specifics right now; we want to make sure it’s great before we say what it is, but you can even see as you’re playing, all the little interactions and the quips that happen throughout and before and after a match are all in the universe. All that was written by the creative team behind the show. Every piece of art has been looked at by Robert [Kirkman], Cory [Walker], and Ryan [Ottley], the co-creators of the comic, just to make sure that we’re getting it right.”
I got into the Invincible franchise through the Prime Video animated series, so I don’t know much about the comic. However, everything I saw, heard, and felt with Invincible VS was authentic to the show I’m more enthralled by each passing season. Invincible VS is an incredibly fun fighter I can’t wait to learn more about.
Invincible VS is set to arrive on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC in 2026.
