Rising Thunder

Note: Servers of Rising Thunder were shut down on March 18, 2016.

Rising Thunder is a rare example of fighting game which was created exclusively for PC. It is based on a free-to-play model and was developed by Radiant Entertainment which is a studio founded by Tom Cannon (creator of Evo Championship Series) and Tony Cannon (creator of GGPO system for minimalizing lags during online matches in fighting games running with arcade emulators). And the main designer of Rising Thunder is Seth Killian who worked earlier on Street Fighter IV, among other games.

Mechanics

In the game, you control mighty battle robots with various skills and fight in duels. There is an option to compete with AI but it is only a training before the real challenge which are matches with other players.

Developers wanted to create an accessible fighting game that would offer depth for veterans at the same time. It was achieved by simplifying controls so that even amateur players could easily perform the most complicated moves. Controls were desgined specifically for keyboard so each move is bound to a single key. That’s why reflex and tactics are key factors here instead of learned combos. However, while controlling a character is very easy, the game itself is deep enough so that there still is large distinction between veterans and amateurs in Rising Thunder.

The idea of simplifying controls for PC harmonizes with focus on the online playing. Rising Thunder does not offer an option to play on split screen. It allowed developers to give characters some unique skills, such as invisibility. In old fighting games an ability like this caused that even player who was using it could not see their fighter, but Rising Thunder does not have such problems. Moreover, Radiant Entertainment prepared matchmaking system which matches players with similar skill level and makes sure that even amateurs can have fun in the multiplayer mode.

Last updated on April 4, 2016