‘Royalty Free For All’ Looks To Smash It With A Cosy Fighting Format & Timeless Roster

Over the course of 20 years and five games, Nintendo-employed game director Masahiro Sakurai wove together five decades of video game lore to build the ultimate fighting game franchise: Super Smash Bros., more or less inventing the 2D platform fighter genre in the process.

And look, it’s a madcap concept right off the rip to incorporate characters from so many franchises across half a century of games, but indie developer Colin McIsaac has iterated the idea further: What if there was a fighting game that incorporated fighters across all time?

In other words, who would win in a fight between, let’s say, Don Quixote and Felix the Cat?

That’s the ridiculous idea behind the pun-riffic Royalty Free For All, a multiplayer 2D brawler still early in development from McIsaac and his small team.

“It’s a joke that some might say has gone too far… I say not far enough,” McIsaac told us during a hands-on preview at PAX West 2024. The demo had us choosing between a sampling of four different fighters, each roughly based on the following characters: Sweeney Todd, Mother Goose, the Princess from The Princess and the Pea (here named Lillith and looking a little like the Jolly Green Giant), and Dorothy’s dog Toto, here named Dorothy. (Or perhaps it’s Dorothy remade in the image of her famous dog?) And if you couldn’t already tell from those descriptions, every character shown off so far has received their own sheen of pro-wrestler-like artifice.

“We’ve created original characters who adopt their names, sort of like actors playing a role,” explained McIsaac. “Every character is a joke character, [but] we still want to honour their cultural legacies without making a full mockery. We want to respect the shoulders of the giants that we’re standing on.”

As the demo started, taking the silly angle delivered laughs on sight, as our brain naturally tried to piece together who everybody was behind their unique names. After picking who ended up being Mother Goose, then jumping into a random stage (which are also modelled after public domain locations, such as Old MacDonald’s Farm, The Hundred-Acre Woods, and yes, Plato’s allegorical cave), gameplay felt familiar: punching, kicking, and special moves used to try to bonk your opponent(s) off the stage, as well as orb-like shields to protect yourself. We did our best, and flew our goose every which way. Suffice to say, if you’ve ever played any Smash Bros., you’ll probably feel right at home.

Yet it’s worth noting the gameplay in Royalty Free For All thus far actually felt a touch simpler than the already simple Smash Bros. control mechanics. And that’s not an accident.

“We’ve simplified the controls to just light, strong, and special buttons, for a total of six attacks,” explained McIsaac. Why? Because they see the DNA of the royal-rumble fighting genre as steeped in a hardcore player base, despite being designed to appeal to the broadest audience possible. Of course, this isn’t inherently bad, but Royalty Free For All sees an opportunity for more people to find a home in an unusually intense genre.

“We’re big fighting game fans ourselves,” begins McIsaac, “so the way we’ve chosen to thread that needle is by retaining all the familiar movement text. It’s a fun, fast-paced fighting game. You can spot dodge. You can wave dash, even. We’ve got a dedicated short hop button. But the goal was to go wider. “What we want to do is accommodate [casual] players and bridge that gap, by making [the game] more accessible.” It’s not a bad strategy to more actively court the audience these games, you know, appeal to. “It’s fun, it’s exciting, but it’s also easy to follow if you know the characters more than you know the genre.”

The game is still fairly early (“we’ve been in development for six months”) and, despite appearing to be a great fit for Switch, McIsaac is committed only to non-specific “consoles” at present.

Regardless, the team has a crucial question for anyone interested in the game at this stage of its development: Which fictional character (created before the year 1926) do you want to see in the game? To find out, and perhaps in a callback to the days of the Super Smash Bros. development blog during the Nintendo Wii era, anyone can go to royaltyfreeforall.com/wish to cast a vote for who they want to see in the game.

“We are getting a lot of names that you might be familiar with that I am not at liberty to divulge, but I think people will be very excited at future announcements.” Currently, the game is sitting at around 30 potential fighters, which McIsaac admits is probably more than will make the eventual 1.0 launch, but he’s hoping outside influence might help dictate where the team spends its time. And with or without outside voices, his mind is swimming with potential. “I’ve got a spreadsheet of options of over 1,000 characters that I’ve researched. [laughs]”

That means as the game continues to get built and refined, you have a chance to influence the most wide-reaching royal rumble fighting game ever made (not counting anything using protected intellectual property, of course).

And who knows? If the game is successful and goes on for another hundred years or so, you may even get to see your favourite Smash Bros. characters join the battle, too. Or at least, your grandkids might.

Thanks to Colin for speaking with us. Royalty Free For All is in development for “PC and consoles” with a release date to be announced.