The state of fighting games in 2022 is a little uncertain, if still hopeful. The promise of new entries from the Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and possibly Tekken franchises feels real, and they could all arrive soon to take advantage of new consoles. Guilty Gear Strive and The King of Fighters 15 came out in the past year, and are continuing to impress fans with their content offerings. Smaller releases like Melty Blood: Type Lumina, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, and DNF Duel are cropping up everywhere, and indie fighters like MerFight: Curse of the Arctic Prince and Fraymakers continue plowing ahead with their development. Offline tournaments have even begun cropping up again, with Combo Breaker and EVO returning to their physical roots.
In the midst of all this, a humble indie fighting game called Skullgirls continues to thrive. Skullgirls celebrates its tenth anniversary on April 10, 2022, and is thriving more than it ever has. While not reaching the size of the industry’s leading fighting games, Skullgirls has received mostly good word of mouth over the past decade and recently underwent a series of major content updates. With its successful mobile spin-off continuing to run beside it and a spot on the EVO main stage finally looking locked in, Skullgirls’ next year may be its brightest yet.
Skullgirls’ Rise to Fame
One of the main elements that attracts people to Skullgirls is how it is essentially designed and funded by the fighting game community. The game was initially the brainchild of illustrator Alex Ahad, who partnered with the fighting game competitor and aspiring designer Mike “Mike Z” Zaimont to start work on Skullgirls in 2008. The game’s development truly hit its stride when the duo teamed up with the recently formed indie studio Reverge Labs in 2010. Publisher Autumn Games and even Konami jumped on board to fund and distribute the game over the next year. Finally, in 2012, Skullgirls was released.
Skullgirls’ various artists have left their mark on the game, giving it an art style that mixed everything from Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding Hood to Capcom’s Darkstalkers. The game offered an eclectic cast of fighters to choose from, and the gameplay was as out-there as one would imagine. Two of Skullgirls’ claims to fame and traits that mark it as a fighting game made by the fighting game community are its variable team sizes and custom assist moves. With fully-voiced visual novel story mode for every character, many fighting game fan-requested features like rollback netcode, and freely available frame data and hitboxes, Skullgirls was quick to become an indie darling.
The Fans Carried Skullgirls Through Dark Times
Things seemed to be going well immediately after the April launch, with Reverge and Autumn Games teasing more content coming in the game’s future. However, Autumn Games was quickly hit with a series of lawsuits regarding Def Jam Rapstar, preventing it from funding Skullgirls at all. In a desperate ploy, Autumn Games and Reverge Labs agreed to let their contract expire so that the entire Skullgirls team could be laid off and form Lab Zero Games. Autumn Games was left with full possession of the IP and affirmed that it would continue working with Lab Zero as progress was made toward a PC port and downloadable content. In the meantime, Skullgirls’ community earned a sponsored side tournament at EVO 2013 by raising the second-highest proceeds in a breast cancer charity drive next to Super Smash Bros. Melee.
The relationship between Skullgirls and its community is a vital part of its persistence. Following the success of the charity drive, Lab Zero decided that, with litigations still ongoing, the fans’ support was the only way development could continue. An Indiegogo page was set up for Skullgirls on February 25, 2013, simply looking to raise $150,000 for one DLC character.
This goal was reached in less than 24 hours, and the rest of the funding both directly and indirectly went into adding six new characters to the game, two voted on by fans and one as an unplanned April Fools’ joke. The Skullgirls engine was even donated to the developer of Them’s Fightin’ Herds. Lab Zero Games and Autumn Games had to sever ties with Konami over the latter’s unresponsiveness, but this allowed for the updated re-release of Skullgirls Encore for PC and consoles to be launched in January 2014.
Skullgirls’ Greatest Trial and Present Victory
After 2015’s 2nd Encore release, not much happened with Skullgirls for a while, owing to Lab Zero turning its attention toward Indivisible. A mobile spin-off for Android and iOS was developed by Hidden Variable Studios and published by Line, though. This touchscreen tag fighter was released on May 25, 2017, and is responsible for both keeping the IP alive through profits and providing key staff after Skullgirls’ most recent troubles. In 2020, Mike Z tapped some members of Hidden Variable to help him upgrade Skullgirls’ netcode to match modern standards. However, as summer was beginning, it came out that Mike Z had been harassing Lab Zero staff and obstructing workflow. All of Lab Zero Games resigned or were fired, and Autumn Games and Hidden Variable took over Skullgirls development.
This seemed like Skullgirls and its legacy staff’s darkest hour, but things picked up from here more than anyone could have predicted. Some money was raised for the staff, and certain members formed a new studio called Future Club. In February 2021, Autumn Games revealed the Season 1 Pass, which included, among other things, four or more new characters. Like always, fan support dictates how far Skullgirls will go.
March brought with it the confirmation of Future Club helping Hidden Variable with development, and soon enough Annie of the Stars and Umbrella were released. Umbrella even has a special color palette and voice pack that make her appear as an authentic Skullgirl when combined, marking the first time a Skullgirl has been playable in Skullgirls. As the cherry on top, after a decade of asking, fans will finally get to see Skullgirls on EVO’s main stage in 2022. With Black Dahlia and more in development, it seems this little indie fighter’s future is looking brighter than ever. It just had to go through a few development studios to reach it.
Skullgirls 2nd Encore is available for PC, PS4, and Switch.
