Interview: Kickin’ Thugs Old-School With Raging Justice

Those of you who prefer the classic style of beat-em-up — in which a chosen warrior or two takes on all comers in the hopes of saving the city or maybe even the world — may like what Team 17 has to offer with Raging Justice. The game just made its debut on consoles and PC and gives you three different warriors to choose from as you attempt to clean up the streets with criminals.

The game was developed by Makin Games and leaves you reminiscent for games like Pit-Fighter with its motion capture style animation and cheesy character designs. But it’s fighting controls are serious business as you’ll use a number of moves and weapons to take down your adversaries.

We sat down with the developers recently to get some details about the game’s development, as well as what could be coming next.

Who’s Fighting For Raging Justice?

First off, what inspired you guys to make Raging Justice? Did you just feel we needed a good ol’ fashioned beat-em-up again, or was there another reason?

We’re a group of friends who’ve known each other from our days working at Rare. It was when we were reminiscing about the good ol’ days one night that we got onto the subject of the classic 2D scrolling brawlers. We are huge fans of the beat ’em up genre, it was probably the type of game we loved most when growing up, I know it was always the Brawler that I was drawn to at the arcades! So why weren’t there more of them around now? It was then that we decided that it would be awesome to make one ourselves. We had all fancied having a go at making a game in our spare time and here was our opportunity!

Tell us about the characters that are in the game, and how they differ from one another.

You get to play as one of a team of hard-hitting justice seeking mavericks; Rage, King and Justice. You’ve got Nikki Rage and Rick Justice, both are cops although Nikki is a good all-rounder with slick hard-hitting moves from her military background and Rick is a tough stocky veteran who has somehow managed to stay clean in the corrupt precinct. His moves are measured but devastating. Ashley King is the latest addition to the team. A kid who got caught up in the action by being in the wrong place at the wrong time but knows how to handle things having grown up in the mean streets of Big Smoke City. Fast with self taught moves: the signature kick was even borrowed from the movies.

The Game’s Unique Design and Weapons

Let’s talk about the design. There’s a little bit of a Pit Fighter vibe here, but with an original twist. How did you come up with the visual design?

We have chosen an unusual art style that allows us the freedom of keeping the solid 2D gameplay, while elevating it with high def graphics. Pre-rendered sprites is a style that originated with games such as Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct. The idea was to take something with a retro-feel, but would look fresh on a HD screen. Pre-rendered sprites and backgrounds allows us to create highly detailed characters from 3D models using cool effects like cloth-physics, dynamic joints, etc, while keeping the 2D feel of the game just right. It also allows us to have as many characters on screen as we like. In a 3D engine, this would be expensive to simulate but in Raging Justice it’s all free (or as near as), it also means our programmer has less of a headache programming it!

What about the weapons that you can use within the game? Would you say there’s a particular favorite that’s available?

Although we try to focus on the bare-knuckle nature of the brawler, it was only right we had weapons! We’ve added a large variety; from hammers to knives, and fire-hydrants to rats, we wanted as many of the items you can see to be usable as a weapon. A favourite when we’ve shown Raging Justice to players has to be the tractor. Once spotted it’s a race to jump on, with the victor maniacally laughing as they plough through friend and foe!

Bring a Friend For Brawlin’

Does the game feature any co-op support? Is it local only at first, and will we see online?

Raging Justice is an ideal game to play with a partner, teaming up to take on the gangs of Big Smoke City. We’ve designed the game to be played in solo or co-op, the second player can join at any time.

For launch, Raging Justice is local co-op only, it’s the best way to play this kind of game, sitting on a couch, arguing over who picks up the weapons or who takes the health bonus. We’ve even got the option of friendly-fire so you have to be careful of each other otherwise you’ll end up fighting in real-life.

Online play is something that has always been in the plan, we’re hoping to add it as an update as it’s probably the most requested feature!

We’ve heard about potential DLC for the game down the road. Care to hint what it may be involving?

We’ve so many tweaks and additions we’d love to add to Raging Justice, things that didn’t make the initial cut of the game. I don’t want to go into too much detail as we’ve not finalised our plans, but we do have new game-modes, bonus-stages, and possibly extra ways to play the game on our ideas board. We want to get some feedback from players as to what they want next for Raging Justice before we decide what to do and when!

Will There Be More Raging Justice?

What fighter do you think rookies would be best starting off with? Or should they try all three?

Rookies should probably have a play of the first level or two with each character, we don’t feel there’s a particular advantage to one or other, it comes down to whether fast-combos or raw power are your thing, a few minutes with each character will give you the right feel.

Finally, if the game does well, could you possibly see an idea for a sequel? Like Raging Justice II: More Justice? (That’s just an idea.)

We would love to take what we’ve made with Raging Justice and work on a sequel. We’ve learnt so much while making it, and no matter how hard you work on a game, there’s always something you had to leave out, some new ideas you had part way through development that would have been too much to add… We’re already starting think of what we could do with these ideas, where we could take Raging Justice to next.

As to the name of the sequel, early on in the development when we’d announced Raging Justice we came across a foreign site talking about our newly announced game. When we translated it back to English we found that Raging Justice had been google-translated to Angry Magistrate… who knows maybe the brawl will move from the streets to the courtroom!

Raging Justice is available now for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC.