This week, the folks at Steel City Interactive dropped a preview of the character creator for their upcoming boxing simulation game eSports Boxing Club. This is a game that’s been on our radar for the past few months. Steel City Interactive is trying to deliver on a big promise: a modern boxing game with an A+ experience. Each bit of info they release makes that promise look more achievable. Today’s developer video is no different.
Creative Director of eSports Boxing Club, Ash Habib, leads us through a deep dive on the current build of ESBC‘s character creator. Initially, the character creator was not going to be part of ESBC‘s Early Access release on Steam. However, the community has been pushing for it, so they’ve added it to the pipeline. It’s worth pointing out at the start that the character creator being shown off is only Version 0.8. Habib clarifies immediately this is still a work in progress, and that some elements still need work.
eSports Boxing Club Character Creator – The Basics
Page One of the character creator is pretty much what you’d expect. Your character’s name, age, height and weight are at the forefront, as with most games with a character creator. The first page also has you choose your stance (as of v0.8, orthodox or southpaw), your hometown, and your walk-in music. Your age in ESBC is gonna be important, since it affects your retirement age (no one gets to box forever). In the video, the created character does not actually scale with height and weight. Habib identifies this as something they’re still working on. The final game will have a collection of licensed music for fighters to walk in to.
Skin Tones and Sliders
Something Habib focuses on is skin tone. Depending on what skin color you choose, the texture of your fighter’s skin changes as well. This means that lighter and darker skinned fighters will look more realistic, and not just changes on an RGB scale. This is a great addition, and an excellent detail to highlight in the video.
As Habib flips through the rest of the options, we are treated to a number of juicy sliders. There are a lot of potential shapes and sizes possible already. Hopefully, this will make the option to randomize your fighter a very fun experience as well. The creator will have a number of officially licensed options for boxing gloves, boots, and trunks, as well as original designs exclusive to ESBC. Once your fighter is finished, you’ll be able to upload them. Then, others can download your fighter and vice versa.
eSports Boxing Club was originally scheduled to release on Early Access last December. However, due to several factors, the Early Access launch is delayed until a later date. After its initial release on PC, eSports Boxing Club will eventually be available on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, with a next-gen release on the Xbox Series X|S and the PlayStation 5 planned after.
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