The next entry in Flashbulb Games’ Rubberverse has changed its name to correspond with its new focus. As of now, Rubber Royale is being renamed to Rubber Warriors and will be the studio’s 2024 brawler title.
Rubber Warriors will be the second installment in the Rubberverse, following the 2021 heist party game Rubber Bandits, and will continue the franchise’s focus on ragdoll physics-based gameplay, destructible environments, comedic overtones, and a distinctive visual style. But unlike Bandits, Rubber Warriors is aiming for a more mature audience.
Rubber Warriors: Not Really a Royale
The name change was discussed by Flashbulb co-founder and Rubber Warriors creative director Mikkel Thorsted in a recent interview with The Best War Games about the Rubberverse franchise and the history and ambitions of Flashbulb Games in general. He acknowledged some comparison to Fall Guys’ minute-to-minute gameplay, but emphasized Rubber Warriors isn’t really a battle royale title at all.
Right now, the working title is Rubber Warriors. We have gone a little bit back to some of the initial concepts of framing for Rubber Royale … I don't think we can classify Rubber Warriors as a royale game. I think it was, to some extent, but I think we're adding a lot to it by making what you can actually do in the game a lot more complex and a lot more interesting.
The fast rounds which drop 16 players down to a single winner can evoke similar feelings of some battle royale games, but Rubber Warriors classifies itself more as a brawler title. It also leans on more mature humor and a sense of brutality to its combat–players can rip off someone’s arm and beat them with it, for instance–to put some distance between itself and more family-friendly party game fare like Fall Guys or its own predecessor Rubber Bandits.
Where Rubber Bandits is a party game that has humor that is geared toward the whole family, the tone of Warriors takes more after the humor of franchises like South Park, Thorsted explained. This more mature tone blends with the increased mechanical complexity found in Rubber Warriors.
I think some of it in Rubber Warriors’ case was, honestly, in the beginning, I was like, “Okay, we do everything very close to how Rubber Bandits is.” That is very much when we do these experiments, and we have prototypes of this brawler Fortnite-ish game look in the Rubber Bandits universe. Then, it just felt wrong.
The December demo titled Rubber Royale Holiday Prologue was well-received by those who played it, but there seemed to be some confusion around the title. While this wasn’t the impetus for the name change, the smaller splash of the brawler title’s demo does make renaming the final product less confusing for potential players.
How Rubberverse Games Are Made
The name change is more closely related to the development process Thorsted follows, which he describes as passion-driven. He focuses more on gameplay mechanics first and develops the game’s narrative framing later in development. That’s the point of the process that Rubber Warriors has entered now. Having the framing nailed down while developing mechanics is something he couldn’t handle as a developer; instead, he focuses on developing through experimentation and iteration on an idea, adding the framing later in development.
Everybody has different approaches, but for me, it's always been mechanics first where I can see some clear vision in how the game could feel and play. Then, secondly, it becomes asking what would fit well for this game. When I started thinking about that, it was pretty obvious for me that's what we did with the Rubber Royale–the whole framing, the whole idea, just for me, it didn't feel right. I think Warriors and adding the brutality and so on feels really, really good as it is right now, and it's now that I'm certain we can say we’re heading in the right direction.
That refocus has put Rubber Warriors on the proper path to release and helped Thorsted crystalize his vision for the game. Those iterations and experiments may have gone away from what Rubber Royale was, but what the game is now is something he’s confident in.
We've been down many routes of what we wanted to do with the game, now it feels like we have all the parts to the puzzle. A lot of the gameplay, systems, and all of that is in place, so it's getting ready to do the actual production, and we have all the right tools to do it. That's where we are now.
Thorsted hopes to have Rubber Warriors released by the end of 2024, and from there has sights set on further diversifying the Rubberverse games by innovating on what they’ve done thus far. This means adding more complexity and longer gameplay sessions, while keeping the physics and humor that’s been a core part of the Rubberverse.
Rubber Warriors will release in Q4 on Steam.