One-Button-Move Fighting Game Rising Thunder Heads To Open Alpha

A few weeks ago, we got our first look at Rising Thunder, a new robotic fighting game from Seth Killian's Radiant Entertainment. Things move quickly these days, and Rising Thunder's public alpha is now available. You can download the game from the Rising Thunder website and get into the action right now!

And, in better-late-than-never style, Kotaku published an interview with Killian at the time of the game's announcement wherein he describes his reasoning behind the game. In essence, he wants to make Rising Thunder a more approachable fighting game -- he understands that the time commitment required to master a fighting game is unrealistic for some players, and so Rising THunder will use one-button special moves, putting more of an emphasis on timing than on manual dexterity.

Let’s say, Killian imagined, that he preached the gospel of the sublime beauty of fighting games to twenty people. "As much as I love ‘em, it’s sad to realize that, of those twenty people, maybe one of them is actually going to have an experience with a fighting game like the one I’m going to have."

Of course, that one out of 20 is going to scream at the top of his lungs about how you need to dedicate your soul to a fighting game, practicing for eight hours a day for six months until your fingers bleed if you want to be any good. The same thing was said about MMORPGs, first-person shooters, and all sorts of other types of games, and, well, you see how that's gone. It'll be interesting to see if Rising Thunder can usher in a new generation of more approachable fighting games.