Fighting Excitement 2The upcoming sequel to Quest's most popular VR boxing simulation looks set to be ready for release, with studios Sealost Interactive and Halfbrick Studios releasing its first trailer.
Update (September 16, 2024): We're still waiting for gameplay footage of the game announced early last year, but now the studios are shaking things up with a new live-action trailer saying, “Prepare yourselves.”
The game is coming to Quest first, but original creator Ian Fitz says the team plans to bring the game to other platforms eventually and that it's not because of “any contractual exclusivity or anything like that.”
Fitz also notes that the Sealost Interactive team officially started working on Thrill of the Fight 2 in July 2020, but the studio’s scalability was an issue. “I abandoned it [internal scaling] “We planned and started working with Halfbrick and relaunched the project together in January 2023,” Fitz wrote in a Discord post.
There's no release date yet, but Fitz says we'll find out “soon! soon!” The original article detailing the initial announcement and Halfbrick's involvement is below:
Original Article (January 23, 2023): Created in 2016 by Ian Fitz and his studio Sealost Interactive, The Excitement of the Fight It focuses on realistic boxing mechanics, eschewing arcade-style stuff like stamina bars and unrealistic knockout blows.
Fighting Excitement 2, It brings the much-requested multiplayer feature, currently being co-developed by Halfbrick Studios. In a development update video (below), Halfbrick CEO Shainiel Deo teases a few more features coming to the sequel: improved audio and visual feedback, changes to how combos are scored, and more gameplay variety to keep players coming back for more.
Halfbrick has released both flat screen versions and Fruit Ninja And Fruit Ninja 2 and also their respective VR adaptations. But the studio's bread and butter is, among other things, Jetpack Joyride, Battle Race Stars, Dan the Man, And Shadows Remain.
In an update posted to Reddit by Sealost Interactive, series developer Ian Fitz discusses Halfbrick's involvement.
“The reason I partnered with Halfbrick on this is because I felt confident they could help me make the game I wanted to make. They want to make (and play) the game I make,” Fitz says.
Fitz also explained the division of labor and how the sequel was made in collaboration with Halfbrick.
“I drafted the outline. Sealost prototyped and proved many of the mechanical and technical challenges. Halfbrick builds a product worth launching and supports it in the future. I meet with them every workday to build the product and stay on track with the original plan (which hasn’t been a problem because, again, they want to make the game I make).”
The partnership with Halfbrick “has nothing to do with funding,” Fitz says. “It's just about having a solid production team and a plan to support the game post-launch.”
The studios say they're aiming for a release “later this year,” but Fitz says that's “just an estimate based on current developments.”
It's not yet clear which platforms will be targeted first, but if the original is any indication, we're likely to see it on Quest 2/Pro, Steam VR, and possibly PSVR 2.