2023 has already been a rough year for live-service games, with several big games seeing server shutdowns in the last few months. Epic Games shut down the online servers for their free-to-play live-service battle royaleRumbleverse, withKnockout Cityfollowing suit shortly after. However,Omega Strikers, an upcoming live-service competitive sports game from Odyssey Interactive, aims to take adifferent approach to the live-service genre. TheOmega Strikersteam recently spoke with Game Rant on how it plans to succeed in the genre where other games have failed.
Omega Strikersis a free-to-play 3v3 competitive game, in which players control various heroes to score points in an air-hockey style game, using their hero’s abilities to knock both the ball and opposing heroes around the map. The game’s PC beta ended just a few months ago, with the official release date for the game set for April 27 on Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, and PC.
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TheOmega Strikersteam cites the game’s cross-platform functionality as one of the main differences betweenOmega Strikersand other prominent live-service games. “We’re launching on all platforms, and that was always the DNA of the game,” said David Capurro, Odyssey Interactive’s co-founder and Lead of Game Design forOmega Strikers. Odyssey wantedOmega Strikersto play almost identically onevery platform it launches on, and the gameplay clearly reflects this. The goal was to ensure that whether a player is gaming from their console or their smartphone, the game looks and feels identical, and using a smaller device like a phone won’t prevent someone from effectively playing and enjoying the game.
“We wanted it to be really, really accessible,” explained Ryan Rigney, Marketing Director at Odyssey Interactive. “Whether you’re a kid in the Philippines with an Android phone or somebody in France with ahigh-end gaming PC, you’re able to jump in and play at the same level as anyone else with no advantages and compete.” This is the vision the team had for the game from the beginning and has strongly shaped the development process.
“Our philosophy for designing the game from the get-go was that if we could challenge ourselves to create a really deep, really interesting play experience that we could really enjoy on the phones, we could then take the direction of bringing it up to the higher spec platforms of consoles and PCs, as opposed to what we perceive a lot of the other cross-platform strategies are, which is to take something that works on PC or console and then try to sort of jam it downward into the phone or Switch.”
Besides the game’s cross-platform functionality, the Odyssey team also credits the game’s simple, intuitive, and unique concept for its pre-release success, and hope thatOmega Striker’s core gameplay mechanicsremain fun enough to keep players around. “Part of the reason we did our open beta on PC was to validate some of the core stuff, right? Like, is this at its core a fun game? Because for us, that’s what really matters,” said Rigney. Since the beta, the team has been working on implementing feedback on adding depth to some of the game’s core mechanics, as well as adding more difficulty and complexity to give players a bigger experience to dig into once they boot up the official version of the game.
With this development approach and dedication to the core ofwhat makes a cross-platform game accessible and enjoyable, the Odyssey team hopes their official launch, as well as the updates they plan to roll out throughout 2023, excite players enough to helpOmega Strikersthrive in an increasingly competitive genre. “I think we’ve reached a point where we’re going to have a much better time reaching players this time around, which is something that I’m really excited about,” noted Rigney. “We went small before, so we’re ready to go big now.”
Omega Strikerswill be available for Mobile devices, Nintendo Switch, and PC on April 27.
