Divekick is an independent Fighting Game co-developed by Adam "Keits" Heart's One True Game Studios and Iron Galaxy Studios.
The game parodies the 2D Fighting Game genre and Fighting Game Community, stripping the former down to the most basic requirements: two buttons (one to jump, one to divekick) and one direct strike to win.
It was released for Playstation 3, PlayStation Vita and Steam on August 20, 2013. A major update to the game, Divekick: Addition Edition, was released as a free upgrade to current owners on April 4, 2014, which included a major rebalance to the entire cast. A second upgrade, Divekick: Addition Edition + released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 7, 2014, while exisiting owners of the game received AE+'s changes as a free update. AE+ includes one new character, Johnny Gat from the Saints Row series. Unfortunately the game went abandoned with Iron Galaxy's increased workload (most notably working on Killer Instinct for Microsoft), with a final update adding The Fencer from Nidhogg released on November 24, 2015.
TROPE DETECTION WARNING:
- 419 Scam: Parodied by one of Sensei's tips, which starts with how his cousin is allegedly a Nigerian prince.
- Affectionate Parody: Of fighting games and the Fighting Game Community.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Kick a foe in the head, and they will be weaker during the next round until the yellow gauge runs out.
- Art Evolution: During older builds, certain characters had different portraits and sprites, including Mr. N
◊, Wolverine/Redacted, Kung Pao◊, and Dr. Shoals◊. - Bad News in a Good Way: S-Kill's boss battle dialogue has not!S-Kill saying that he'll still get nerfed, but he'll still be top tier compared to everyone else on the roster. S-Kill takes it in stride.
- Big Head Mode: Alex Jefailey's gimmick. Every time he wins a round, his head gets bigger, giving the opponent a bigger target to concuss him in subsequent rounds, but all the hot air gives Jefailey a floatier jump.
- Boom, Headshot!: If you hit an opponent in the head, the following round they begin dazed for a few moments (which causes them to jump and attack slower) and any Kickfactor energy they had is not carried over as a result.
- Capcom Sequel Stagnation: Flat out defied in the trailer.
- Circling Birdies: If a player gets defeated by a headshot, they will have these in the next match to denote their weakened state, until it runs out.
- Creative Closing Credits: In the form of Hilarious Outtakes with Keits and Iron Galaxy CEO Dave Lang, as seen here.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Win against someone four rounds in a row, and the screen will show a message saying "Fraud Detection Warning." Win, and the message changes into "Fraud Detected"; lose and it changes to "Detection Averted" before disappearing the following round. Allowing a 4-4 tie after setting off Fraud Detection has the game show the message "Choke Detection Warning" instead.
- Death from Above: As shown in the quote up top, this trope name is spoken verbatim by the announcer at the start of a match. This is the primary method of knocking out opponents in this game, although some characters can attack from below.
- Deconstruction Game: Stated by
Word of God, as the fighting game mechanics are simplified to only two buttons, one to jump, and other to divekick. - Ditto Fighter: Kenny is a Mokujinner variant, where has access to all of the character's divekicks (excluding Uncle Sensei's alternate divekick, of which it's a plot event in Kenny's story), but he also has his own techniques.
- Diving Kick: The core mechanic.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: You dive (into the air), and then you kick.
- Expy: All but one of the characters is an expy, either to a character in a fighting game or a person (or persons) in the fighting game community.
- Dive is an expy of Street Fighter's Yang.
- Kick is not only an expy of Yun, but he also references Will Smith.
- Mr. N is essentially FGC member Marn dressed up as Rufus. Mr. N's backstory bears many similarities to a real life occurrence in which Marn, who was in charge of Guilty Gear brackets at a tournament, completely messed up the job and thus killed much of the community's interest in the game. Mr. N was developer Keits's Take That! to Marn. His aerial attack is known as Marneto, and he wears a familiar looking red onesie with a purple cape.
- <Redacted>, when she was still known as Wolverine, is pretty obviously an actual Wolverine, referencing his forays into fighting games. Her stage goes one further, and is called "Howlett Canyon" - her inspiration's real name is James Howlett ("Logan" was someone he knew as a child, and whose name he later took).
- Kung Pao is essentially a genderswapped Kung Lao, referencing the 9th installment of his series. Her official bio gives her elements of Kitana as well.
- Uncle Sensei, the mentor to Dive and Kick, is Gouken, the mentor to Ryu and Ken.
- Dr. Victoria Shoals is a genderswapped Doctor Doom, taking his Foot Dive from MvC2 and MvC3.
- Alex Jefailey is a rather transparent expy of fighting game tournament organizer Alex Jebailey (who is now Iron Galaxy's community manager). Jebailey paid Iron Galaxy to put himself in the game but didn't specify how he wanted to be portrayed, so Keits and IG made him another Joke Character on par with Mr. N in response.
- The Baz is the realization of a rejected design from Street Fighter II, with Spider-Man's Web Swing and Zero's Raikousen thrown in.
- Markman is another obvious expy of an FGC figure, this time of Madcatz's Mark "MarkMan" Julio. In addition, his item-gathering gimmick is a reference to Phoenix Wright's playstyle in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, while his kick and just-frame ability is in homage to Kazuya Mishima from Tekken.
- Stream's name is a pun on "stream monster" (someone who smack-talks others in stream chatrooms), while he himself is an Expy of Firebrand in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
- S-Kill, the Final Boss, is former Capcom community manager Seth Killian using the exact same dive kick of Seth, who was named after him.
- Kenny is based off of Kickstarter backer Vincent's late brother Kenny, who favored random select.
- Some of the background characters are expies as well. Mob boss Don Luo is pretty much Duo Lon in a mobster outfit, and Detective Toe Guard is Terry Bogard, complete with Gratuitous English.
- Flawless Victory: The Perfect message pops up completely at random, and every round is technically a perfect win. There is also "Fraud Detection Warning", which sounds if you beat your opponent four/five times in a row.
- Gameplay Grading: The winner at the end of a match is rated in three categories: Diving, Kicking, and Not Losing.
- Giant Foot of Stomping: If a round ends in a tie (neither player has managed to hit the other and they are equidistant from the center of the stage when time runs out), a giant foot belonging to the God of Divekicking comes down and crushes both combatants.
- Gratuitous English: Everything the announcer says.
- Guest Fighter:
- Johnny Gat from the Saints Row series appears as a new character in Divekick: Addition Edition +.
- The Fencer from Nidhogg followed roughly one year later.
- Arguably, The Baz fits this, being a staple of Two Best Friends Play
- Joke Character: Jefailey. Unlike the others, his kicks are rather slow and floaty, meaning he's a bit harder to use. Plus, his head constantly inflates as you win.
- Minimalism: As the original trailer puts it:"6 buttons? No! TWO BUTTONS!"
"1 joystick? Try NO JOYSTICKS!"
"38 characters? No! TWO CHARACTERS!"note
"Useless adjective modifiers? Super Ultra Ultimate Sex Turbo Magnum Chihuahua Bear Testosterone Arcade Edition? No! Two words: DIVE KICK!" - Nerf: S-Kill is obsessed with nerfing the other characters to fix perceived balance issues. The only exception is Jefailey, who, as the game's Joke Character, has nothing to nerf.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Nerd Slam notes in their DiveKick 4-Play video that Jefailey bears a striking resemblance to John Cena.
- No Plot? No Problem!: There's actually a backstory and plot... which the game seems to do it's damnest to ignore entirely, like many fighting games.
- Odd Job Gods: The God of Divekicking doesn't appear to do much aside from reset stalemates and train angels in the sport.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder:
- Probably the only fighting game example. One well-aimed Divekick is all it takes to get KO'ed.
- The YOLO Gem gives you a 30% boost to all stats but makes it so that the other player only needs to win one round to win the match.
- Parodied Trope: The entire game is a parody of dive kicks in fighting games in general: since they have a tendency to become
the only tactic anyone ever uses, why not build on that idea? - Player Punch: Attempted invocation with the "FRAUD DETECTION WARNING" - this is as if the game was designed to automatically weed out "frauds" (Read: unskilled players) by determination of Curb Stomp Battles.
- Pokémon Speak: Wolv-er... Redacted knows only one word: "UNACCEPTABLE!" Guess where she got that from.
- Power at a Price: The YOLO Gem gives the player's character a 30% boost in all fields: diving, kicking, and meter gain, essentially putting them into permanent Kick Factor - but in return, the user is automatically given a Fraud Detection Warning, meaning they must win the required 5 rounds, while the opponent only needs to win one in order to achieve victory.
- Rocket-Tag Gameplay: To the extreme — one hit KOs the opponent, so it's all about who lands the hit.
- Serial Escalation: Consecutive Headshots are counted off as you rack them up (Double Kill, Multi Kill, On A Rampage, and Total Domination for getting 2, 3, 4, and 5 headshots in a row respectively.)
- Serious Business: Divekicking, natch. Entire tournaments are dedicated toward it, there's a deadly disease based around it, a shadowy conspiracy seeks to control it, and the sport has its own patron deity.
- Shout-Out:
- This advertisement for the game talks about Dive and Kick being born and raised in West Philadelphia. This goes hand in hand with every other Will Smith reference Kick uses.
- The YOLO Gem is one to the hidden Mazi Mode in Street Fighter Alpha 3, where the player gets an increased damage output, both dealt and taken, but the opponent only needs to win one round, as well as the Char Custom meme (It's the RED gem whose bonus is 3 times greater than the 3 other gems, but gives you one third of the maximum lives (rounded down)).
- The game's "loading" icon is identical to that of YouTube, no doubt a shoutout to those who watch matches on video streaming sites.
- One of Uncle Sensei's winquotes of "The wheel of fate is turning? Let me know when it's a wheel of cheese instead!" is a shout out to BlazBlue's match start line.
- One of Stream's death cries is "SALTY SUIIIITE!", a reference to one of the competitive Super Smash Bros community's most famous after-tournament streams.
- One of Uncle Sensei's pre-fight "tips" is "I am the one who knocks."
- Another "tip" is "Sir, I have never once had a curly mustache. Please stop asking about it.", referring to a memetically famous Marvel vs. Capcom 2 video.
- Yet another "tip" is "If you use a messy recipe, the cake will end up crazy."
- Another extra "tip" is "Everyone knows that City Trial is the best mode in the game."
- One of Kenny's victory poses is the same as one of Ryu's classic victory poses.
- One of Redacted's victory quotes is "WRRRRYYYYYYY"
- One of the loading screen tips asks if you'd like to play a game of Lucky Hit.
- This advertisement for the game
- Shown Their Work: Each character has the exact angle of their divekicks match the actual characters they were expied from.
- Parodying one particular fighting game her former namesake was playable in, Redacted's divekick makes people bounce off the floor and fly off the screen.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Both Markman and Jefailey shout "No refunds!" when they get knocked out (but for different reasons).
- Super Mode: Diving and Kicking enough will fill a shoe-shaped meter and automatically make the player dive and kick much faster than normally. This is noted by making the player glow red.
- Inverted if a player gets kicked in the head. The next round, that player will not only dive and kick slower and at a much lower height, but it also prevents them from gaining any meter and losing all charge of said meter. This is noted by the player glowing yellow in the earlier builds, or by a dizzy animation in the final release.
- Take That!:
- The game has gems that increase diving and kicking, and, in an early build, one DLC gem that you needed to pay $8.95 for that does both. It could also have counted as a bigger Take That! to Capcom's DLC policy in general. It's worth noting that the DLC gem required a third button, which Divekick doesn't use. Said gem was later taken out and replaced with 2 more gems - the Style Gem and the YOLO Gem.
- Mr. N is the embodiment of one of these, aimed at Marn and Rufus.
- One of the loading screen tips says to play without items and exert dominance over players who do otherwise. This looks suspiciously like a sarcastic reference to tournament Super Smash Bros. play, which is infamous for banning items and entire levels for the sake of balance and frowns on those who do not play competitively (read: for fun).
- Alex Jefailey, one at a tournament organizer who paid the devs to be in the game
- Another loading screen tip makes fun of rage over online games by saying that if the other guy is swearing and screaming racial slurs, he's just trying to tell you "good game".
- Thief Bag: Illicit deals in Divekick are always done with the classic large sacks of money with dollar signs on the sides. Mr. N gives a big one to some people to fix the brackets and ruin Uncle Sensei's career, and later Baz is given one by Don Luo when he's hired to track down Mr. N.
- The Unfought: For all the bluster about how he's the face of divekicking, Dustin Weinburger doesn't appear as a playable character.
- Worthy Opponent:
- S-Kill sees Jefailey as this, saying his character is balanced enough as is. He also promises to buff Jefailey if he wins.
- Kenny was one of these to Dustin Weinburger, who only barely won his first round match against Kenny. Of course he didn't know hanger-on Mr. N had slipped Foot Dive bacteria into Kenny's shoes, hamstringing him and eventually leading to his death.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: S-Kill, against Kenny's fight. Also, S-Kill in general. Somewhat subverted in S-Kill's boss fight.
- You Keep Using That Word: Another loading screen tip says the following:"It's very likely that you've used the term Metagame in an attempt to sound smart, but you've accomplished the opposite by misusing it. Just stop."
TROPES DETECTED
