Weishan and Early Access Launch Date Revealed for Icons: Combat Arena

After releasing a teaser image on May 17th, Wavedash Games has revealed Icons: Combat Arena’s seventh character, Weishan, alongside some more information about the game’s release in their May 23rd reveal stream and press release.

Weishan fills a niche not seen often in the platform fighter genre, wielding a polearm - specifically a guandao. As such his moveset has a strong focus on slow, hard-hitting moves that cover a lot of space, lending itself to strong punishes on hard reads and punishing poor positioning on the opponent's part. Because he represents a playstyle not seen often in platform fighters, some of Weishan's moves are fairly unique for a platform fighter character.

His neutral special is a stationary charged projectile. The longer the player holds the special button, the further away from Weishan it appears. His side-special, on a surface level, seems like a fairly standard stabbing attack, though it has a sweetspot hitbox with a special property - on hit, Weishan uses his guandao to hurl his opponent behind him.

While Weishan's down and up-specials are based on ideas that have been seen before in a platform fighter, the former is still fairly unusual. Weishan's down-special provides a twist on the usual counter, functioning as a charged attack akin to Ryu's Focus Attack in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U. His up-special is a fairly standard recovery move, consisting a rising uppercut with his guandao and an optional falling attack, similar to Cloud's up-special.

As for the information about the game's release, on July 12th, Icons will be entering Early Access on Steam. The game will operate on a free-to-play model, with characters and cosmetics sold through an in-game store. Players will also be able to pay a one-time fee to upgrade to a Pro Account, granting access to every character released over the game's lifetime without having to pay for them individually. More information on the monetization model for Icons can be found in a recent post the game's official site.

To coincide with this major announcement, this week will have an additional playtest session, running from May 25th through 27th, rather than only the usual four hour Wednesday period.

 

Finally a spear character, good call Rishi.

 

Looks way better than Brawlout!! (Y)

 

Looks way better than Brawlout!! (Y)

I mean, it doesn't take too much to be better than Brawlout

 

I’ll say this, on terms of animation and that stage. It looks a lot better put together and better animated than anything else shown before.

Props for that icons.

 

The character is super fun. Highly recommend people try him out when they get a chance.

 

Still waiting on a Beta invite, but this game is growing on me.

 

Now that I'm allowed to talk about it (NDA was lifted), I can say the game is shaping up quite well. The movement animations need some work (everything looks a little "stiff") but it seems to work well. If both players have good internet, the online matches are great and fluid! And the new character seems pretty awesome! The "dual" characters are really interesting too, and you can do some neat tricks with their switch mechanic. Overall, I recommend this to anyone who's a fan of platform fighters in general, and hope it does well!