Smash Bros-style battle royale is on the way but there’s one big catch

The developers behind Omega Strikers announced they have a new game that is basically Super Smash Bros as a battle royale, but it might not come out.

Odyssey Interactive, which stopped working on Omega Strikers in late 2023, revealed it has been working on a game called Byte Breakers. This is a platform fighter and battle royale, making it a unique entry into the fighting game genre.

The developers called the title a “Smash battle royale” and showed off its huge map and some gameplay in a trailer on September 11.

“Making a platform fighter is scary. You’re going to always be compared to one of the greatest gaming series of all time,” Dax Andrus, one of the studio’s founders said in the video.

“But to us, that’s also exciting. We are not trying to make a better Smash, we’re trying to build an evolution of the genre that Smash started way back when we were kids.”

The catch, however, is that the game is only in its prototype phase, and it might not even be fully released if players don’t find it interesting. The developer said they will let a few thousand players in to test Byte Breakers in the next few days, and they aren’t afraid to “go next” if the game doesn’t hit.

“We might not even end up making this prototype. We might not end up making the next prototype we show you, either. But we think this kind of public testing is the best way to find out if our ideas have juice,” Andrus said.

The idea of testing out interest in a game during its initial phases is not all that new. However, publically announcing that you will scrap the project if it doesn’t garner interest, instead of tweaking gameplay elements or iterating based on feedback, is a novel concept.

Players will get to decide for Odyssey Interactive whether it is worth it for them to create a Super Smash Bros-inspire battle royale or if their efforts are better put to use in another title.