Candyman and Latch are pretty popular among Lethal League fan-art creators. For this first fan-art spotlight we picked this Latch and Candyman combo by Rachel from Ontario, Canada aka ‘Life Writer’. Great work!
Recently Klaus Veen’s track ‘Ordinary Days’ ended up as the favorite Lethal League track with almost 50% of the votes. Kelvin Van Veenendaal a.k.a. Klaus Veen is a young beatmaker from a small village in the Netherlands, called Laren. We asked him to have a little chat with us.
Klaus, can you tell us a little something about who you are and what you do?
I’m currently a sound designer at an app company, where I mostly create sounds/music for apps/games. I grew up in a musical family; almost every family member played an instrument. When I was a little Klaus, my uncle got himself a TR-909 (“housy” drum machine) and I immediately fell in love with the punchy kicks and funky loops he got out of it. Since then I always had interest in electronic sounds and started playing with them.
How did the name Klaus Veen came about?
I’ve played a lot of Counter-Strike and used “Klaus” as nickname. Klaus was the name of a musician called Klaus Wunderlich and every time I killed someone I played an obvious tune of him. Just for the troll of it. Veen comes from my last name, Veenendaal, makes sense.
When did you start producing your own music?
I remember my first tunes when I was 10/11 years old. I got a pc with a music tool called “ReBirth”. This amazing piece of software taught me the basics of electronic sounds at a younger age in an internet-free era. No Google or Youtube-tutorials were there for instructions, all I had was trial and error. Most of my music were different genres, I never intended to stick with a specific genre because I just made the music for myself. I never had much interest to compose for publicity. Could explain why I never really “deejay-ed”.
What are your biggest influences when creating new tracks?
Much house artists like Kerri Chandler, Todd Terry and other older producers were a great influence to me. There is only 1 artist that got me in to this 4×4 garagy-house style, Todd Edwards. Most of House music from the 90s until now are all founded on repetitive beats with bombastic sweeps and swipes. Todd Edwards was the only artist that got me psyched because he was magically able to create musical, key-changing bangers, which almost no other housy “EDM” track has nowadays.
Do you get a lot of reactions on ‘Ordinary Days’ via Lethal League players?
Since the release of Lethal League I’m getting much support on my bandcamp page. So many downloads! I never knew “Ordinary Days” could have so much response… All the money I get from this is going in new synthesizers and drum machines. I’ve already got myself a 80s synth, the “DX 7”, that’s already in some newer tracks after Ordinary Days. It really motivates me to see so much positive reactions on my work!
What can we expect from you in the future?
When I get a musical kick, I start my engines and I just go with the flow. No pressure.
Last but not least; who is your favorite character in Lethal League?
I should choose Candyman since he’s almost the face of Ordinary Days, but my real favourite is Raptor. Feels nostalgic, playing the baseball fellow back in the early Lethal League days.
Thanks a lot for your time!
If you want to hear more beats from Klaus Veen you can check out his work below.
To start off, Lethal League had a great launch, hitting the target we had set for a month in barely half a week. There’s a lively scene of players and it appears to be steadily growing. From competitive-heads wrecking rookies online in Quick Match to party-goers playing local Free For All battles. Here’s a big thank you from Team Reptile for playing our game and telling your friends!
Aaaaand we’re back! After an exciting week in Las Vegas, we could only wish we had brought double the setups to better accommodate the interest of tons of fans and newcomers. Even when setting up the day before the event, we got a healthy reminder of just how enthusiastic players can get as the screams of a small crowd filled the otherwise empty venue.
We chose not to put chairs down to have people get a turn faster.
Day 1 The first day had us busy showcasing Lethal League to the gaming press, explaining the game’s in-depth techniques and getting to know our neighbors, the Starwhaland Nidhoggdevelopment teams. Catching Super Smash Bros. commentator Progduring the first rounds of the competition to tell him about our upcoming release, he asked “Is there going to be a Lethal League tournament?”.
Day 2 Disappointed to answer we didn’t plan for any tournaments at the time, we went ahead and fixed that for the second day. We had a total of three 16-man competitions spread out over the day. The first was won by a player called Tim who quickly went back and forth from Lethal League to Killer Instinct where he also competed. Then a oft-returning player called Hazama took first place twice in a row. As the day came to an end, we met with one of our American voice actors, Carlos.
Day 3 We started off the third day with an 8 team doubles tournament. Team Monster eventually won over Team Iron Storm in the final match. Monster from Team Monster went on to win the last singles tournament afterwards. The day was punctuated by a surprise visit at the Lethal League booth by the producer of Street Fighter IV, Yoshinori Ono.
To finish, here’s a shout-out to our new friends and fans that hanged out around with us or competed: Pikachad, Moose, Big Ben, Hazama, Tim, Monster, Rickie, Jay4Gamers1, Steve, Animefreak, Zach, Johnny, Snow, Juido, Alfredo, Monster, Carlos, the nidhogg and Starwhal teams and everyone who’s name we either didn’t get or wrote down! Thank you and I hope we meet again!
Team Reptile is looking for a voice actress for one of Lethal League’s new characters, Sonata!
Go to our dev blog and read on for a chance to contribute to Lethal League by having your voice featured in the game as one of the playable characters.
The Character Name: Sonata Type: Human Age: 23 Background: As a pro b-girl, Sonata is all about pushing her body to its physical limits in the name of showmanship and impressing her audience. She has joined the league to boost her recognition and fame. She wields a giant boombox hammer effortlessly, owing to her diligent training.
Lethal League is a competitive projectile fighting game where the goal is to launch a ball into the face of your opponent. Lethal League first gained notoriety when it was featured as the grand final ‘Mystery Game’ on UFGT9. It quickly became clear that the extreme nature of the game, mixed with the stylized street visuals and chip-hop music hit a sweet spot with the crowd. The game is currently in development and will be released Q3 2014 on Steam.
-Highly competitive gameplay.
-High performance online GGPO multiplayer.
-Up to 4 players.
-Mad art.
-Banging beats by various artists.
-No weak shit.
Why would we go to Casual Connect 2014? We don’t make mobile or casual games, we don’t necessarily like F2P stuff. It felt we had no reason to go there at all even though it was only a few miles away from our office! Fortunately we were invited to show the current version of Lethal League at the Indieprize showcase hosted at Casual Connect 2014.
The location (Beurs van Berlage) was impressive and the main hall was reserved for all the indie developers (110!) who were invited. We had a great time meeting great developers, making new friends, party hard and of course showing the latest version of Lethal League which is currently in closed beta on Steam.
The response we received on the game was really impressive, we heard quite some oOoOOooOH, aAAAaaAH and other unidentifiable screams. It’s currently our most valuable measurement tool for defining the good things in the game. Also the word of mouth during the event was pretty effective. A lot of people kept returning to our booth to show this “insane” game to their friends and colleagues. All the positive attention the game got was pretty exciting and we would certainly be up for more!
Several other developers said this before but it doesn’t really matter what kind of event it is. If it’s an opportunity to showcase your game, go for it! We will continue showing Lethal League at several events this year so stay tuned to find out where we will be next!
Here’s a full-shot of the original Lethal League main character Raptor, to be used for character selection and promo stuff. He has had some subtle design changes to make him a bit less bland compared to the rest of the cast. We also redid his in-game animations to match his new design.
Raptor, like all the characters, now has a history and motivation to participate in the illegal extreme sport that is Lethal League. The singleplayer mode won’t be following a story, but we’re looking for ways to show the depth in a different way. So please look forward to that!
Last Friday we were invited to a local event in Dion’s beautiful home town Laren. Great location, Live DJ on the wheels of steel and B-boys jamming on the dance floor in front of the game.
2013 was a very exciting year for us. Dion and I successfully released our debut title Megabyte Punch which received a lot of great reviews and responses from the players…
We also left our tiny attic behind and we moved into a very decent new office in the heart of Hilversum. We were even ranked in the top 100 of “Europe’s most exciting game start-ups” by the Develop100.
Earlier this year our flash prototype version of Lethal League hyped up a lot of people and at the Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament. Last November we started the REAL Lethal League development at full force. You can follow the development here
2014 will be the year of Lethal League!
Lethal League will feature multiple characters, voice acting, unique abilities, different levels, native controller support, high performance online GGPO multiplayer (up to 4 players), a banging soundtrack featuring various artists (including Doctor Lazer) and full Steam integration. Yes, Lethal League will come to Steam in 2014!