Release is coming soon, but you still don’t know what INSANITY is! | Review of MADNESS: Project Nexus

Back in the era of Flash entertainment and the uncontrolled flow of all kinds of outrages on the Internet,
the people had a strong demand for a bloody mess, black stuff or simply politically incorrect humor. These were various games where you had to constantly torture someone, dismember them, pull out their guts for 10 minutes at a time, and similar animated videos of the same focus, which, as mentioned above, had its own strong demand.
Also, there were a lot of creative people, of different skill levels, who were quite enough to more than satisfy this heavy demand for unmotivated violence.

One of these people is Krinkels a.k.a. Matthew Jolly – series creator
flash-animated series MADNESS COMBAT, and also the designer of the game MADNESS: Project Nexus,
which I want to talk about after a short excursion into the aesthetics of the series. So that you are not confused by the visual design and technical flaws of the original.

KRINKELS’ WAY TO NEWGROUNDS

A series of animated videos MADNESS COMBAT, was made using Flash and released on the newgrounds platform .
The release of the first series from the canonical list, dates back to July 25, 2002.
Krinkels himself wasn’t particularly good at drawing at the time, which is clearly evident in his debut work, namely the series of three animated videos "BreadMan".
In the description for the third episode of "BreadMan", Krinkels wrote:

Later, he released an animation called "Marsh-Mellow-Madnes s", which was like a test animation: No textures, no complex shapes. Primitive characters with crosshairs instead of a face, levitating arms, detached from the body, turning into feet without full legs, which, according to the plot of the video, were launched from a cannon into a huge marshmallow.

Grunt and an example of using its tiles for animation

"PROJECT NEXUS 2"

I’ll immediately explain to the newfags https://doradobetcasino.co.uk/login/ the confusion with the same name of two different games. Here’s the thing:
At the peak of the popularity of his series on newgrounds, Krinkels decided to make a game. First there was “Madness interactive” – a typical beginner’s flash drive, not worth attention, and later, a full-fledged, well-thought-out game was developed, with a bunch of cool mechanics, statistics, story mode and arenas – “MADNESS: Project Nexus”, and after the announcement of the sequel, the postscript “Classic” was added to the name.

Since having gained experience and received user feedback, Krinkels and his development assistant,
The Swain (Michael Swain), took on the development of a higher quality mass product.
So, they began to study the wilds of game development and gradually came to a three-dimensional design with an isometric POV (sort of like in the old LEGO Star Wars : D).
Kickstarter launched to raise funds for development. The working title of the game was:
“Madness: Project Nexus 2”, but later they decided to abandon the two in the title.

The game was developed for 7 long years! Only in 2020, on steam, it was released demo with a couple of missions in the story. By that time, Kickstarter had long been closed, having overcome steam greenlight, the game now had a full-fledged page and only those who invested money at the time got access to closed testing. No early access, no pre-orders. Only a tape of almost daily patch notes and Dev streams were available for public viewing, which from year to year warmed the souls of those waiting.
However, the owners of the test builds freely played the early versions on streams and even posted the walkthrough on YouTube, but no one leaked the game files. Amazing community.

GAMEPLAY

Simply put: it’s Hotline Miami with a creative backstory. At first glance, there is nothing really interesting here… Yes, this is a cool action game with tons of firearms and bladed weapons in the arsenal, a gorgeous, divine soundtrack, lore developed over the years of the series, a slightly naive but acceptable sense of humor, local memes, charismatic characters and monstrously cool opponents. And everything seems to be fine, but there are an endless number of games of this format and, as a rule, they don’t last for a long time, but the project has its own peculiarities..

MUZLO

I already said that the soundtrack came out simply gorgeous and divine? Fans worked on it. Namely, Cheshyre, who wrote tracks for the series and the classic Nexus, and Locknar, a professional DJ who set the general mood of the game and conveyed the dynamics of madness.

fun fact:
I personally became acquainted with the MADNESS universe on soundcloud in 2016, when I heard the composition Crawler by Locknar. It was a re-upload, so the title of the track was written as follows: “Locknar — Crawler M: PN2 OST”
After some searching for the full soundtrack, I discovered this wonderful fandom. And I’ve been waiting for the game ever since.
end of fun fact 🙂

portraits of composers Cheshyre and Locknar by DeimosArt, respectively.

SPECIAL FEATURES

The game features co-op for up to 4 people, implemented using Steam REMOTE PLAY TOGETHER technology, which allows you to play online even in games that only provide local multiplayer. The story mode continues the events of the classics, where players will be allowed to play for the central characters of the series.

Madness: Project Nexus story mode screenshots

SO WHAT AM I ABOUT..

The MADNESS COMBAT fandom, amazingly, has brought together a close-knit group of talented people. It’s interesting that artists, musicians, animators and other creators were united by a cartoon about dismemberment and total madness, without entailing serious problems, because first of all, for the community, MADNESS COMBAT is art. Characters, plot and lore are discussed, own canons within the universe are created, new series and collaborations are made, driving music is written specifically for animations, the most beautiful art is drawn, MADNESS COMBAT characters appear as Easter eggs or additions to other projects on newgrounds . For many, this has become a motivator in creative development. People, from a young age, fans of the series, took sprites, Flash and went to learn how to make their own stories based on the universe. And many people do it very well. There is even a tradition when on September 22nd, on newgrounds, “Madness day” is celebrated, where Krinkels participates as a judge, choosing the best of fan works in different categories.
Let me remind you that the planned release date for MADNESS: Project Nexus is September 29, 2021.

LINK TO GAME PAGE IN STEAM: ÿ

This is my first time doing a review of this format. This is my first time reviewing SG. I hope I haven’t broken any rules by posting links everywhere. I’m just citing sources or providing a link for context.
There will be recommendations – there will be edits.
All the best. Thank you for your attention!

Wait for the video review after the release and write what should be added to this post.