See The King Of Fighters World In Action Thanks To An Offline Closed Beta Event

Perhaps the most pressing question about The King of Fighters World that I've had since SNK announced it this past January is "but what does it play like?" As a popular, long-running fighting game series, it's only inevitable that the game's mechanics are going to be dissected upon release.

Today, we can get a brief look at how the game plays, as MMOCulture has uncovered footage from a recent "offline Closed Beta event" in which SNK China invited fans to its studio to play the game and take notes. Admittedly...it looks a bit odd.

I can only describe what I'm seeing as follows. You know how, in mobile MMORPGs and ARPGs, they have the basic action buttons in the bottom right corner of the screen, with the ability buttons surrounding it in a semi-circular manner? The King of Fighters World has that, which begs the question of whether the game will have features such as proper combos and whatnot or whether it will feature traditional, side-scrolling fighting game movement while controlling like a mobile ARPG. Unfortunately, we can't get a hold of any of the notes that participants took during the event, so we can't know exactly what it will play like for sure.

What we can know for sure is that SNK China also unveiled the second of four new characters that are being made exclusively for The King of Fighters World: a woman named Faith Brown. Apparently, Faith idolizes Heidern and learned to be an assassin from him. She is now the instructor of the academy where she learned ton be an assassin. Her rise to fame happened three years before The King of Fighters World's story, when she successfully foiled an attack on her academy that was conducted by "an unknown group."

A limited The King of Fighters World iOS Closed Beta is set to be held in China in April. SNK China still has no plans to release the game in any English-speaking markets at this time.