Sugar Coated Skirmish

Sugar Coated Skirmish is a sword based fighting game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Wii U. It was released in Europe, Japan, North America and Australia during the months of Summer 2015. Sugar Coated Skirmish is the first game in the Sugar Coated series. 

Gameplay

General Overview

Sugar Coated Skirmish is a 3D fighting game that runs on common fighting game mechanics. Players choose from a variety of characters (having their own unique playstyle) and stages based on the theme of the game, candy. However, unlike most fighting games each character uses weapons to fight with. Every character has their own unique style weapons such as swords and axes. 

Gameplay

Like most fighting games, the goal of a match is to deplete the opponent's health bar by performing powerful attacks and combos. Every fighter in the game has their own playstyle, weaknesses and strengths. Two characters are set against eachother in open-spaced arenas that feature gimmicks, items and hazards and must K.O. their opponents. But instead of using their fists to fight, fighters are aided by powerful weapons which all have their own properties. Fighters have unique moves (a mixture of light attacks and heavy attacks) and combos, performing combos fills up the fighter's gauge, allowing them to perform their character's Special Move, an extremely powerful move that will do a lot of damage if timed correctly. Items are also found in the game, items can also be collected on the stage which can be used offensively (throwing them or using them on the opponent) and defensively (boosting health and stats). There are also multiple unique modes in Sugar Coated Skirmish that change the normal gameplay such as Tag Team, Sumo and Item Frenzy. As well as this the game has a small basic story mode in which players compete in a tournament and try to win the cash prize for the reason they enter. 

Controls

The game has three different controller options, players can use the gamepad, a wiimote and nunchuk or the pro controller.

Modes

Battle

Battle is one of the main modes in Sugar Coated Skirmish. Players can choose from a variety of gametypes and customize the game's rounds, health bar, computer difficulty and time limit. This mode offers single player matches and some modes can even allow up to 4 players.

Regular Battle

This is the simplest type of battle in the mode. Players can fight against either a computer or another person and choose rules for the match such as the number of rounds, health bar, computer difficulty and the time limit. 

Tag Team Battle

Players team up with another player, a computer or work alone and battle against another team. The mode can be played with 1-4 players. Unlike other modes, the player or the player's team has two members, that can be swapped between. The other team member can be another person with a controller, a computer or even the same player can control both of the fighters.

Sumo Battle

Depleting the health bar is not the goal in Sumo Battles, infact there aren't any to be seen in this mode. Instead, players must knock their opponent out of the indicated perimeter in order to win. This mode is all about defending, dodging and pushing your opponent back. It can be played with one or two players.

Item Frenzy

This type of battle plays out very similar to regular battles but it has a key element missing from all of the other modes availible, being weapons. Due to weapons being taken out of the match, fighters can't perform any attacks other than using offensive items to diminish their opponent's health bar.  It can also be played with one or two players.

Combo Competition

This mode is another gametype allowing four players to play, using one controller. To win in this mode, players have three attempts to perform the longost combo they possibly can on a dummy, the player with the highest combo wins the game.

Target Triumph

Similar to Combo Competition, this gametype allows up to four players to play, using only one cntroller. Players take it in turns to destroy a certain amount of targets as fast as they can. The player who destroys the targets in the fastest time wins the game.

One Hit Knock Out

This gametype is all about dodging and defending, if your fighter takes a single hit, they are KOed instantly. It can be played with one or two players.

Survival

Survival is a single player gametype. Players choose a number of fighters (such as 10, 100 or infinite) and battle each one consecutively without healing. 

Training

This mode allows players to practice moves, combos and attacks with any character on any stage against a computer.  The computer's AI can be changed and customized to suit the players needs, you can make them do nothing, walk around, run and jump or fight back. The gamepad shows details about the moves and how much damage they are dealing.

Online Match

Players can challenge other people from around the world in this mode. It offers most of the same gametypes as Quick Battle mode. Players also get a rank (called Sweetness) based on how many battles they have won or lost. Usually, players will be set up against players with a similar Sweetness rank as them but players can also battle friends online too.

Story Mode

The game has a short story mode involving a fighting tournament in which players compete to win prize money for their chosen character's goals. Each fighter has a slightly different story with multiple cutscenes. Although it is called story mode there isn't much of a plot to it.

Challenges

In this mode players complete challenges (or missions) for each character. Every playable fighter in the game has around 8 challenges in total, ranging in difficulty. The goal of each of the challenges vary, for example some are based around defeating opponents in a limited amount of time, while others may specify you cannot lose any health in the challenge.

Achievements

Sugar Coated Skirmish has it's own achievement system with over 200 achievements to attain. This mode lists achievements that have been completed, progress on certain achievements and which haven't been completed yet.

The Skirmish Show

The Skirmish Show works similar to Mario Kart TV from Mario Kart 8. Players can view popular match replays and edit their own matches. There is also an app that allows players to view matches on their phone and share them on social media.

Statistics

This mode shows all data about the player such as their most used character, favourite stages, least used character, least used stages, highest combo, online wins and online losses. 

Options

In this mode players can change different settings of the game of things like the language, subtitles and sounds.

Characters

In Sugar Coated Skirmish, all character's designs and sometimes personalities are heavily influenced by different types of candy, sweets, desserts and chocolates.  A lot of character's costumes are also based on japanese street fashion and style.

Playable Fighters

Every character in the game has unique attributes. They all have two unique weapons, 2 alternate costumes, a special move and their very own playstyle. Each fighter has a balance of strengths and weaknesses that are sometimes effected by which weapons are used. There are 12 playable characters in the game, 8 are default, 2 are secret and there are 2 downloadable characters.

Default

Image	Name	Theme	Description	Play style	Weapon 1	Weapon 2
???	Hoshiko Kappukēki	Cupcakes and Sweet/Princess Lolita	???	???	Frosted Sword	Sprinkles Parasol
		Flying Saucers and Uchuu Kei			Flying Saucer Disc	???
		Peppermint and Red Decora			Giant Lollipop	???
		Cherry Sweets and Wa Lolita			Sugar Fan	???
		Ice Cream and Pop Kei/Spank!

Weapons

Default

Weapon	Description	Attacks
Frosted Sword

Stages

The game's stages are often large open areas with interactive elements and unique gimmicks. There are 24 stages in Sugar Coated Skirmish, 10 default, 10 secret and 4 downloadable ones.

Beta Elements

• Characters from the Gumball the Dog series were meant to appear as the main cast in Sugar Coated Skirmish but instead were replaced by human characters based on desserts and sweets.

Trivia

• The game was originally a reboot of the Gumball the Dog series but was massively changed.
  • This is why some files of characters from the series could be found.
• The game also shares similarities with Sugar Rush from Wreck-It-Ralph due to characters being heavily based around sweets, chocolate and candy.
• The game was set for release on Halloween in North America and Europe, but was released earlier as the game was already completed.
• A Wii U based on the game was bundled with it to help promote the new IP.