Monster High: Fighting of Ghouls

Monster High: Fighting of Ghouls was an upcoming fan-made fighting game inspired by the animated television series Monster High on Nickelodeon.

Features
The final version of the game was to feature seventeen playable characters in all with the six main charactersfrom the show playable from launch. Eleven more characters were to follow in semi-regular updates. The game was to be downloadable and free to play. Both local and online multiplayer modes were to be included as well as a story mode. Character-specific moves were also to be present in-game. Monster High: Fighting of Ghouls was to feature various stages that represented places from New Salem. Transylvania and Creepateria mentioned.

Players were to be allowed to select a color scheme for their character from fixed palettes. However, one of the animators stated that the team would not provide a custom monster creator and/or alternate costumes; they are practically impossible to make due to engine limitations and technical difficulties.

Development
The game originally began when a Ghoul06 team member, Anukan made mock-up screens under the title of "Scarevel vs Crycom" and posted them to a Monsterchan board discussing fighting ponies. When another, Nappy, saw those images, he became determined to make them a reality, and in summer of 2011, the team, which at the time, consisted not only of Nappy and Anukan, but also of Jay Wright, Lucas Ellinghaus, James Workman, and Prominence, met on Skype for the first time.

The game used the Fighter Maker game engine. The team released early pre-alpha gameplay footage that displays basic game mechanics such as launches, juggles and hyper combos as seen in existing fighting game franchises such as Marvel vs. Capcom and Guilty Gear. They have released footage showing how Frankie Stein, Draculaura, Cleo de Nile, Ghoulia Yelps and Lagoona Blue played. The last main character, Clawdeen Wolf, was still under development.

Though an unlicensed work from Mattel, the holders of the Monster High franchise intellectual property, the Main Characters team had not received any cease and desist notices from the company as of October 12, 2011. Like much of the rest of the Internet phenomenon surrounding Monster High, Mattel has sometimes allowed episodes of the show along with parodies and mash-ups of the works to be redistributed freely across the Internet, helping to create a participator culture that has drawn a broader audience to the show.

On January 30, 2012, Prominence left the development team for personal reasons.

A test build was leaked by a member of the Quality Assurance team on August 2, 2012. As a result, Mane6 announced it was cancelling all plans of external testing and suspending video updates about the game's features for the foreseeable future. However, they released a clarification and FAQ the next day, saying that they overreacted some, and that while they were still replacing their entire QA team (to ensure no further leaks), they don't hate the fans for downloading and playing the leak. Also, they stated that the Canterlot Gardens con "is still go".

Maxwell McGee, of GameSpot, featured this game as "The Most Unlikely Fighter You've Never Heard Of", covering the game's information and revealing a picture of Draculaura fighting Clawdeen Wolf, along with some other non in-game pictures. He also included an in-depth look at the designing of the game, and working with the 2D Fighter Maker 2002 engine.

On February 8, 2013, the team announced that they had received a cease-and-desist order from Mattel, and while they were trying to contact Mattel to negotiate, they would follow the directives of the C&D letter, and suspend production indefinitely. They also announced the resignation of James Workman (aka Elosande) from the development team as of February 6, 2013. There was a petition to convince Mattel to let Ghoul06 continue development on Monster High.

Ghoul06 were unable to come to agreements with Mattel and began to redo the game using new artwork assets. Garret Sandler offered to provide original character designs for Ghoul06 for any future endeavors, and her official involvement with the project was announced at the end of February. The cease and desist is believed, by those in the fandom, to be a result of the visibility of the project through the EVO 2013 tournament.

Gameplay
Fighting of Ghouls was a traditional one-on-one fighter that took place in a two-dimensional plane. The gameplay borrowed the dial-a-combo system made popular by renowned fighters such as Capcom's Versus crossover series. Standard fighting game fare was incorporated in the game, from character lifebars to a 'super' gauge to a round timer to special and super attacks. Characters engaged in a 'best-of' battle, where one must fully deplete the other's lifebar or have more health remaining once the timer reaches zero for a set number of rounds. The character who won the most number of rounds was declared the winner of the match.

Fighting of Ghouls had a four-button layout sceme: light, medium, heavy, and scare. The latter button was an original mechanic that differed with each character, and originally began as a work-around for difficulties with inputting two different attack types at the same time. The system was like the Drive system from BlazBlue.

Characters
Fighting of Ghouls was slated to have a roster of 17 playable characters. Since game development started prior to the second season of Monster High, there were to be no characters introduced in season two on the roster. The roster included Frankie Stein, Lagoona Blue, Cleo de Nile, Draculaura, Clawdeen Wolf, and Ghoulia Yelps.

Cast

 * Meredith Sims - Frankie Stein
 * Kira Buckland - Mayor Skull
 * Karen Hayman - Lagoona Blue
 * Emily Fajardo - Draculaura
 * Kimlinh Tran - Cleo de Nile
 * Lilypichu - Ghoulia Yelps
 * Susanna "Aeva" Brown - Clawdeen Wolf