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Lionhead Studios was acquired by Microsoft in April 2006 - and exactly a decade later, the publishing giant made the studio defunct.

A lot of developers were put out of a job: luckily, the British development scene is pretty supportive, and many of the Guildford-based staff found new work.

Some went to established studios - EA, Ubisoft, Jagex and more are based in the area - but some of the developers opted to set up their own new indie studios, instead.

One such studio - Upstream Arcade - saw the launch of its first game this week.

The title, Deadbeat Heroes, is a superhero beat-em-up set in 1970s London with an understated story and a few new interesting mechanics: it mixes platforming and beat-em-up action with the dry humour of a British hero sitcom, and it takes some pretty interesting risks.

"We just wanted to do something different," studio co-founder Adam Langridge said in an interview with The Daily Star. "“When we were at Lionhead, we played a lot of beat-em-ups every lunch - and that gave us a hankering to play something of our own.I was one of the guys that did a lot of the gameplay coding and combat prototyping on Fable II, too, so after working on ‘one-button combat’ there we got a real taste for this kind of game."

I was one of the guys that did a lot of the gameplay coding and combat prototyping on Fable II, too, so after working on ‘one-button combat’ there we got a real taste for this kind of game and gave us the impetus to do something of our own."

The game uses a combat model where your protagonists are 'glass hammers', as Langridge puts it: you can dish out severe damage, but get hit and you go down quick.

"You don't have a block button," Langridge explains. "You need to dash, jump and wall-run to avoid damage. It gives the game a quicker feeling - we played a lot of brawlers [as inspiration] for the game, and we wanted to do something new in that space."

Mixing the 'glass hammer' mentality with a gimmick that allows you to nick villains' powers gives the game a unique identity - and that's helped in part by a script from another Fable veteran, James Leech.

"I'm really glad you noticed Deadbeat Heroes has been written by James Leech. It got to the point in making this game where I thought 'we need a writer, who's the best writer I can think of?' And that was Leech.

"He's a fantastic lead: he's a funny guy - his jokes are either really good good jokes, or really good bad jokes. His style is fantastic.

"We let him off the leash with this game: it's full of bizarre, surreal, silly, quintessentially British humour."

"One of our influences for the game was 60s Batman," explains Imkan Hayati (co-founder and art director). "So we really wanted to create the British version of that, essentially. Imagining what the kind of Batman could have been."

There seems to be a taste for British humour in gaming at the moment - especially when you hold Deadbeat Heroes up alongside something like Strange Brigade (in the works at British studio Rebellion).

"I'm really glad you noticed Deadbeat Heroes has been written by James Leech. It got to the point in making this game where I thought 'we need a writer, who's the best writer I can think of?' And that was Leech.

"He's a fantastic lead: he's a funny guy - his jokes are either really good good jokes, or really good bad jokes. His style is fantastic.

"We let him off the leash with this game: it's full of bizarre, surreal, silly, quintessentially British humour."

"One of our influences for the game was 60s Batman," explains Imkan Hayati (co-founder and art director). "So we really wanted to create the British version of that, essentially. Imagining what the kind of Batman could have been."

There seems to be a taste for British humour in gaming at the moment - especially when you hold Deadbeat Heroes up alongside something like Strange Brigade (in the works at British studio Rebellion).

Langridge and Hayati seem to think that's because of the 'dense talent pool' that collects in the UK, and Guildford specifically.

"The British developers really punch above their weight," Langridge says. "We've got a fantastic heritage of bold, left-field ideas. As far as I'm concerned, the UK is the Hollywood of games development - that's the joke we all have down the pub in Guildford [laughter].

"But we try and lift each other up as much as possible, especially as we see the industry shift from a few 100-strong studios into dozens of smaller, two- to five-man teams."

Moving from Lionhead to a new indie studio gave Langridge and Hayati the freedom to create the kind of game they wanted to create, according to Langridge.

"We've got a lot of ex-colleagues, and we've seen the opportunity to do indie games in smaller teams is a dream come true.

"We spent upwards of 10 years working on large products with large teams, where so many decisions are made by committee and individuals you need to work with are way over there, departments away.

"So whilst it was nice working with such talented developers, it's refreshing to have the freedom of working in a more agile, smaller studio."

Langridge does note, however, that learning new elements of game design (he'd never had to design a level before Deadbeat Heroes) is an intense learning curve.

"All I had to worry about working at Lionhead was making good stuff; we were completely insulated from the business side of things back then. That said, when we announced the game, we did sort-of ride the coattails of the studio a little - it wasn't an enormous leg up, and despite [our history], the game still has to stand up and perform on its own merits."

Langridge refers to the legacy he and Hayati has with Lionhead as a badge of honour, and clearly still has some connection to the games they worked on with Microsoft.

"You're asking what my reaction would be if another studio came in to work on my baby!" laughs Langridge when we ask him how he feels about the dubious future of Fable under Microsoft.

"We feel such a personal connection to that series. There are such a large number of key people - creative director Dene Carter, for example - whose vision crafted that franchise, and without those key people, you're going to have a very hard time recreating the same kind of Fable.

"Their personalities permeated the games, you know? You could feel them in there like names through a stick of rock.

"It'd be very hard for another studio to make a Fable game like the ones we know now, but that could be seen as me dropping the gauntlet! Have a go! Go for it!"

Langridge cites 'the first proper 3D fighter' as a big inspiration for Deadbeat Heroes - Power Stone on the Dreamcast.

"It innovated fantastically well, this 2-player beat-em-up: it combined brawler elements with platforming elements, and a lot of that hasn't done before or since."

That's what Deadbeat Heroes seeks to change: Langridge and Hayati want to push those elements Power Stone combined further, in multiplayer co-op - rather than competitive.

It's a brave choice for a first game, and couldn't be further away from the fantasy realms of Fable's Albion - but that shift definitely seems for the better.

And, more than anything, Deadbeat Heroes represents an intimate success story for Langridge and Hayati, and is another in a long line of games that proves small studios can stand toe-to-toe even with some of the most established studios in the industry.