Over five years in development and with only about a dozen people to develop it, Bangu-Bang Mania has finally been shown to gaming journalists in a simple ceremony at GameFrog at Metrowalk, Ortigas Center.

Bangu-Bang Mania, developed by VITAS, is considered as the first fully Filipino made online casual game. It is primarily a two-dimensional beat ‘em up game similar to the popular Nintendo game Smash Brothers and can be played by up to six players on three-against-three matches.

The game’s characters are all robots whose body parts can be upgraded with different weapons. These include upgrades for the head, torso, arms, legs, primary and secondary weapons and backpack weapons.

VITAS President Rainier Umali said the open beta test of the game will start before the end of August while the commercial launch will happen by mid-October.

Instead of following the commonly used free-to-play scheme in other casual games, VITAS decided that Bangu-Bang Mania will be pay-to-play wherein players will top up their gaming cards with 50 pesos for one week play time, 100 pesos for 2 weeks, and 200 pesos for one month play time. He said they are in talks with ePLDT’s Get Loaded payment system as well as Load Central for the top-up card loading service.

“The pay-to-play model helps balance out the game because users will start out with just the same amount of money to play, instead of buying more expensive items. Of course, if they want to continue playing they have to get the higher amount,” Umali said.

Umali added that they are not hoping to be the most played casual fighting game but they are aiming for just “one percent” of the online gamer market, which would sustain the game.

For the next few weeks, Umali said the company will be having in-game promos that would include awarding prizes to the top scorer in the game for the open beta test as well as the person who reports the most bugs in the game.