Read our Invincible VS interview with Robert Kirkmen here.
When it comes to Invincible VS, our time with the game has shown us just how much developer Quarter Up has invested in not only making an approachable fighter with depth, but also a game honoring and telling Robert Kirkman, Corey Walker, and Ryan Ottley’s now iconic comic’s story.
But, in our recent interview with the development team’s Narrative Director, Mike Rogers, Executive Producer, Mike Willette, and Art Director, Dan Eder, about the title’s first announced original character: Ella Mental. yup, that’s right.
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Overseen by Robert Kirkman, this original character is bringing elemental powers to the 3×3 tag team fighter and expanding the world of Invincible for fans. We discussed how she was developed and what players can expect from Ella’s elemental-controlling powers and defensive wall-based fighting style.
If you’re unfamiliar with the title, Invincible VS is a tag-team fighter based on the comic and television series that changed the conversation around heroes when it was first published under Skybound in 2003. The second video game based on the franchise was announced during the Xbox Games Showcase 2025.
Invincible VS is the debut game for Quarter Up, Skybound Entertainment’s brand new studio. The new tag team fighter offers an easy entry point for newcomers to the genre, while providing enough defensive depth to keep longtime fans engaged well beyond a single match. And in many ways, Ella Mental is one of the best representations of that.
Quarter Up is working hand in hand with Invincible’s creators.
As we spoke about in our hands-on preview of the game, Invincible VS offers both approachability with easy-to-manage combos and defensive depth for veteran fighting game players and those looking for competition. To start our conversation, which took place ahead of the Game Awards 2025, we discussed how Ella’s new original power set fit into and balanced against the game’s existing heroes, and how they kept such a powerful concept from becoming unbalanced.
“It was a very unique challenge,” Narrative Director Mike Willette explained, “When we originally wanted to do an original character, Dan [Eder] was the first one to bring it up. While we were developing our art style and honing our characters, Dan asked Maike [Rogers], ‘Can we do an original character?’ And I was like, Fuck, no, Dan! We gotta make the [existing characters] look great!”
Willette continued, “But it was always in the back of our heads, [because] it would be really cool if we did a brand new character in the universe. Then, [Dan] talked it over with Mike and some other folks, and we’re like, oh, let’s just go ask Robert [Kirkman].”
When you love a property like Invincible, with a world of heroes, it’s almost a natural inclination to want a fighting game experience for it. But when you introduce original characters, the genre doesn’t leave too many options to introduce the character in the same way a more story-based genre does. For a fighter, visuals, power set, interactions with the world’s power sets, one-line interactions, and, well, personality are the core factors in telling a player who a character is.
Mike Willette continued to tell the story about how Ella Mental came to be. “We asked Robert, and Robert’s like, ‘Hey, this is a rad idea. Let’s do it!’ So, he and Cory Walker got together and did an initial concept piece, Robert wrote a backstory blurb about [Ella Mental], and then they handed it back to us. We were like, ‘Oh, this is really cool—Oh, shit, there’s a lot of stuff here!'”
If you’re following along, it’s clear how much Invincible‘s original creators are invested in Invincible VS, and how much they worked hand in hand to bring Ella Mental to life, offering Quarter Up a chance to add a piece of themselves to the Invincible universe while still honoring the unique voice of the comic turned multi-media franchise.
Willette then explained how Ella took shape from a gameplay perspective, “We really wanted to dig into [what they gave us]. From a gameplay perspective, she’s got all these abilities that manipulate the elements, right? Like fire, wind, water, and earth. [The power set is] really interesting within our tag [and] combo system of just different ways to control space or to block people from using space; hit people from far away or bring them towards you, and just manipulating the battlefield in different ways that are separate from what you know, robot or Cecil or Rex can do.”
Ella Mental adds a unique component to defense. With the ability to wall off opponents, she lets players control the stage, offering a distinct player personality. At the same time, her elemental powers also make for a fiery offense, pun intended. Willette continued, explaining her offensive abilities as well.
Ella Mental’s kit offers a powerful defence for Invincible VS.
“We really wanted her to have her own personality within the fight. We started coming up with these different abilities where her fire projectile can bounce multiple times and has a weird arc to it. She has a straightforward water spire that she can do, and you can charge it to cause a hard knockdown, and you can do all of these elemental manipulations while hiding behind an earth shield that you can generate in front of you that you can also break.”
With fan favorites like Mark, Atom Eve, or even Omni-Man or Battle Beast, an original character has to have a powerset that makes her a viable choice for play. Based on the details Willette shared, she’s going to be a top choice for many players. But the power set is only one element (pun not intended), and fitting her into the larger world and making her powers work from an artistic perspective are others.
“So [Ella’s] kit starts taking shape with all these really rad ideas. But can we do the art and have it be performant? And that’s when we go to Dan and say, ‘Dan, bail us out! How the fuck are we gonna do that?!’ That’s where Dan should take over this part of the story,” Willette said, with the call letting out a laugh, and Quarter Up’s Art Director, Dan Eder, stepped in.
“It’s always a balancing act with these kinds of characters, because you don’t want to be the fun police where you say, ‘Hey, this is too complicated, but we can’t do it,’ because then you’re not going to get anything good or creative, right if you just say no to everything,” he said, “But then you also got to make sure that you’re not buying golf more than you can shoot, that you’re planning sustainably. And also, we’re going to get the best version of this character we can, while also making sure that it comes at a cost that is going to be manageable for us.”
He continued, “As soon as we got that first concept from Cory Walker, we dissected it in terms of what does this mean in terms of the character model, her color palette, the fact that she has a cape, the fact that she has four elements— What does that mean from a VFX standpoint, how can we make sure that this is the view?”
The complexity of Elle Mental’s design is clear when listening to Eder talk. He added, “I think looking back, I think we planned it out very carefully, and it paid off, because now we have a character that, although she was probably our most demanding character creatively, she’s also the most satisfying because we didn’t have any source material, unlike every other character in a roster, where we had an entire repository of, you know, a reference from the comics or the show with her, we just had one sketch.’
“It’s both terrifying but an exciting at the same time, because you get to do whatever you want, and thankfully, because we’re part of sky bound and we work with the creators directly, we got a lot of the creative freedom to change a few things maybe, maybe spruce it up when it comes to the design, or some of the facial features.
And I think ultimately, as you saw in the trailer, we ended up with a character that I think is really appealing. She’s both unique in her essence, but also I think she stands in sort of this, in alignment with the rest of the roster, and really feels like an inherent part of the IP, so from my perspective, you know, mission accomplished,” Dan Eder ended.
Ella Mental feels right at home, like she was always a part of Invincible.
Hearing the developers discuss how Ella Mental came to be and how carefully they integrated her into the world of Invincible VS as an original character made my initial reaction to her make sense. For me, I had to do multiple takes after watching the announcement trailer, which was released during The Game Awards 2025.
The way that Ella jokes, her costume, and her name all made it seem like she was always a part of the franchise, even making me, someone who has the Invincible omnibus volumes, question whether I forgot something. And that was by design.
Narrative Director Mike Rogers described the process of integrating her into the world. “It was an amazing challenge, and also a lot of fun, because, you know, like, I think Dan and Mike touched on it, Corey Walker and Robert Kirkman… I think for them, it started with, like, a character name, and like that, branched out into doing all the elements and whatnot.
And we were able to extrapolate that from determining who she is. How does she act? What’s her personality like? How does she connect with other characters in the world? And working with Helen Leigh, who’s a writer on the game, who was also one of the writers in the show. We really had a ball figuring all that out.”
As our conversation continued, fans of the property will notice, as I did, that there is no separation between the different media telling Invincible‘s story. The creators are involved in the show and the game, with a core writer like Helen Leigh also working on the game, and the cohesiveness across entertainment spaces begins to take shape. And it also makes an original character like Ella Mental feel at home.
Rogers continued, “The end result is that she does feel like she’s a part of the Invincible universe, just as much as anyone else is. And you know, we started by anchoring her with like, ‘Okay, what’s a relationship to Mark like, and what’s her relationship to someone like Rex or Robot like?’ Then from there, we were able to build out with, ‘Okay, what kind of characters might she gravitate to more towards, who might she not like as much? How would she feel about this kind of joke or this kind of scenario?’ And the more that we wrote, the more crystallized it became.”
“I think for me, where it came together, sort of like the pinnacle of it all, was when Tierra Whack, who is going to be voicing her, came in for her [recording] and came into the picture. She brings a heightened depth and detail to the character. We knew Ella would be the first to step up with a solution when a problem arose. We knew she’d have some positive activity and energy. But Tierra really brought that sardonic edge that was there in the writing, but really pulled it out just by her performance,” Rogers explained.
Ella Mental’s voice actress Tierra Whack brings humor and charisma to the character.
Known for her work under her stage name, Dizzle Dizz, Tierra Whack is a Grammy-nominated rapper and singer who has collaborated with everyone from Beyonce to Alicia Keys and Tyler The Creator. Her song “Mumbo Jumbo” was nominated for Best Music Video at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards, and she even toured with Flying Lotus, who has made his own jump into the larger entertainment space. And all of that makes her role as Ella Mental even more exciting, and Whack’s status as a boundary-pushing artist is something that Rogers celebrated in our conversation.
“I was really excited about getting to work with Robert and Cory and bringing this original character into the world, and also working with someone who’s, quite honestly, such a visionary, like Tierra, and building this new original corner of the invincible universe that fits right into what is already there.”
But despite being a new character, the goal was to make Ella feel at home in Invincible VS. Rogers added, “If you’re new to the IP, you might, like, boot this game up, and think Ella was created the same time everyone else was, and she just sort of seamlessly fits in. That really was our goal, and because of all the different people that were involved in all this, [the] talent and care and passion that was put into this, I feel like we got that opportunity, and I’m super excited for everyone to see it.”
With the arrival of Invincible VS, the latest tag-team fighter coming from Quarter Up, fans of the popular comic and television series, as well as newcomers to this violent, superpowered world, will have a fun way to immerse themselves in the chaos this IP brings. With the introduction of the new character, Ella Mental, the game offers an exciting stepping stone and is sure to be welcomed by all.
Get ready to play Invincible VS, which will launch for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC on April 30, 2026, for $49.99.
Invincible VS | Official Release Date Trailer
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