Feedback Kensei - top down slash-'em-up. (Windows Demo, SS, Vids) [Updated 10-30-16]

[Gravedust]

KENSEI (Prototype)
Download here (~5mb, windows, standalone .exe, includes readme. Current version.)

________________________________________________________________________________

You are a swordsman journeying to the heart of an enemy citadel.

Your goal is to be the only one left alive.
________________________________________________________________________________

Kensei is a top down game featuring extremely fast combat that is intended to challenge the twitch reflex and quick-thinking skills of the player.

Your primary attack (Left Mouse button) is a quick dash-strike to the position of the mouse that will eliminate any enemy it passes through.
You have a limited number of dashes (indicated by the white circles by the character), however every enemy killed by a dash will restore a charge, meaning you can 'chain' dashes from enemy to enemy in quick succession.

Your secondary attack (Right Mouse Button) is a normal sword swing with a little bit of knockback,
Your Secondary can also deflect projectiles, with good timing.

Here is a (very quick) video of example gameplay:

It should be noted that this is a prototype meant to test gameplay, so almost all the present assets are placeholders, (even the name ) and lots of features aren't there yet. (Some sounds are missing, poor menu, no options, etc.) All this will receive due polish in time.

But before I proceed I'd love to have some feedback on how the combat feels at the moment, as that'll be the core that everything else rests upon. Any and all thoughts are appreciated, but I am especially interested in which aspects stood out as fun or frustrating, any levels where you got stuck for a long time, or any aspect of the mechanics you feel like you don't understand. And most importantly if the combat feels, looks, and sounds satisfying.

Thank you very much! I plan to update this thread fairly regularly with new versions as things progress.

More Videos here--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spoiler

Including one embarrassing failure:

Screenshots here--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spoiler

======FUTURE FEATURES=================
• More enemy types
• Traps and obstacles
• Updated player and enemy sprites, animation, and background art.
• Target scores and times for each level.
• Additional player characters with different abilities.

 

[EckyYakov]

Have it downloaded! Waiting to get time to give a full review. Stay tuned

 

[Gravedust]

Awesome, thanks.

 

[Gravedust]

[ UPDATE ========== 09-08-16 ================ ]

Still awaiting solid feedback on gameplay before I start making any major changes, so I have been messing around with some minor stuff in the meantime.
__________________________________________________________________________
+Control Addition: WASD controls
...So now you can control your character with the WASD keys as well as the arrow keys.
Not sure why I didn't do this sooner, actually >.>

+Added Feature: High score/ best times Screen
Still very rough, but now you can see your scores and times for all levels at once.

+Gameplay Adjustment: Dash Buffering
This was to fix a situation where the game would eat dash inputs if they occurred at the same time as a player was getting hit. (leading to missed dashes, more damage, and a dead player.) Now dashes will fire as soon as a hitpause ends.
__________________________________________________________________________

Download is HERE
(But the one in the top post will always be the most current one, also)

But anyway, probably the most exciting thing this week was doing some concept work on the (current) main character.
The in-game sprite is something I literally just threw together and animated, so I spent some time fleshing out the design a bit, basing it off what I'd already done and just trying to make it fit the game characteristics of the character, light on his feet, fast, and of course, swordy.

Spoiler

Despite what the name might imply, the setting of the game will probably not be in the past, (or in japan) so I felt free to incorporate a few modern touches to the armor and general style. I like the direction so far but it will probably see some more iteration before I bother doing a new sprite set. I did feel I was far enough along to try a color test:

Spoiler

...and yeah I know the flowing red scarf has been done to death, but I can't help myself. -_-

Anyway, any feedback you can give me at this point will help me solidify the direction this game is going in, as well as help me progress a lot faster and in general be incredibly helpful, so please consider downloading and letting me know what you think.

Thanks.

 

[EckyYakov]

HEY!
Finally got some time to play the game and give you a little bit of a write up. Sorry it won't be as in depth as the one you gave me, but that is because i am a bad writer and honestly not that good at reviewing games haha. But anyway....

Love the pace of the game. Super fast. Easy to play a couple levels. Try to get a higher score. Take a break, come back play again. The levels are super fast. Even tho more difficult one... it just figuring out your strategy before you start moving. Controls feel super intuitive. Dash strike was all i seemed to be using. Didn't find the basic attack (right mouse button) too effective/useful. So i just made sure I landed my dash strikes. I like the sword swing sounds and the dash sound but am a little annoyed by the enemy taking damage scream... Definately a preferential thing but it just seems a little too sharp and occurs too often for my liking. Maybe when you get further down the road add in rotations of different audio queues for that! I like the response range and line of sight of the AI, but there are definitely times where they would get stuck on walls or behave awkwardly, so you may want to look into making the AI tracking a little more built out. The difficulty progression seemed pretty smooth, but i also played a level multiple times before advancing to try to improve my score. So that may have lead to be getting used to the mechanics faster than a player just going through the levels would.

Art and aesthetics are all very enjoyable. Would like to have some subtle up tempo music in there too at some point but it is off to a good start. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of help. Wasn't much i could find that i really didn't like. Will play some more and see, and if you have any specific questions about my experience feel free to ask!

Also, within the next update of my game should be some of those features you suggested so keep an eye out. Cheers!

 

[Gravedust]

Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah the idea was for fast 'bite sized' levels, so even if you die at the very end of one you're only set back 30-45 seconds or so. Right now the game is centered around score, (because that's all there is) but eventually it will also have a story that unfolds between multiple characters, so hopefully even the non-score motivated will have a reason to keep progressing through levels.

And yes, for the current character, the secondary (regular swing) attack is very much the 'use until your dashes come back' option. (or actually an defensive option, since the pushback makes it easier to keep some enemies outside their attack distance) The game really revolves around the dash. When there are additional player character options, some of their secondary attacks will probably get more interesting. For instance I'm thinking about a ranged secondary that ricochets off walls and gains damage with each bounce, encouraging skillshotting around corners.

The sound suggestions I will take under advisement. I had a feeling some of the sounds would become obnoxious, fortunately once the enemy types are differentiated more (each class should be getting unique sprites and animation, etc.) they ought to have different sounds as well, and I will probably swap out the current sound set as well. That may not happen for a while, though. : / So in the meantime I'll add in a mute key.

I would love to add some music, and I definitely will sooner or later. Probably just 1 or 2 tracks to keep the filesize down though while we're still essentially a prototype.

Enemies do do some weird things occasionally and then can get hung up on geometry, but they should not get stuck forever.. I'm basically using the stock GM:S pathfinding code to navigate them to the player around obstacles, then once they have the player in sight they then use my code to close in and attack. Right between that transition is where they can get jammed on things. They are supposed to detect when they're stuck on something though and then use the stock code to navigate clear and get back on the grid… I was hoping nobody would notice. But since you did I will see what I can do about improving that transition more. I've actually been thinking about making my own grid navigation code, just so I can have tighter control over things, that may be a project for the future.

If you're referring to some other weird behavior though, please let me know what and I'll see what I can do about it.

Anyway, thanks for the notes! I saw you just posted your new update, I'll check it out as soon as I get a chance.

 

[chefdez]

Hey Gravedust,

Awesome game! It really does get difficult in some levels so it's key to be strategic! I thought a bug that did stand out the most was definitely enemies getting stuck on walls, it was easy to cheese the basic enemies. It felt like the blue enemies with the large sword swing were the most dangerous, where as the ninja star enemies were easy to avoid. I liked all the sounds except the enemies dying, since you're killing so many enemies sometimes one by one the sound gets a little obnoxious. I love the dash sound mb left click though!

It's funny that I run into a game like this as I'm currently working on my first game ever. It's very similar to this although if I showed it to you, you would probably have a good laugh as I'm not an artist hah. I was wondering if I could run some questions by you via inbox? I get very lost when it comes to coding so I would like to pick your brain to learn where to start if you don't mind! Thanks for your consideration

 

[Gravedust]

Heya! Glad you enjoyed the game!

...Wow I guess I'm really going to have to do something about those hit sounds, huh? >.> Glad you liked the other ones though. Funnily enough, there was a specific other sound issue I was sure I'd see some negative feedback on, but so far nobody's mentioned it. >.>

Yeah the blue guys are nasty, basically if you miss them you'd better land outside their attack range or you will probably get hit, moreso than with the grey guys, at least. That's the idea of them, anyway; area denial. (Fun fact: You can actually poke them to death with your secondary without getting hit, if you are spry enough. They hate that.

I actually just added a mob that used the Blue's attack but also has a few additional attributes. Should be present in the next version, we'll see what people think.

Now between you me and the fencepost, I am actually okay with it if people cheese the game*, if that's what they have to do to progress. I'm really trying to make the game appeal to two kinds of people; score-hunters, and people interested in the story (...which does not exist at the moment.) To get the best score you need to move fast, chain everything, and dash lines of enemies, etc. If you are lurking around corners your multiplier will tick down and your score will be lower. Or so I am assuming**. But it's the SAFE way to play, and it's a way that players who don't have the skill to go crazy can see the next level and unravel more of the plot, until they gain the skill to beat a level 'properly.' In a sense, allowing cheese is my way of catering to differences in player skill. ...You know, without actually doing anything.

(*However I will definitely try to fix the corner-stuck issue!!!)
(**If it turns out that corner-lurking is a dominant scoring technique I'll have some serious adjusting to do...)

Anyway, yeah if you have any coding concerns I can tryyyyy to help you out, feel free to shoot me a PM if you want. I am not a great coder by any means, (I read the manual, watch tutorials, and bang my head on things until they work like I want them to) but I can certainly explain what I did to make this project work, in case it's applicable to that you're doing.

The GMC Programming forum is also a great place to ask for help, very friendly and helpful folks there who can help you find solutions, provided you are willing to meet them halfway.

________________
Also: Before I forget again like I keep doing, Credit where credit is due:
This game owes a lot of it's visual appeal to the fantastic Aura Lighting System (...Which I am potentially abusing...) by Nocturne, ( https://marketplace.yoyogames.com/assets/721/aura-surface-based-lighting ) ...
as well as Draw Trail by Killer ( https://marketplace.yoyogames.com/assets/212/draw-trail ) Which is how I do part of the dash effects.

 

[Gravedust]

Not a serious post, just had to show a bug I found last night that made me chuckle:

If you aren't familiar with the game, I'm using the multikill hitpause (MKHP) to set up a buffer-dash back across a string of enemies, and since they don't 'die' till the end of their step event when they notice they have 0 hp (and they skip step events while they're hitpaused), I can hit them again, get another MKHP, and then lather rinse repeat until you miss or click too slow.

The score multiplier keeps on ticking however, and needless to say you're not supposed to be able to score 269,500 points on a level with 10 enemies.

This is an easy fix, but… I kind of like it. It's fun to do. It definitely needs to be tamed, especially in terms of score, but it does take a bit of skill to execute and keep going. (it took maybe a dozen takes to get one as long as shown in the video) and I think it could make for a fun way to 'milk' multikill-dashes for some extra points, once it's made to be more reasonable.

But anyway, this bug is still present in the current version, so try it yourself if you want! You need to hit at least 3 mobs in a dash to start one.

 

[lolslayer]

Really nice lighting, real-time or calculated at start only?

 

[Gravedust]

Really nice lighting, real-time or calculated at start only?

Thanks but I had literally nothing to do with it, it's basically stock Aura Lighting (there is a marketplace link to it above somewhere), just with the size of the light sprites scaled way up. The only real change I made to the standard Aura package was to also add the shadows drawn by the wall objects onto the surface used by Aura. But it's all calculated at the start, essentially.

There were realtime elements which worked great on my dev computer but they were causing huge frame slowdown on slower machines, so I dumped them at the last minute because I wanted to make sure this would run on any reasonable machine. (and I am almost certain I am doing one or more dumb things with this poor, innocent lighting system.)

I was planning to give the lighting another pass later, but I am very much a novice so if you can recommend any alternatives or offer sage wisdom it'd be appreciated.

 

[lolslayer]

Thanks but I had literally nothing to do with it, it's basically stock Aura Lighting (there is a marketplace link to it above somewhere), just with the size of the light sprites scaled way up. The only real change I made to the standard Aura package was to also add the shadows drawn by the wall objects onto the surface used by Aura. But it's all calculated at the start, essentially.

There were realtime elements which worked great on my dev computer but they were causing huge frame slowdown on slower machines, so I dumped them at the last minute because I wanted to make sure this would run on any reasonable machine. (and I am almost certain I am doing one or more dumb things with this poor, innocent lighting system.)

I was planning to give the lighting another pass later, but I am very much a novice so if you can recommend any alternatives or offer sage wisdom it'd be appreciated.

Ah, okay, still nice use of lights though ;P

 

[Gravedust]

Just a quickie update: I got tired of everyone looking the same, so Grey guys are getting new sprites and animations.

Oh and everyone has shadows now as well. *shrug*

 

[Grimlock]

This looks like an interesting concept. On first impression though (seeing the video) the red streak looks like a blood streak, at least that was my first thought. Have you thought of changing the cape to a different color? I think it would help bring out the blood splats drawn when the enemies are eliminated. Maybe a dark blue or green to contrast the red blood. Just a thought, other than that it looks like it's progressing well.

 

[Gravedust]

Just a quickie update with some current events:
Been a busy week or two, but so far not really ready for a new release yet, alas. But here's what's been going on:

- Fixed infinite dash bug
Enemies can now only be re-hit by dashes a max of 3 times. Bonus points are awarded for re-dashing enemies. At the moment the bonus is fairly small, it may be increased in the future.

- Revamped in-level UI
Score, Level Time and Score multiplier are now visible all the time instead of just when a level has been completed. THey are pretty subdued while gameplay is going on so as not to distract the player, but at the level end they come to the foreground. The Score Multiplier is a bit more visible all the time, and has a couple of effects to make it look fun.

- Level timer does not begin until the player moves or attacks.
Just to make things a bit more fair if you are going for fast times.
(additionally, enemies with patrol paths will not start moving until the player does.)

- Added new enemy type.
It's a secret, though!

- Updated art for Grey Enemies.
New idles, active poses, attacks, and corpse sprites. This comes along with a minor update to the animation system as a whole. More work remains to be done however!

- Added a new playable character
"Blue" for now, since that's the color she'll be.

Blue works similarly to Red (the current guy) in that she has a dash and a melee swing as primary and secondary attacks, but is different in that she has 5 dash charges. However they do NOT recharge automatically, and they do NOT refresh on a dash kill.

Blue's secondary however is a huge melee swing that can hit multiple targets and 1-shot most enemies. If she kills an enemy with this attack however ALL her dash charges will be refreshed. This attack has a huge (~1 second) cooldown however, to encourage you to be strategic with it's use and combine your dashes and melee strikes to fight effectively.

So Blue's modus operandi is to hit 3 or 4 enemies in a row and then slash one (or more) before her dashes run out, allowing her to keep on moving. It's pretty different than how Red operates, and it took a bit of unlearning to be able to use Blue effectively. She tends to score lower than Red, but can post better times, especially on longer levels. Her play still needs adjustment, but I'm happy with the direction it's moving so far, and I'll be excited to see what other peeps think.

Anyway, some early/sketchy concept art for Blue:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

::CURRENT TO-DO LIST::
• Add character select
• Add separate scoring for multiple characters
• Investigate wall stick bug
• Add Showcase level for new enemy
• Add Other additional levels
• Sprite art for Blue
• More enemy sprite art

The idea is to get things shaped up for another release by next monday or tuesday.
Don't know if I'll be able to, and I certainly won't have all the above done, but I'll give it a try.

 

[Gravedust]

This looks like an interesting concept. On first impression though (seeing the video) the red streak looks like a blood streak, at least that was my first thought. Have you thought of changing the cape to a different color? I think it would help bring out the blood splats drawn when the enemies are eliminated. Maybe a dark blue or green to contrast the red blood. Just a thought, other than that it looks like it's progressing well.

Oh man. I somehow completely spaced on replying to this, sorry.

It was the intended to have the character's dash streak, hit effects, and blood sprites all be the same color and have them mix together visually. Primarily for two reasons:

The first was to make the effects seem more unique on a one-to-one basis. Combining the dash trail with the different hit-splats (there are actually supposed to be more than 1 kind of hit splat, somehow I never got around to adding the rest, but I should. >.>) was supposed to help dashes look unique individually by essentially making each one a solid 'shape' rather than something made of distinct sprites. ( I have a ton of same-colored blood sprites that are trying to do the same thing: make each blood splat seem unique, or at least obfuscate that pieces that are going into it by having it read as a single shape rather than separate pieces. )

...I'm not sure I'm doing a good job of explaining what I was intending, but anyway…

The second reason is a thematic one, and is the same reason I made the first iteration of the character red in the first place, and influenced his visuals; he's doing a pretty nasty thing, slicing up a lot of people for (at present) essentially unknown reasons. I haven't really started on a concrete story yet but in most of the ideas, Red and his compatriots are not the heroes. So blending the character, his power, and the blood that results was intentional. I also tried to communicate the potentially sinister nature of the main character in other ways: Has anyone noticed his blood is a different color?

But then again, that's just the prototype. Anything can change. I guess when you get all the way down to it: I did it because though it looked cool.

…So then of course I had to go and make a character with a blue color scheme (mostly for the purposes of keeping them easily distinguishable, I'm certain there will be a Green, a Yellow, etc, like sinister power rangers) so now I have to decide whether/how to change the effects to accommodate.

 

[Gravedust]

Boy was I wrong about how Blue would play!

After doing a lot of personal playtesting and some making some adjustment, I've got a better feel for the playstyle now. Turns out that after getting used to Blue she was incredibly overpowered, so after some fiddling I reduced the number of dashes all the way down to 2.

This cuts down her cycle to a very tight 1-2 second loop, which I have found is very reasonable to plan around, (Dash that guy, dash that other guy, swing to recharge dashes, repeat) and increases the consequences of a missed dash. It also emphasizes use of the blade as part of the rotation. For Blue Primary and secondary attacks are equally important, unlike Red where your secondary is there mostly as a last resort.

So Blue's playstyle is shaping up much like I wanted in terms of difficulty. She was intended as a more advanced character, and requires more second-to -second planning than Red, who is mostly about just making sure you don't miss your dashes. She also gets punished harder for misclicks. If you run out of dashes AND miss your melee swing, you are essentially defenseless for a full second, which is long enough for most mobs to kill you if you are in range.

That being said, she is great for trashing special (any non-grey) mobs, which die in one hit from her sword. Though Green mobs are a hassle since she can't always dash directly into their faces like Red can. And while she can deflect, the long melee cooldown makes it a bit dicey. (to help counteract this, her deflect deals enough damage to 1-shot many mobs.)

But anyway, she's a lot of fun to play and get ready to give both mouse buttons a workout if you do.

As of last night I have cooked up some test sprites and animation for her, below is her melee swing, running about 50% of game speed.

This is actually 3 separate sprite strips combined here; The attack animation, the pose for the melee cooldown, (intended to visually show that you can't melee again yet, there may also be a sound cue for the end of the melee cooldown.) and the transition back to the 'ready' stance once the cooldown is finished.

And more concept art. Decided to tone down the armor a bit. I liked the last version, but it seemed too bulky. Still not quite happy, probably will see more revision.

Depends a lot on how things go this weekend, but I am hoping I will have a new release ready by Monday or at least some point next week.

 

[Gravedust]

Whew. Quite a delay, but I'm back.

Progress has been going well, and I'm hoping to have the next release (calling it an Alpha, now) ready by this weekend.

In the meantime, Blue's Final-ish design:

And some new videos: ============================================

Spoiler

Demonstration of Blue's abilities on a longer level. Plus pleasing high-score tone.

Quick comparison of the two characters running the same level, and how each of them deals with the new 9-HP "Hulk" mobs. Play them both at the same time for extra fun.

================================================================

 

[Gravedust]

NEW VERSION RELEASED!
I'm calling it an Alpha this time, even though there is a lot to do in almost all areas.

DOWNLOAD HERE (Or use the link at the top, which will always point the the most recent version. )
[standalone .exe][windows] [~10Mb.]


CHANGELOG!

+ NEW LEVELS------------------------------------------------------------
- Promethean Hollow
- the First Archive
- Red Courtyard
- Shadow Channel

+ NEW CHARACTER (Blue/Cierynn)---------------------------------------------------------
The first of hopefully several alternate characters. Her abilities and playstyle are different from Red's in that she has very limited dashes, and needs a melee kill to regen them. Her melee will 1-shot most enemies, and has a very large hitbox, but also has a long cooldown, so good scores are dependent on using the melee to wipe out groups, and dashes to eliminate stray enemies or for positioning. If you miss both you are left defenseless for a time.

+ CHANGES TO RED/NELCHALEN--------------------------------------------------------------
Made a minor change to they way his dashes regen, previously the regen timer would be reset on a dash, now it ticks constantly. Basically makes more dashes available and makes him a bit easier to play.

+ NEW MOB TYPE---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hulk" mobs. Hulks are big and can survive more than one Dash, unlike most mobs. Intended to slow you down and eat up your dashes, you can keep your momentum by using lesser enemies to keep your dashes up. they have Blue Mob's weapon attack, so it is not very safe to stop near them, either.

+ IMPROVED GREEN MOB AI---------------------------------------------
They are now a bit more proactive about pursuing you and making sure they have clear lines of fire.

+ UPDATED UI------------------------------------------------------------
Score multiplier is emphasized more, time and score are now always visible but deemphasized until the end of the level. (Future versions will allow you to set the UI alpha as you like)
Score multiplier increases and decreases are now animated.

+ ADDED LIGHTING SETTINGS---------------------
You now have the option to turn off the the Aura lighting, in case it is causing slowdown. Most machines should be able to handle it fine, but if you are noticing slowdown, deactivating the lighting might help.

+ UPDATED SPRITES FOR GREY MOBS----------------------
New Idle, Active and Attack animations, new corpse sprites.

+ HIGH SCORE/TIME BOARDS ADDED FOR BOTH CHARACTERS
So you can compare your performance between characters.

+ START MENU ADDED-------------------------------------------------------
Includes character select, high scores, options, general info and sound/music credits.

+ MUSIC ADDED--------------------------------------------------------------
Just one track in order to keep the filesize down. Good 'ol Kevin, of course.
I am working on some tracks of my own, but I have a long road before I reach any sort of competency.

+ SOUND OPTIONS ADDED------------------------------------------------
Don't like the sound or music? Now you can turn either down or off.
...I'm sorry, I did not get around to changing out the vanilla mob pain sounds. -_- Next time!!!


As always, your feedback is hugely appreciated.

 

[MunchytheFox]

Just had a run through, omg it's quite hard but it's such an amazing thrill dying, repeating, dying until you finish a really challenging level and you see all the points and blood/bodies around you really slick Hotline Miami experience!

Just a few notes I jotted down when playing:
-Nice you programmed an intro screen with options, I still don't know how to do that yet.
- Nice fast paced gameplay, quite polished.
- Is the grimy, non-descriptive industrial interiors what you want in the end? Reminds me of old flash games/movies I used to love as a kid/early teenager like Madness Combat, Xiao xiao, Killstick etc.
- Love the character designs! Bummer how top down perspective means you can't really see them in gameplay but them rushing around like madmen is amazing.
- Love the ringing sound after completing a level
- Really nicely skill based.
- Is there any health-based mechanics? If I'm getting this right, it seems like the number of slashes I can do replenishes a bit after killing people? Which means, instead of racking up high combos by killing multiple people at once in one sweep, I feel safer drawing people out and taking them out one by one. Is there any chance for a little bit of health to be gained back after a certain amount of kills? Then again if you want the highly lethal gameplay like Hotline Miami or similar then maybe keep how the health works atm, it certainly means that I can't get through the crazy levels in one go which means I won't be breezing through the game. Bit of a hard topic here in terms of game balance.
- Tried to take a screenshot but couldn't in full-screen mode but alt-enter crashes the game?

Amazing stuff, keep up the good work

 

[Gravedust]

Heya, thanks for the feedback. I've kind of let this one slide off the front burner, but responses are still pretty invaluable.

Let's seeeee,

> Nice you programmed an intro screen with options, I still don't know how to do that yet.

Menu screens aren't too difficult to code, just a bit time consuming to figure out if you've never done one before. The version I use most often basically just runs off an array, I can give you the cliffs notes' version of a simple one if you're interested, or I'm sure there are plenty of tutorials about them.

> Is the grimy, non-descriptive industrial interiors what you want in the end?

Not quite... The backgrounds were built from a tileset I did for a previous game and used because I had it laying around and it fit the grid size I was using:

Spoiler

If/when the game mechanics are nailed down securely I would definitely create a ton of level assets and add a lot of things to properly define the spaces and support the plot when there is one. In all honesty I haven't worked out the setting or aesthetic I want just yet, though it probably won't be overly cheerful in any case. -_-

> Is there any health-based mechanics?
You're basically meant to complete the level on the amount of health you have. (you can even think of health as the number of 'mistakes' you can make and still pass the level) If I do implement a health regeneration it will probably be as a character mechanic for someone.

The demo is pretty difficult, I wanted to go from a gradient from the easiest it can be to about as hard as I intend to make it, (It usually takes me more than one try to do any of the last three levels, and I've played quite a lot, obviously. >.>) but I don't have very many rooms to fill out that gradient with, so the difficulty spikes a lot faster than I would ordinarily like it.

I do want to mention that the dashes don't work quite the way it appears you think they do; for Red, the dashes regenerate automatically, but he also gains a dash instantly whenever he kills anyone with one, meaning as long as he keeps hitting people he can keep dashing indefinitely. (or put a different way, you only lose a dash if you don't kill someone with it)

Blue is a bit different, she only gets 2 dashes and they do not regenerate naturally. But both are restored when she gets a kill with her regular sword swing. Her sword is really slow (in terms of time between swings) but will one-shot most enemies and works very well against multiple close enemies.

I really ought to do a better job of explaining and demonstrating the mechanics in the game since they're extremely important but not very obvious. -_- I will stick an optional tutorial in there before the next version.

Anyway, the scoring is meant to encourage a fast, aggressive playstyle, and the dash system tries to accommodate this by letting you to keep your momentum (since dashes are both attack and movement) as long as you don't make any mistakes. I did try to make it possible for a slower and more deliberate playstyle to work as well so people could make progress even if they don't yet have the clicky-click skills needed to beat the levels really quickly can still get by at least some of them by doing the divide and conquer strategy you seem to have figured out. But the higher than normal difficulty curve of the demo will probably brickwall some if not most people at some point regardless. If I can ask, what level did you make it to?

> Tried to take a screenshot but couldn't in full-screen mode but alt-enter crashes the game?
Uh oh. I'll have to have a look at that, thanks for mentioning.

Thank you very much for your input! Hope you had an enjoyable time playing.

 

[Gamerev147]

This is quite the game! It appears very solid just from the screenshots.
I played it and I was right! The game is very solid and it feels very good to play.

The only things I recommend:

• Add some effects! Add huge blood squirts and particles to give the game a better feel.
• I got stuck in the wall somehow on the second level... It only happened once but you might want to check that out.
• Make a distinct difference between the enemy "dead" sprites and the player's dead sprite. I couldn't really tell if I was dead or not...
• Upgrade the graphics a bit.... Kinda... meh

Great game though... I played it for 20 minutes or so and never got bored with it. Good luck!

 

[Ankokushin]

Hey, well done. Great art and very fluid, pleasant gameplay. The small levels are a good choice too, since the level of concentration for continuous fast movement is very high and the player needs breaks. Personally, I wish you would have chosen to show the in-game characters from their side (like this)

rather than directly from above (kind of like you did)

, for the player to be able to really see your art, instead of just seeing the heads and arms moving around. I understand that this model increases precision on player movement, since he will not be bothered with the depth, but it is a shame, really, because the player is missing on very good art. Anyway, I´ll be waiting to learn more about the game story. Good work so far!

 

[Gravedust]

Thanks both of you.

The art should definitely see changes and improvement as things progress. At the moment the game is still mostly a prototype, so I reuse assets about as much as I can (enemy types are almost all recolors, for instance, and most of the tileset comes from a previous project) The plan is to gradually replace all this placeholder art with original work made specifically for this project. But for now I am concentrating mostly on gameplay. Very happy that people seem to like it so far.

 

[jonjons]

Ive just played the demo
The menus are really good along with the character selection and the music is great.
Frist instinct it came up to my mind when i started playing was ( ninja + shadows = stealth ), it could be easy to make some shadows that hide the player from the enemies ?!
i cant really comment on the gameplay, controls, enemy A.I, etc... because iam not really an expert, but everything seemed ok.

One thing that it seemed out of place was that the player was always doing the same thing in all the levels ( kill enemies )... i could think of a way to start the game were the player is unarmed and has to find the sword... other missions were he has to kill the shogun without raising any alarms. However this missions should be relatively easy, failing the mission and restarting the mission over and over again could kill the gameplay. But i think these are more advanced things to do when the prototype is finished .

My opinion would be focusing more on stealth - killing enemies trow thin walls ( wodden doors ), whistle ( fffuui, fffuui, come here BOOM stealth kill ) , maybe maximum stealth points to use in a level... the rest should be relatively easy ( level traps, open door, close door )

the characters on the main menu seemed to be really good, doing the same now on the gameplay could make you lose focus on small details and make it harder to add mechanical gameplay and A.I. ( however it can be very tedious to work on a game and not improve the visuals for a long period of time )

 

[Gravedust]

Hey, thanks for taking a look!

The game's focus at the moment is purely on combat-centric twitch reflex sort of play, which I'd like to stick with as the primary mode of play. I have given some thought to incorporating some stealth elements, and to explore that space I would probably introduce a new character whose skillset made direct combat less survivable and encourages catching enemies unaware one at a time, and keep the aggressive playstyle of the other characters intact.

Interestingly, the current dash mechanic essentially blinks you to your end location (as far as the AI are concerned), so you can zip across enemy sightlines without them seeing you, as long as you are out of their view at the destination. So I would probably experiment with that feature some, to try to make players focus on creative movement and dash use to stay out of the view of the enemy, in keeping with the fast pace that the game tries to encourage.