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Sudden Darkness: Samurai’s Ascension's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Game Design | #347 | 3.325 | 3.325 |
| Fun | #367 | 3.275 | 3.275 |
| Audio | #432 | 3.125 | 3.125 |
| Overall | #560 | 3.013 | 3.013 |
| Graphics | #596 | 3.125 | 3.125 |
| Innovation | #607 | 2.800 | 2.800 |
| Theme | #901 | 2.425 | 2.425 |
Ranked from 40 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
I believe my game fits the theme "Calm before the storm", because it is about a samurai who is undergoing training on a regular day, when suddenly his city's power shuts down because of an evil scientist using all the electricity to power up his army of killer robots. I implemented the theme in a metaphorical sense where everything was normal, until it suddenly went downhill.
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
Everything was made by me except for the sound effects.
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Comments
The visuals are well made with very nice animations, the audio is superb with the composed music going hard along with good sound effect selection. The gameplay is hard yet fun with movement, jumping, and attacking that feel very smooth and responsive. Dashing is a nice addition, though can be a bit finicky trying to dash upwards. Nonetheless, solid game 👍
Thank you for your comment and input on the dash! I'll try to work on it so it can feel smoother for future projects.
[EDIT: Played the Windows build. Your mileage may vary.]
It felt like I got a floppy from a friend with a game, put it on my Amiga, turned it on, and got this unique vibe. Tracker music, hand-crafted art, and a good challenge to boot.
Problem is, I suck at platformers. I suck at games overall, but more specifically at platformers. Specially those that have more challenging techniques like dashing. I felt like I was trying to play Through The Fire And The Flames on Guitar Hero and just kept on crashing onto. the. same. wall.
over. and. over.
Until it clicked. Then I felt unbeatable. The patterns were easy to understand, a bit harder to master. Then I was playing Smells Like Teen Spirit.
And the simile with playing guitar is no joke. I was chording the dash like I was playing a chord on an instrument. And I think this is kind of the thing with the controls. It has huuuuuuuuge Celeste vibes to them. And for me, a filthy casual without the muscle memory for these games… if it werent that I stuck with it a minute further I would’ve just said 0/10 it sucks.
Don’t give up. You’re gonna miss it.
The theme though… ok maybe I’m gonna interpret it more abstractly, but it felt like the inverse. The storm was the rage I had trying to play it, the calm was breezing through the levels having ascended into learning the ways of the Samurai.
please make the second pillar on the tutorial a tad shorter. That would’ve saved me a lot of anger.
I have a soft spot for this kind of game since I want to make a ninja game as well sorta in this vein. The dash is sorta finicky how it locks you out if you jump forward, it took me a good amount of attempts to get across the ledge in the starting area. The game does a decent job presenting new puzzles to go through. I would've liked to have heard sfx on the robots, footsteps, the bullets, etc. It looks like you created the music so good job on that! Much respect making this all yourself.
Thanks for your comment. I'll try to work on the dash to make the movement more fluid. It seems quite a few people got stuck on the beginning, so I feel like I could have done more to make the movement more friendly to a newcomer. Unfortunately, the sound effects were kind of done last minute and I didn't have the time to add them for the robots. I'm glad you liked the level design and the music! Thanks for playing!
I found the blue shooting robots really hard to kill (skill issue i think), so I just dodged all their bullets and went up the floors. Also the controls were a bit hard to get used to. Other than that pretty cool game. Oh and stormy night hehehehehehe
Very smart interpretation on the theme. I did struggle with some of the controls, but when I got into the swing of things, it became very rewarding. I especially enjoyed killing the gun enemies :P
I didn't quite understand if the green enemies actually could kill you, because I cut them down immediately.
There's a weird inconsistency between how fast you strike an enemy and their very slow death animation, maybe them disappearing immediately in a puff of blood/smoke would be more fitting.
Yeahh, I couldn't perfect the AI of the green robots. When you get right in front of them, they charge back and attack you but it doesn't kill in one hit like the blue robots' bullets do. Because of this, I kind of just left the green robots there to give players the satisfaction of killing them, and designed the difficulty around the levels based on the blue robots.
I also agree with the slow death animation. I'm pretty inexperienced with animating, so I went with something simple (like the robots' helmet turning red then grey implying they power up). It sounded like a good idea to me in theory, but in practice it kind of takes away from the fast paced gameplay which I want. Having the robots disappear and there being a cloud of smoke did not occur to me, I LOVE that idea. I will be learning more about particles and effects in hopes of doing something like that in the future. Thanks for playing and for giving your feedback!
A fun game, very reminiscent of katana ZERO, in the best way. The combat was good, and the level design had me thinking about how to approach each encounter. My suggestion would be to make the controls a little more intuitive, its hard to dash whilst moving.
Glad you liked the combat and that the level design does what I wanted it to do! I'll try to work on the movement. If you have any suggestions, please let me know :)
Great job! That was really well put together. The pacing of the combat was great. It was very straight forward in a good way. The music worked well with it. My only suggestion would be to add a couple more sound effects to give the hits more impact (something we needed to do as well lol).
Glad you liked the combat and the music! I agree with what you said about sound effects. I kind of had to rush them on the last day, and could not learn how to cycle between different sound effects in time for submission. It definitely would have helped make the game feel more interactive!
I liked the art and the sound, the controls were really tricky compared to what I would expect for this type of platformer. The concept is solid. I'm not sure that I really see the theme being applied in the game itself. Despite my difficulty with the controls I still had fun playing it, so good job and thanks for the game!
Yeah, I'll try to learn how to let player change control keybinds. I've gotten a lot of comments related to the player input. I just used the ones from hollow knight and hoped for the best, but they obviously can't satisfy everyone. You're right about the theme. My idea was to have a small intro of the game of a samurai training in a dojo (this would be like the tutorial replacement that I currently have), and then have him go outside and have the lights turn off implying that someone stole all the electricity to power up the killer robots. Unfortunately, because I'm not that efficient with making art, I didn't have time to make a tileset for a dojo, and couldn't enhance the transition of the metaphorical "calm before the storm." Despite the flaws, I'm happy that you had fun playing my game!!
Really solid game, the art is great and it plays quite well. I agree that the controls are tricky to use but that's an easy fix!
With just a little more polish this game could be one of the best! Great work!
Glad you liked the art! Thanks for playing.
Considering you made almost everything yourself and this being your first jam I'd say this is pretty good! Though, gameplay could use some polish, and the button placement was hard to get used to. (I'm more of a J - Attack K - Jump person myself)
But, this game is quite fun! I geniunely wanted to beat this game, and I did it. It was a short and enjoyable experience.
Well done!
I agree that the game could use more polishing! Mainly by making the dash more fluid and the attack feel lighter. There's also some other quality features like a proper background, which I couldn't implement given the week long time frame. As for the controls, I've received a lot of criticism on them. I myself use an unusual set of controls for platformers, and I changed the input settings to match the base ones used in hollow knight, which I saw quite a few people use. However, since it's common for people to use different keybinds in platformers I can't satisfy everyone. If I had the time to learn how to let the player set their own keybinds, I definitely would have. I'm glad that the game kept you hooked, and that you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing!
I like the idea but the implementation isnt quite there. the buttons to attack and dash are terribly placed. Using the mouse to attack, shit to dash would go very well with wasd and space to jump. You could also make that the dash also count as a sword attack or that the dash allow to go through bullets because that blue guy shooting is near impossible to kill because of how fast he shoots
Dashing around was really fun! Good stuff :)
This can become something incredible like Katana Zero with some more work, the only thing it's missing is the "feel", which is very vague and hard to do, so can't really knock for points for that. Great job!
Controls were a bit hard to master on keyboard. Dash was a good addition. Good work.
struggled with movement. until i switched to controller where it felt perfect. definitely felt the katana zero in this game
Really cool you were able to finish a game, there's enough content for a jam.
I'm very used to controls like Celeste where C is for Jumping and X is for dashing so i was getting very confused here and there but managed to get a hold of it.
Great job and keep up the good work!
I actually play celeste too, but my binds are different from the default ones, and are considered to be quite unusual. For the controls of my game, I looked up what common bindings were for celeste and hollow knight players, and incorporated those into my game. I hope it wasn't too hard to get used to! If I knew how, I would have implemented a way to change key bindings. Thanks for playing!
Very nice first project. I believe you can continue to make some really cool stuff in the future! I liked the movement quite a lot, and the overall atmosphere with the music was very well done. Some feedback I could give would be definitely to make the slash more impactful. You can do this by making the smear way more pronounced and having more recovery frames rather than having a lot of start up, as in game it did feel quite awkward and heavy (slash should be earlier basically lmao). Apart from that, I think a background, however basic would've been a nice addition instead of navy blue throughout. I also wish I could hit the bullets with my sword haha. Would've made the blue guys a lot less of a pain to deal with. Overall, very nice and well done! Was pretty fun :D
Thanks for the comment and your feedback! I also felt at first that the slash took too long to wind up, but I never had the idea of shortening it and adding recovery frames after, which definitely would have felt more like the way I originally wanted it to. I did want to have a proper background, but I still don't have enough experience in art and programming to put in the same amount of work in the 2 areas, meaning I had to put more effort into coding to actually get the game done. When I originally planned out my game, I was actually thinking of making a block/parry mechanic for the bullets! However, I had to shorten my scope in order to finish the game in a week. Thanks again for playing, your feedback is really beneficial!
The music was really good and set the ambience very well. I really didn't like the controls being on ZXC, but thats my preference. I made it past the second jump and through most of the game until the last level where the blue guy was being funny. Overall, pretty solid game and especially since it's your first.
Happy to hear you liked the music! Thanks for the feedback. I implemented arrow keys and WASD controls with general key bindings of platformers, but of course not everyone is comfortable with using them. Thanks for the words of encouragement!
Hack and Slash Ninja action
1. The movement feels good, I like the jump plus dash, it was tricky to get used to at first but after i mastered it, it was fun. I played with WASD + JKL. I played the game always wanting the K to be the Jump and the J to be the attack because the the key proximity to dash. Maybe I'm the only one.
2. I liked slashing the enemy green dudes, but the blue guys gave me some trouble, I couldnt get passed one of the blue guys who kept me pinned down with shots. The green dudes also stay around even after dead which blocks my path
3. Music is banging
4. The main character sprite work is good and he has good animation and movement
Glad you liked the movement! I wouldn't say you are alone with the key bindings, as it is VERY common for people to have different controls for platforming games. If I'm being honest, I actually use a different set of key bindings when I play platformers, and just changed them to the ones used here when exporting because they are considered to be more regular.
The green robots were kind of just there to give players the satisfaction of killing them. This is mainly because I couldn't perfect their AI so they are not as threatening. I think you're referring to the level with the 2 ramps, which requires you be standing near the top of the first ramp, and then run and dash once a bullet goes behind you so you can make it to the downwards ramp before the blue robot shoots again. I tended to use more blue robots to make the game feel challenging, so I understand if that was causing you trouble. Thanks for your feedback on the death timer. I also think it might be nicer to make the death animation a little shorter so you don't feel like you have to wait to get past some areas.
Glad you liked the music and the sprite work!
Would love to be able to dash through the blue man bullets, would be very fun!
That idea never even crossed my mind! I will definitely try to implement that as a feature on a future project.