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A jam submission

Lost KatanaView game page

Action platformer.
Submitted by Pentixel, Redgar, Luciano, Mr Union, coinbirdface (@coinbirdface) — 9 hours, 24 minutes before the deadline
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Lost Katana's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Visuals#24.5004.500
Audio#34.0004.000
Overall#93.6673.667
Fun Factor#133.3753.375
Originality#193.5003.500

Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Is your game a video game or a physical game?
Video game

Was your game made solo or in a team?
Pentixel - Programming, Redgar - Game Design, Luciano - Art & Animation, Mr Union - Music & Sound, Coinbirdface - Project Management

Did you use any third party assets, if yes what assets did you use?
None

Did you choose from one (or more) of the optional secondary themes?
Historical Events, Cinema

Does your game contain 18+ content (Nudity, Gore, Language)?
No

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Comments

Submitted

Loving the pixel art and character movement! The music is great too. the only thing I would improve is adding more feedback to the combat. Keep up the good work!

Submitted

Loved the pixel art on this! Visually well done. Really reminds me of Neo Geo / SNK games! Character movement felt pretty nice and cutting down trees to traverse across pits was a cool concept.  The music was also a straight banger! Props to the composer. 

 I noticed there was lack of a coyote time/input buffering,  making the jumps feel pretty stiff.  

Attacking felt a little off. The hitbox seems small and stubby compared to what is visually represented in the animation. I had to get close to register a hit. I believe adjusting the hitbox would make the game feel a lot better. Also adding a little a bit of combat feedback would be a nice touch to make it really pops!

Submitted

Nice pixel art musics. You need to fix the attack animation though. Slicing trees and towers are a cool mechanic. I keep getting stuck somewehere. There was a watch tower and spikes to the left of it. When the archer falls, he always kills me before i hit him and there's no checkpoint system so it keeps taking me to the beginning of the game. I got tired of it and quit playing after dying a few times. 

Anyway nice addition to the jam. Good job to the team and good luck

Submitted

Graphics were really nice and the trajectory of the arrows made me laugh. The bg music was sick and being able to slide massive object was so cool! I only wish I didn't go back to the beginning every time I died. Also some visual to show when an attack landed would be useful, I found myself spamming space bar to be sure. It hits the theme of 'samurai' really well, great stuff!

Submitted

Very nice story presentation in intro, stylish menu and fitting music.  Great visuals! I liked cutting trees mechanic and it was fun to make archers fall from towers. But overall gameplay turned out a little bit boring for me) 

Submitted (1 edit)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2054415951

Streamed this game today

Overall one of the stand outs of the jam. Great visuals, great mechanics with jumping and cutting down trees to forge paths.

For visuals, great opening cinematic, fantastic paralaxed buildings and landscapes in the background. Trees that have leaves that go transparent after being cut down.

The level layout is the biggest winner here. It's what someone could expect from a fully realised and released game, theres jumps to be made when getting attacked, trees to cut down when you're under enemy pressure and a variety of small puzzling that gets more and more challenging as you progress through the level. Art and animation is top notch. The run is purposeful, well animated and has lots of weight. 

Comments on what to improve as far as animation go might be a sword swing that's as dynamic as the run is.

My new guilty pleasure is knocking archers out of trees.

Look forward to any jams from you guys in the future.

Submitted

Lovely visuals and music, and the intro is great!

The chopping trees mechanics was very satisfying. The only minor issues I had were with the controls, and the game could use a little bit of forgiveness (like allowing for two hits before dying, or maybe implementing checkpoints, but to be honest? Maybe checkpoints would ruin the purpose of the game, considering the story and your goals). To be a bit more specific about controls, buffering inputs would help a lot, I think, to reduce the perception of missed inputs.

Nonetheless, the art is really great and has lots of personality, and the music really gets you going. Great use of parallax as well. The environment was impressive. Beautiful entry, great job there!

Submitted

Great Concept love the visuals! It took me a few tries but I am glad I finished it! Awesome overall and great intro cinematic.

Submitted

What a great game! The cinematics were so good  I was left speechless, I have to say the whole concept of using the trees was really cool! Great game overall! 

Submitted

That was crazy good! Only thing I wish was better would be the way the sword swings and the hitboxes, sometimes i couldn't see the arrow that was killing me. So cool tho! 

Submitted

Beautiful graphical work, banger ost, nice little level design and and okay combat system!

Enjoyed my time cutting through trees and tower, my only wish is a little bit more nuanced combat system, that would just elevate the whole project! Don’t get me wrong even now it is enjoyable, it is just something to think about if you are planning for future work!

Really solid jam entry!

Submitted(+1)

Really awesome presentation! I was very impressed with both visuals and sound. Having a full-blown cutscene at the start was super cool too! The game lived up to the promise I saw in the preview - I will chop down that tower and make them rue the day they captured me and left me unattended in their camp!

To get into some chunkier feedback: The gameplay had plenty of positives, but overall I didn't feel too deeply engaged during play. Chopping down objects was fun to look at and visually satisfying, but I didn't feel much push or pull to engage with it from a mechanics perspective. Most obstacles didn't offer too much decision-making - chop the trees when they present themselves, jump over obstacles, and enemies were both (mostly) safe to ignore and simple to dispatch if not. 

I don't think that a game's gotta be chock-full of complicated moments and decisions, but some mechanical tension (having a couple game elements that offer conflicting threats & incentives) does a lot to get me engaged. 

I thought the archer in the tower near a tree was a nice moment like that - ignoring the tower meant I was in danger of getting shot while caught in my sword-swing animation. Chopping down the tower meant I could attack them, but it also meant their angle would be poor enough that I could safely run past. Or, when I was really optimizing, I could just stutter my movement slightly to bait the shot early and then run past to the chopping tree.

It was a fun little puzzle for me to play around with, and I'm glad it was in the game!

A different angle of engagement could be having a flow that's satisfying to execute, and I think there were some moments like that in the game for me:

  • The spot where you run across gaps down a slope and then get caught by the start of the broken bridge was cool, it was satisfying to recognize I could just hold right and press jump and the end while looking dangerous and death-defying
  • Similarly, jumping across the broken bridge over the shallow spike pit felt cool too. It felt good to time my jump with when I caught the edge of the bridge, and the way it held me at the edge meant I wasn't actually in terrible danger.

I think the fact that the character has to stop to perform the sword swing makes sense from a practical perspective (it's a simpler state to manage and you don't have to animate a running swing and a standing swing) but it does hamper that flowing feeling for me. The animation itself is really nice, but the feeling of my movement seizing up on ground and air made me feel like I wanted to avoid using it whenever possible.

The "chop trees to cross gaps" thing caused similar kinds of flow-interruptions for me. The look of it is very nice (and the implementation details behind the scene are equally cool, I bet!) but the fact that I couldn't jump forward into the trees easily before chopping, had to stop to chop, then wait for the tree to drop meant every tree represented a chunk of downtime.

Not that the downtime has to be bad - it led to the cool moment with the tower for me - but I feel like it's a bit at odds with the idea of a flowing movement game as-is.

Sorry for rambling on for so long. I definitely want to emphasize that I was very impressed with your game and thought you did a great job!

Balancing time during a game jam is a difficult thing. Deciding where to invest your time is important, and I think you did a great job of make a cohesive game with some cool features and really above-and-beyond presentation.

Submitted

The music is good, I liked how you used the koto at the intro,  and the gameplay music loopswell and fits with the pace of the game. The visuals are pretty good, The character moved a bit too fast so it was a litte hard to control him, and also there was a delay in the deaths, i think adding a visual effect or sfx for the sword hits would improve the game feel. Congratulations, it's a great game.

Submitted

Very beautiful!

Submitted

Really cool ! Visuals was so good and the story and cinematic aspect was really well done. 

Host

This game was awesome, loved how cinematic it was. The idea of cutting down trees to use as platforms works really well too.

Submitted

There's something very satisfying about that swing. Maybe it's the sprite's stance. I really like the idea of slicing through all obstacles and would have loved to play more.

Submitted(+1)

Aesthetically, this game is very good. It had fluid movement (Though it lacks some sort of punch to its impact) and animation and the intro cutscene is very crisp. It gets you to the action pretty decently. The controls are a bit clunky and I died too many times because I'm not good at platforming, but otherwise with enough polish in effects this could be the makings of a real samurai hack and slash run.

Submitted(+1)

So much beautiful artwork, love the feeling of the movement. Great game!