Man, i love this game!  It kinda feels like the NES version of Nioh. I don't know if you have ever played the original Ninja Gaiden Triology on NES but this game also reminds me of Ninja Gaiden especially in terms of gameplay. Like the enemies pop out of nowhere all of a sudden :) The boss fight is so Ninja Gaiden like. Btw you need to add a boss music and a health bar for the boss fight.

The art of the game is very good. I love the character, enemy and boss designs. The flame throwing lantern enemies were annoying but i like that every enemy has a week point. Oh man the kabuto crab samurai boss fight, i totally dig it's design. You even made a second phase for the boss i guess. After you damage it for a certain times, it starts a second attack, spraying water or something like that.

Gameplay mechanics. The high attack, low attack mechanic is a good touch, it adds some depth to combat. You need to do the right attack according to enemy's stance. I tried to the same thing in my game but  i think your implementation is much better. In the  current state of the game blocking is not very useful. I beat the whole game without blocking even once but i'm guessing that you will want to improve the combat mechanics further in the future so that it'll become more vital. Dropping the lantern into tall grass is a very nice touch. The fire spreads through the grass and burns down enemies. Cool delivery of enviromental weapon. I think it should give more damage to the enemies though and we don't get damage  when we walk in the burning grass, there should be a risk/reward aspect to it.  I think health replenishment should be handled in a different way, it makes the game a little easy. You can something like power ups. Checkpoints are good too but some people may like more challenge. You may conside placing less frequent checkpoints maybe in the final version of the game.

That's all i have to say right now. I'm gonna follow your itch.io account bcs i really like your style. Your team did a great job and i wish you make successful games in the future. Best of luck to you!

The environment and levels are gorgeous. I very much enjoyed the cinematic effects. The gameplay, and specifically the character controls, were a bit confusing to me and I had a few issues with the physics. I felt like I didn't have enough control of the character and the anticipation phase of enemies' attacks were a bit sudden. Despite of that, I think with a few numeric adjustments and some extra visual feedback, those issues would definitely go away.

One thing that was really nice was the indication from enemies as to where to defend and how to attack. I died lots of times at the beginning but when it finally clicked, it made a lot of sense and I started having a lot of fun. Also, the environmental attacks with the fire and all were a great touch.

This game is full of very interesting details. The butterflies, the blood mechanics, the crustacean boss, the ending, the pretty environment. I feel like this has lots of potential, good job!

Pretty moody, and nicely progressive ^^

What about adding some bounce back to player and ennemies on parrying? Or stun? It would introduce some risk/reward/impact ? 

Impressive for a jam project.

Lots of great little details here, neat art style. The grass slowing you down but being able to be slice it down was fun and then using it for an elemental attack  was super cool! It felt like there was a bit of slow down which took me out of it a bit and maybe an  extra checkpoint would have been nice to remedy some of the frustration from my fingers being confused but it was fun overall and really hits the Samurai brief. Also extra points for the butterfly!

Really awesome! The visuals were fantastic! I felt like the cleaning your blade was a really cool detail I would love to see way more, the samurai armies following you made me feel like I was in one of those japanese movies! great stuff! 

Fantastic game! the mechanics feel nice, the combat is pretty interesting, I was having a bit of hard time with defending and attacking my fingers would get confused, so many times i was attacking or defending wrong, maybe using the arrow keys for the attacks and defense and awsd for exclusive movement might be a good solution, but it was enjoyable all over, great art too! 

Visually, this is pretty good. I liked the overall aesthetics and the evil red crustacean samurais are cute. Gameplay wise, its kinda fun matching the right stance to beat the enemies and using space to heal is an interesting moveset that takes control of your gameplay slash mechanic and turn it into a sort of strategy type of move. 

However, the skill curve just isn't really in the cards for me. Playing this has made me realize that enemies comes in droves, sometimes I couldn't hit them right and the space to heal doesn't work somehow? The lantern enemies are egregious for spamming that beam thing that keeps sapping health so I wasn't able to parry that. They have a big health pool so its also kinda difficult for me to figure out how to beat them down. I'm not good at hack and slash games/beat em ups and I wasn't a huge fan of it to begin with so this just isn't really down for me to really enjoy as much.

Also lack of BGM and SFX is noticeable in areas, and audio mixing can be a bit loud and unstable with the slash.

That being said, the potential is there. As one of the commenters mentioned, improving the bells and whistles would net you a lot in terms of potential viability.

Really nice look to this game. Loved the concept of using the blood to recover your health and how the combat system worked too!

I like the simple nature of the game, but the commands were a bit difficult for me. My fingers just don't naturally fall on those keys so it felt like I was reaching for  the controls and mis-hitting buttons.  I feel it could have benefited from BG music too. Aside from that, it was SUPER fun!

I like the general concept and idea of the game and it is was fun to play. The art is really nice and consistent, but sadly suffers a little bit from sub-pixels and non pixel-perfectness from Unity. The controls feel a little bit floaty, and I think there might be better keys, e. g. UJIK are more vertically aligned than IJOK. I constantly pushed the wrong buttons.

The combat system in general is really cool nonetheless and is really satisfying. Enemies felt like they are taking turns on the attacks, so you could patiently wait, parry and then attack. Very cool!

Burning down the fields was also a really nice idea.

Very nice and fun entry overall, a little bit rough around the edges and could use some polish.

> Crustacean???
Crustacean!!!

This game has such a interesting combat sistem. The parry mechanics feels good and it gives u time to react and attack. Maybe the interface is not the best but I like the way it is, is not invasive :) Maybe with time this game could be on Steam haha luck! (Im sorry for the english)

Good ideas, like cutting off the lamps. There's even a boss. Work on sounds and tempo and it will be very good.