It just works. Good fun game that's scoped very well for a mini jam and strikes a good balance with the difficulty. I love the aesthetics; the art style gives off great Souls like vibes, and the Japanese styling is a fantastic touch. Reminds me of the show Samurai Jack for some reason.
Play game
Zenkai's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #20 | 3.625 | 3.625 |
| Use of the Limitation | #22 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Enjoyment | #24 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Concept | #27 | 3.643 | 3.643 |
| Presentation | #27 | 3.857 | 3.857 |
Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Team members
@deathbydisorder17 - Music and sound, @trusty1 - Animation and art, @gilga4907 - UI and Flow, @cshadie - Main loop programming, animation and art, sound.
Software used
Unity, Aseprite, FL Studio, Audacity.
Use of the limitation
The main boss is absurdly overpowered.
Cookies eaten
2
Comments
Short, but for the 1 run i played was pretty fun and addicting!
By the way, my game crashed at a certain point..
Submitted
Polygon ProtocolReally loved the pixel art and the dark atmosphere, it looks great. The boss fight is fun, and the parry mechanic feels really good. Pulling off a successful parry honestly made me feel like a badass. The music and sound effects fit perfectly and add a lot to the intensity of the fight. Awesome job!
Submitted
Super Cute Slime AttackVery cool! Love the grimy artwork and animations, they look great. I know you had to submit it late but its still very impressive that you managed to get this all done!
I am terrible at parrying style games so I appreciated the ability to set the difficulty by grinding it out a bit hah. I wonder if it would be helpful have a counter for how many attempts have been made so far, so that really skiled players could have bragging rights about doing it in one round or something haha.
That being said, if that were the case, then I think the player would have to do a bit more base damage, or have some kind of extreme special attack (maybe like you have currently with increased damage after a parry, but one that stacks over consecutive parries?) This attack would allow the player to essential one tap the enemy if they successfully parried a ton of times without having to die first to increase their base or parry damage.
All in all, great work, congrats on getting it over the finish line.
Submitted
RIDICULOUS POWERWe really do love numbers going up (or down in this case). I'm a little concerned about scaling like that, because of the effect it would have on those that struggle and get to the higher levels of stats, if they pull off two parries for instance, even at the lower exponential level, it would have a HUGE impact when their base stats are that high already. It's an amazing idea, I'll definitely explore how the balance of such a mechanic would work, thanks for you feedback!
(I've added a bunch of statistics at the end anyway)
Lovely vibe, graphics and gameplay. I played until I could beat the boss - lovely touch with the parry with extra bonus on the next attack. Great work man, very enjoyable and polished game
Submitted
🦡 Badger Defenders 🪨This made in 72 hours is very impressive, i feel like this is an awesome base for a metroidvania
Submitted
It takes only one ARMThe art is beautiful, music and sfx are awesome too, and the mechanics are feel poolished. In fact, a very good entry for this jam
Submitted
God Is OnlineReally interesting used of limitation here. I like that you have a sense of progression and that by failing you improve - it made dying feel like a step forwards, not backwards. My only worry was how much health I had left, but honestly it wasn't huge flaw as I just played on the assumption that I had far less health than the enemy. Interesting game, well done!
Submitted
OverclockedKind of nice to see an overpowered theme where the power lies in the opponent! The death loop is a great idea and builds on a cycle of continually building upgrades that I enjoyed. It is, to be fair, a little easy to cheese this by intentionally dying over and over until you become powerful enough, but the idea is there and it works pretty well. Also good to see combat where parrying is a must. Great work!
Submitted
DICEBREAKERThank you! Glad you enjoyed! That was actually exploited very heavily during development for testing purposed, but I couldn't really find a way to keep it balanced for the lesser capable. For instance we have player A, he's a GAMER, and we have player B who's really good at something other than games - Adding a restriction like that would exclusively punish player B who's by default having a worse time, where player A doesn't even know about it. I hope you see the reasoning, and thank you for your feedback!
Really enjoyable and overflowing with style! Like seriously, I love the aesthetic and the art is superb.
Honestly only a couple of things are holding this game back in my opinion. Here are some suggestions that I think would make for a more fulfilling experience:
Make it so that simply touching the boss does NOT hurt you, early on I thought its attack was triggering a jank hitbox until I realized I was dying cuz I barely touched it. I'm sure this was implemented to make one pay attention to their spacing, but it felt more unfair than anything.
The previous issue wouldn't be as bad with my next two suggestions if you wanted to keep the damage on touch. Firstly, make it so that the player character is always facing the boss, there's no utility in turning away from the enemy and makes it harder to space your attacks (also, it wouldn't make sense in a real combat scenario to turn your back on the enemy, which is more of a nitpick since it's a video game but seems appropriate for this type of game).
The other suggestion that could alleviate my first issue is to make the player's attacks more consistent, or more visually telling of why I missed. I had several times where it just seemed like I was raising my sword but not attacking. I'm assuming it's a spacing issue but maybe I just don't know how the controls actually work? If so that's my bad.
Maybe a small indication of how much health you have left?
Loved this one, excellent job!
Submitted
Death CrabThank you! That's a huge compliment, to address your points, I see where you're coming from about the contact damage, it does suck, but it is quite necessary in games like these, otherwise it introduces too much cheese, and the way the boss movement is designed, he will never touch you on purpose, you need to walk into him. I do think I could've improved the logic to make him ebb and flow towards and away from you to make it less likely to walk straight into him. That was actually how it worked during development, but it made it feel very robotic, especially with high movement. I do agree with you on the attack response though, it's currently bugged where you can animation cancel your attacks into the next one, which is what I think you were experiencing, thanks for that, fix is on the way. And yes, definitely an oversight on the health thing. Thank you for your feedback, glad you enjoyed!
Animation canceling, that makes sense. I tend to spam my attack button lol.
I agree that something should discourage getting right on top of your opponent, and contact damage works, but doesn't necessarily need to be the solution. For example, could be a quick kick that has high knockback and stun.
I still think making your character always facing your opponenet could help alleviate getting too close on accident, because you won't have to walk towards your opponent in order for your attack to be aimed in the correct direction.
Something else I thought of that could help is to make movement have acceleration. Doesnt have to be alot, just enough to not be 0 to 100 in one frame. Especially when your speed stat is higher, having a few frames where you're not at max speed could be helpful for micro adjusting your spacing.
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