Samurai Slash

Inspiration

The concept for Samurai Slash was born from my love for fast-paced games, with a particular game Warframe taking a unique "hack and slash" take on the genre, which I adore. After receiving the theme of "A Twist on a Classic", I immediately though of how cool it would be to translate the core elements of the game that I find most enjoyable into a 2D setting with a completely different vibe (in this case, Warframe is very futuristic, but my game is set in a traditional Japanese nature setting, across Japan)

What it does

Samurai Slash is a 2D action game where you play as a lone samurai facing waves of enemy samurai. Utilise movement, timing and patience to avoid, attack and adapt as the intensity of the onslaught increases. See how long you can survive for!

How we built it

I built the game using Godot and GDScript. Due to working as a solo developer (and my AWFUL art skills) I got my hands on a Japanese asset pack that really gave me a good theme to go at. My goal was always to use pixel art because I adore the art style, it really brings me back to my childhood when I would play Pokemon Black and White daily!

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was understanding the best practices early. In early builds of the game I used a single player script and a single enemy script with an enum to handle states thinking it would be fine for a project with movement, dashing and combat... it was not! At one point I had to spend a couple days solely focused on refactoring the entire project to work with StateMachines, which, as a beginner to Godot, was A LOT! Once I finally got it done I was so happy with myself.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is a very minor feature but I'm really proud of the combo system for player strikes, it makes attacking look so much smoother (to me atleast). Also, I'm quite happy with the movement, dashing and jumping feels genuinely fun to me.

What we learned

I learned LOADS about Godot in the 2 weeks, as someone with an introductory level experience in Unity and a project built in Defold for my A-Levels, using Godot felt like a refreshing blend of the two and I can see myself using it going forward (especially if I enjoy the 3D side of it in projects going forward). I also learned a lot about scoping properly. The game jam sort of made me adopt the perspective that you should build so that what you have is solid, but can be built on, that's the approach that I have aimed to take here. There's so much more I wanted to add (more mission types, more characters with different abilities and playstyles, more enemies, improved gameplay etc.), but due to a mix of a somewhat short deadline and a perfectly timed sickness I had to pull back a lot on what I did - still I am pretty satisfied with what I made.

What's next for Samurai Slash

I may explore adding more mission types, more characters and more enemies whilst improving the current systems in the game. I'm mostly excited at the prospect of more playable characters, I had this idea for the entire game jam of a more bulky, harder-hitting character that you can play as, with the draw back that the character cannot dash (restricting movement for damage), and at some point I'd love to add that.