Happy Holidays! Last Patch of the Year!

As the year comes to a close, I want to take a moment to thank everyone for your continued support and enthusiasm for Swordai. It’s been an amazing journey developing this project alongside such an engaged and passionate community.

Whether you’re climbing the tower, perfecting your duels, or just enjoying the freeform modes, I hope Swordai brings you some fun and challenge this holiday season.

Wishing you all a joyful and relaxing holiday filled with warmth, good vibes, and plenty of victories—both in-game and in life. Here’s to an even better 2025 together!

Patch Notes

This week has seen a range of updates focused on refining combat mechanics, UI customization, and bug fixes. As always, your feedback continues to shape these improvements.

1. New Features and Updates

   • Soft Feint Toggle: Added a control setting to disable "Soft Feint." When off, starting a new attack immediately after releasing the current one won’t feint—it will do nothing instead.
   • Riposte Damage Reduction Overhaul:
     • Damage reduction is now continuously active after blocking an attack until the riposte window expires.
     • This simplifies the mechanic, ensuring consistency and better usability in 1vX situations while reducing spam effectiveness.
     • Tweaks were tested in Saturday duels and received positive feedback.
   • Rotatable and Repositionable Ability Hotbar: Players can now rotate and move their ability hotbar.
   • Enhanced Freeform Scoreboard: Added new stats, including attack accuracy, block accuracy, damage per attack, and more. These stats offer insights into individual performance and areas for improvement.
2. Partial Block Logic Rework:
   • Full blocks now require:
   • Correct block direction AND Either sword capsule interception OR facing the correct direction with block initiated at least 150ms ago (ping-adjusted)
   • This change reduces partial blocks due to high ping or attacks hitting odd hitboxes (e.g., feet) while maintaining partial blocks for back hits.
   • The goal is to favor consistent gameplay over hyper-realistic physics.
3. Kick Mechanics:
   • Cooldown increased from 3s to 8s but resets on a successful kick.
   • Kicking increases incoming damage by 10.

4. Combat Adjustments

   • Combo Parry: Temporarily added to the pure loadout for further testing.
   • Combo Parry Shout Removal: Removed the shout effect to reduce confusion with Kiai and balance its already high difficulty.
   • Adjusted Overhead Swing: Added one additional frame to the "parryable only" phase.

5. UI and Quality of Life Improvements

   • Updated the Forgotten Knight area to make locating him easier.
   • Addressed targeting inconsistencies in the team deathmatch arena.

6. Bug Fixes

   • Fixed an issue where:
   • Alt-F4 spectators would drop loot on top of the spectated player.
   • NPCs could mistakenly target spectators.
   • Shatter ability would reset repeatedly.
   • Block trainers would stop attacking after accumulating 3+ stacks of Winter’s Chill.
   • Corrected client-side charge meter prediction for smoother operation under high ping.
   • Resolved a loadout requirements bug impacting specific cases, including rare scenarios involving S-grade Katas.
   
   

7. Developer Notes

   
   These updates aim to balance the gameplay experience by refining core mechanics while making the systems more intuitive. The riposte and partial block changes are especially important steps toward a smoother combat flow. I’ll be closely monitoring feedback from the upcoming playtests and matches.

As always, thank you for your feedback—it’s invaluable in shaping Swordai!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2321890/Swordai/