First Cut: Samurai Duel · published
Hello everyone, it's time for another update. This patch brings the game much closer to completion, and ideally it should be the last major patch before the final release update.
The 'Town' mission has been finished, and the patch also adds the 'Tunnel' and 'Mountain' stages.
The 'Town' stage is centered around a long stretch full of in-fighting enemies and the player will need to take advantage of the chaos to reach the end. It also adds civilian characters who will flee across the screen and bump into anyone in their way.
The 'Tunnel' stage is full of unique gimmicks and ambushes, and will test the player's reflexes and ability to deal with cross-ups.
The 'Mountain' stage is a final mission intended to test the player's skill in every way.
In addition to this the game now also has an optional combo and scoring system, and will give the player a ranking when moving screens or finishing a mission. I'm very happy with this system as it adds another optional layer of challenge to the game - trying to finish each mission quickly and maintain a large combo.
Survival Mode has also been revamped to use some of the systems from Scenario Mode. You can now pick which enemy team to fight, which will affect their fighting style and other gimmicks. The difficulty now reflects the overall enemy team, rather than each individual, so enemies will be easier to fight in groups but will gradually increase in skill as they spawn in. You can also choose to fight alongside an AI team-mate.
I've also been optimizing the game and have done a lot to make corpses less resource-intensive. It's now possible to maintain a solid framerate even with a huge pile of dead enemies at your feet. There's also an upper-limit to the blood now to prevent performance bottlenecking when too much is happening at once.
There are still areas I intend to improve before release, as well as continuing to balance the missions. I also have a lot of music to add to the game once I have finished mastering it. For now the later missions are silent but I will be incorporating music in the next update.
This update also adds a lot of new achievements, and I have begun to incorporate the Steam leaderboards for uploading player scores. This is still a work-in-progress and any uploaded scores will likely be wiped just before the actual release.
Oh also I added zombies.
Thanks for reading, not much longer now.
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Beta: 0.28
Gameplay Improvements & Changes:
Changing stance during the windup of a counter-attack is now faster, giving the player more options when using counters.
Turning during a counter attack now boosts movement speed, allowing the player to swap targets and gain distance from their original opponent.
Tapping a direction during a windup now gives a small speed boost.
If an enemy is killed while reacting, the enemy behind them will now cancel their own reaction to prevent a second cheap kill.
Adjusted enemy spawns in Scenario Mode. Certain enemies will only appear depending on the difficulty mode.
Enemies with Bleedout timers now scale based on difficulty.
The campfire is now much more lethal, and depletes with each swing.
Scenario Mode no longer automatically restarts on death. You can now hold a button to restart.
It is now possible to hit team-mates from behind if they are in the 'shoved' state. This makes the grab much more useful when surrounded.
Enemies will now flee when the bandit boss is killed.
Killing an enemy now lets you start running instantly. There is a slight speed increase for each combo kill.
Reworked Survival Mode to use the teams and difficulty settings from Scenario Mode. The default settings are easier at first but will increase in challenge over time.
Additional Content & Visual Changes:
The game now tracks player progress across Scenario Mode. Each mission chapter must be unlocked in order. This will remain disabled during the Beta for testing purposes.
The game now tracks stats for each mission in Scenario Mode, including each chapter.
Added score and ranking system for Scenario Mode.
Added 'Camouflage' to the Extras Menu. When used by the player it reduces enemy spotting distance and delays awareness of your position.
Added 'Zombies' to the Extras Menu. Can be applied to enemies or the player. Zombies must be beheaded, cut in half, or be struck with a charged blunt attack to die.
Added 'Civilian' type characters who will flee across the screen in some scenarios.
Added "tsujigiri" achievement.
Added "ronin" achievement.
Added 'whoops' achievement.
Added 'First Cut' achievement.
Added 'yatta' achievement.
Added 'typhoon' achievement.
Added "jigoku" and "yabai" achievements.
Added 'Mixed' AI style.
Added Tengu Mask.
Added enemies and bosses to the Town stage.
Added Tunnel and Mountain stages.
Added an optional AI companion to Survival Mode.
Added Shrine stage.
Bugfixes & UI Improvements:
Optimized the game. Corpses are now very light on resources even in large piles.
Fixed players not colliding properly on one side.
Fixed the legs moving too fast while running during certain actions.
Added the option to disable hitting corpses in Gameplay Options.
Added the option to disable auto-turn during Duels in Gameplay Options.
Fixed visual issue with tight sleeves.
Fixed match timer not resetting on rematch.
Adjusted camera to prevent movement flickering.
Added backward blocking to the tutorial.
Added counters to the tutorial.