Really like the music, goes well with the visual style, and as soeone else pointed out, it really feels like a cowboy bepop fight scene. Might have been nice to make the adaptive music more obvious, maybe with a more dramatic transition in the boss fight, but it was smoothly done

Really groovy stuff! I love it, completed in three tries. The music and pixel animations are great but I would say the controls and movement feels a bit wonky, especially when attacking and dodging which makes the character freeze. Would love to see more :D

Great controls, gameplay and animation. Music is awesome and adapts well. Reminds me of this :)

Wow. So far, this has one of the more sophisticated compositions and dynamic music systems I’ve seen from submissions to this Jam!! My only concern is that its subtlety may be lost on the casual player.

Like any great O.S.T., this work supports the action subtly, so as never to distract you from the gameplay. The transitions are so seamless and natural that many players won’t even acknowledge their own influence over the environment. In order to fully gauge this influence, one must experiment by running around for a bit without attacking. Given the fast-paced combat, surviving such an experiment is no mean feat, and seasoned survivors of the genre may forego that enterprise altogether. Thankfully: I’ll enlighten them here as to what is going on.

We open with an unmistakably jazzy drum and bass ostinato reminiscent of a Yoko Kanno soundtrack for Cowboy Bebop. This loops seamlessly, ad nauseum, until the first enemy has been dispatched. Only once more appear does a crisp drum fill segue into the main section with the horns cranking out the edgy urban jazz chords. Pay close attention to the angular piano riff that comes in later; it mounts in volume as more and more enemies are destroyed. If I’m not mistaken, also, the bass register gets a boost during the Boss Encounter. It’s wild, though I don’t blame you for keeping your eyes on the visuals instead of being seduced by the sounds at this moment; that final fight is brutal and will require your utmost visual concentration.

In terms of Gameplay, I had to penalize my score because of the difficulty spike alone. Fending off swordsmen and ninjas was fun enough, especially since many of them let me regenerate health points parasitically, but the Geisha at the end would slice and dice me until I got her stunned up against a wall. Thankfully, none of this is to the detriment of the Original Soundtrack, though it may be to the detriment of the casual player’s appreciation of it. I might have only suspected this to be Adaptive after a few attempts, had I not known in advance that this was a Jam Submission with Adaptive Music as its premise. As an Easter Egg, it’s one of those fine touches which fans of a Game would come back to for years to come, long after having completed the adventure. Its quality shines through.

Five Stars in Implementation and Audio.

[({R.G.)}]

Absolutely amazing stuff. Great art style, fluid controls, perfect audio. Exceptional stuff... and this is the first game I've tried in this game jam!