Unable to launch the game as there is no love.dll file. Shame, as I thought this game looked dope.
Viewing post in Craven Edge: Samurai Blade jam comments
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-rMIXX92MeElpm1Q3CbOEKxCcHbVSzUK
Sorry for the inconvenience! The file you need is in this Drive link. Please let me know if you have any more issues!
(Alternatively, re-downloading the game should also work now!)
Thanks! I guess it would be common courtesy for me to actually give you a proper review now!
The game looks stunning, with the graphics really delivering on that consistency in colour palette, pixel size, and theme. Really feels proper to a professional level. Unfortunately (for me), I was alone in my flat when I tested this game, meaning that I didn't get the full experience of fighting another player one-to-one, but I'll do my best to summarize my thoughts here regardless.
The simple controls reflect that rock-paper-scissor vibe that most fighting games have, with the attack-deflect synergy. I would have liked to seen that being fully implemented, switching the deflect for maybe a counter and making it so the counter could be overcome by something like a grapple. Now, maybe I'm wrong here and the system you have in place works a lot better than what I'm proposing, and I'm just unable to properly test it. If that is the case, disregard this last paragraph!
In general, I have a hard time to put into words what makes this game feel professionally made, but I think I could summarize it all by saying "Juice". This game feels like it has been juiced to bits, to get everything feel more impactful, such as the small shake the samurais go through when they deliver a killing blow, the impactful sound that goes along with that, and more.
There were some issues I found though. When an enemy goes down, you could keep on spamming the attack key on their corpse and the game would not continue. It would be stuck in some cruel limbo. Also, if I timed it correctly, I could skip an entire round, because I killed the enemy again between frames. It's not the biggest bug in the world, but it is a bug nonetheless. The lack of walking animation did bother me a bit, but it is not something that's really that important.
Thank you for the feedback!
I can understand trying to make the game feel more like a rock-paper-scissors style fighter of sorts, but I personally feel like the parry creates a more complex scenario, as upon a successful parry, each player is presented with the chance to either continue attacking or dash back and reset the situation. While I do see the appeal of having an option that beats parrying, it essentially exists as "idling". "Idling" beats parrying by letting you hit them after their parry animation has finished (since there's a cooldown on them performing any other non-movement action), sword strikes beat "Idling" and parrying beats sword strikes. I feel like having a true counter to parry would make it under-perform overall, since it would essentially be the only option to lose to two types of "actions", and the current effect created from being parried leads to a more interesting scenario that continues the game other than just ending it.
Thanks for finding those bugs! While there's not much we can do about it now, I'll try to be more intensive with testing for the future.