itch.io

It's a custom C++/Lua engine called Flint. Tim Ambrogi built it for the game Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony and was kind enough to let me use it for Sword Bros!

Sorry, that's my fault! You can maximize it using winkey+up. I'll have to add fullscreen in an update.

I'm not sure if I can reply to Flypool below, but I've uploaded a new build (v1.1) that might fix the problem.

It's possible! it should be a fairly quick port, I just need to find a mac to build on and some time to do it

quick notes after maybe 60-90 mins of play. i'm having a great time with the game, even though these are mostly critiques :)

- movement is different from anything else i've played and feels great after the initial adjustment period. i can tell immediately that it's something special, not just another roguelike

- if i fall into a hole before planting a checkpoint, it seems strictly advantageous to restart. this is fair but also pretty un-fun. it happens more often than it might since area 1 is mostly fairly easy and area 2 is really hard, so i know i need to stock up on hearts and gems rather than spamming checkpoints

- i'm generally really unsure how much damage things do. this is at least partially because the moments when i take damage (and the couple of seconds after when i'm catching the seed) are the times i'm least likely to have my eye on the health meter. also i'm not sure how partial hearts work

- what if holes didn't do damage? in a roguelike, having to repeat an exhausted area already feels like a huge punishment. also, it seems nice and elegant for holes to just be holes and for only monsters hitting you to do damage - a closer tie to "ice cold beer but videogame". just having to repeat that area seems annoying, but i feel like the damage is a distraction from that annoyance rather than a fix (see next note)

- as i'm writing these i'm realizing that having to repeat stuff after falling into a hole is central to a lot of my annoyances. not sure what to do about that and i'm sure you've thought a lot about it... maybe something to make the section different each time you fall down?

- i can't what extent enemies are seeking and to what extent they're random wandering. feels messy to me (in a bad way) not to know

- restart loop feels slow to get back into the game (both menus and going through the starting camp)

- each heart icon represents 1 hp, but the gem icon doesn't represent any gems. i often think i have 1 gem left when actually i have none

- love the world building in the camps!

- i wish there was a way to jerk one end of the stick up if you tapped a stick hard/fast enough. probably quite hard to tune to feel good and you wouldn't want to use it most of the time, but i imagine it would make fast rolls more usable and widen the action gamut a bit. obvious caveats are that it would have to maintain the current slow/smooth controls and integrate smoothly with those, and not feel weird when (i assume) the seed never leaves the stick

- spikes don't look dangerous enough to be instakills

hope these are helpful, looking forward to playing more in the next few days!

played some more, looks like the x jittering is tied to the movement of the stuck helicopter seed (same jittering as when you hit the spring then stop moving up)

Sometimes quitting to menu during a run and then starting a new one makes the seed get stuck at fixed x position and jitter back and forth, kinda like when something's stuck between overlapping colliders. Then there's a copy of the seed helicopter sprite at the seed x and the camp boundary Y. If you move through the boundary (seems to be no collision when this is happening) then things go back to normal.

Sidenote: having a great time so far!

Hi! I'm Drew. I was a programmer on Jamestown+ and things. I saw the game at GDC and talked to Greg a bit but didn't get a chance to play. Really excited to try it now!