The art looks great! I like the fast and noisy effect of its looks. Wasn't able to play the game... I used all keys and couldn't pass title screen :(

I also couldn't get passed the title screen. Tried WASD, Space, F, R, Arrows Keys, Enter, mouse clicking. But I like the screenshots!

The buttons not responding have now been fixed, apologies!

Known issue with LibGDX with GWT

art looks awesome, gameplay was pretty fun, bummer you guys ran out of time, def. needs music.

The art work is superb. Music/sound effects would have added to it pretty well, but overall really good.
The controls for moving could have been improved a little more, pretty easy to get stuck when jumping. Overall though, fun, a bit of a challenge figuring out the timing for attacking/blocking.

Interesting game, Graphics are great! but sometimes I could not see the ground so I fell to my death, also it seems that their attacks hurt you at the beginning of their swing so it made it hard to block, but combat was pretty easy none the less.

This game is really fun. The gameplay mechanic that I liked monst was that you could block or attack and would have to time it.
One small thing:
You could delete the Boxcollider when you killed them (maybe this doesn't work with your code but when I played I could move them while the death animation played)

I also like the graphics! But with sound it would have been even better!
Thanks for programming ;)

Nice game man! I like the death animation, I did not like the controls, and the hole was difficult to spot. Good work

Ha, The "sadly" message at the end made me chuckle and was a sufficient victory laurel, thank you. It was a little difficult to maneuver around steps at times; I got stuck once. Nice art! Fun.

Reminds me of Altered Beast but set in Rome--I think Caesars' lightning is why. That's a good thing. :-) Great work on the sprites. Not sure about your default binds for F being attack and R being block though, but that;s hardly a big deal for a jam game. Good work.

I'm digging the art!

Character movement could be improved - it's far from pleasant to go up the stairs :c Also, I just easily smashed my way with F button to the end of the game, without defending at all and not loosing much of my health. It should be a bit harder to win this way ;)

Just a friendly tip: remember to add some music next time, it's something that has one of the best amount-of-work/perceived-value ratio on jam games :D

Great character animation and sprites. But it's a pity, you managed to make only one level, which is not really challenging and didn't manage to fifnish leaderboards.

Lovely graphics and animations! I included it in my compilation video series of Ludum Dare 36 games, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/vrExnx4_kXk

The art is pretty neat here, too bad there's no audio. Still, I rather enjoyed that, especially backgrounds.

When it comes to mechanics, they are sadly a bit clunky and buggy. At one time, I got stuck on some platform and could only jump. On another occasion I fell from the map and there was no death or anything, so I had to reload the game. I'd like to have arrow controls, too; with WSAD and RF that close to each other the controls become crowded...

Also, with the gladiator jumping like a flea I can easily jump over the guards straight to the Caesar; I don't think that's quite how the game is intended to be completed. ;)

Good job! Loved the graphics, the style seems similar of some MS-DOS games, PC games from the 90's; but in a good way, they could be a good reference if you want to develop this game further.

The title screen need an info about how to start the game, you could write 'press Enter to start' or change the input for spacebar/F/R.

In my opinion, the keyboard controls are complicated, two hands too much close one of each other, change the A/D to arrow keys, R/F to D/F, this could to be better.

About the gameplay, I think that the jump could be higher. For a future update, maybe would be cool to have some more combat mechanics: like defend on the exact moment of a enemy starting an attack, with one (quick) hitbox at the beggining of the player defense, if this hitbox collide against the enemy attack hitbox, make the player automatically counter-attack, like thrusting with the shield.

Keep up the good work! And sorry my broken english. ^^'

Wow first off:
Great job on the graphics! These were really nice, some artist you got working there :D

The controls were a bit wonky in my opinion, hard to play with one hand, but wierd to play with 2. I would suggest moving the block and attack keys to Z and X and the movement keys to arrow keys, though some people's keyboard might not support this.

Sound: Was a little lackluster, but fine enough.

Gameplay: It was actually kind of fun, and I stuck with it for a while :)
The jump is way too high, and it really surprised me xD He went flying off the screen! This high jump meant I could surpass almost the whole game without attacking. The idea of the "powerups" or things that restored stats were good. I also liked the idea of Blocking.

However, was the enemy supposed to take damage when blocking?
Parrying would have been nice, but Its your game.

Final note: The boss battle at the end was pretty cool, but it had some problems:
I'm pretty sure that I got hit by lightning even though I had ran away. At one point I got stuck where I could move or attack as well. I could only jump.

Overall, nice fun little game with great art style!

Most people looks for good ideas with poor game development, so we must judge the idea. In your case, you have done a poor idea with high development, so I can only dudge that.

*Pixel art is awesome
*Animations also very good
*I like little deatils like "red flash" when hits

Now my bad feelings. Obviously is very very hard to polish this kind of game in 72 h, so don't take care my opinions:

*Make the background image bigger and use a little side scrolling. It will improve the depth feel a lot

*I think you have selected the controls in order to play by one hand. Try to separate them for two hand. For example:
A/B - move
Space - jump
U - attack
I - block

*Make the bottom terrain darker. I mean, you must increase the color/light difference between the platforms where you can walk and the terrain where you fall down.

*The attack-timing is wrong. I mean, the "red flash" (and health fall) happens at same time than attack animation starts. The feeling is wrong. You must trigger the red flash when the swords collide with the character, or 0.3 seconds from the beginning of animation. If you solve this, you will have a little time to block the enemy attack before be injured.

*The combat is like two kids playing: block-attack-block-attack-block... The easiest way to solve it is to randomize the enemy attacks. Moreover, you can reduce the attack probability of the enemy when you are blocking, so it encoureges you to attack.

*Limit the number of jumps in the air to 1. He's not Superman.

*If you jump to a vertical wall you should fall down. He's not Spiderman ;)

I repeat, you have done a big work, but it's very very very hard to do an action game like yours. By this way, it is much more easy to think a good idea with simple implementation.

Very cool game. I like the graphics and animations but, I feel the attack and defend controls are to far away from the move controls. So I would make attack be left click and defend be right click. :)

Cool game with an pretty amount of work on aesthetic and animations. It reminds me my old games on Atari 520ST. I liked it ++

nice art. The fighting feels quite long since they have that much health this early.
and also by some reason the screen didn't scale properly for me so i couldn't see the ground

Very impressive pixel art and animation. I found the fighting a little difficult with timing blocks, would benefit from some audio cues as well as music to tie the game together. Great attempt and with some tweaks this could turn into an enjoyable retro slasher, especially with a game pad.

I liked the graphics too, don't have much more criticism to offer. Although controls were really weird (what's wrong with arrow keys??) and you can actually beat the level just by pressing D and spamming jump. Afterwards you have enough health to just beat Caesar to death without bothering to block. Speedstrats!

Great job on the art, the animations are decent too. The controls were ok, a bit awkward though, would have preferred either all arrow keys or all WASD. I got stuck and couldn't move at one point. Did not even see the hole in the level. The game would benefit from even a little bit of sound or just a music track.

Overall, I think this is a decent submission and with a bit of work I think it could be great.

The control scheme is very awkward, you should have at least allowed for directional keys as well.

The enemies have too much health, the correct strategy (as far as i could tell) of attacking twice then blocking takes too long and makes the combat very repetitive; alternatively, maybe the first enemies could not have a shield and/or telegraph their attacks better.

I also didn't realize the hole was a hole until it was too late.

This is still a solid entry though, especially for your first LD, and i really like the artwork and animations. Nice work!

First congrats on finishing your first LD!

A background music and some sounds is always great to have. At least put some bxfr sound and for music I'm sure you can find some free online. That add a lot of value.

The jump seems a little broken, i could jump really high and avoid fight... That things need to be nerf :p. The overall gameplay is basic but work well. May be a little repetitive and slow.

Graphics are well made, except may be the ground. The UI graphics is not that good. Our health bar could be better positioned. And you could add some style to it. An UI that is well integrated with the game add also lot of value.

Again congrats for this first LD, good luck in the future!

I found some glitches when player is jumping near wall. He's stacking on it until you press space again to jump, or stop moving in wall direction. The abysses were awful because I thought it's only different tile of ground when I suddenly have fallen and died. You should always show some spikes and abyss to let player know it's dangerous to fall there. Also controls are too close to themselves. Instead of using A - D for horizontal movement, using arrows to move horizontally and jumping would be a great help.

There is also bug with triple-quadra jump in air. I rushed through whole level jumping on guards and I didn't have to fight any of them. Also boss is using thunderbolt which has unlimited collider. I could run from it even when using quadra jump or block it with shield. Overall this game has pretty nice art style, but I definately had no fun playing it because of too many bugs and weak design.

Wow what a game.

I mostly cheated in this game. You can literally jump right over the enemy's. The only guy i had to kill was the boss but the lighting bolt didnt stop me. I could jump until he was done then go on and fight him again

Besides the glitch i thought it was fun to play. The controls were weird for me but i didnt really use them.

Graphics were good better than what i can do thats for sure.
Good Game

Loved the art style thought it felt really polished and worked well. Do wish the jumping and platforming mechanics were a bit tighter and did notice that at times if i turned my back on the enemies and used my sword I could hit them even though I wasn't facing them. Congrats on your first entry and looking forward to seeing more in the future.