I loved that! It was a very interesting concept! My only critique would be that the normal walking is really slow and some hit boxes are weird. Took me a while to understand how to beat the red demon type of enemy, but it was really fun!

Love, love the audio visual presentation of this, great attention to detail! And the idea is solid. Mechanics while nice and responsive feel a bit stiff and could use more work. I also feel the player's collision with the environment is off.

Encountered a bug, those big doors don't open up fully for me (both sides), so they cover most of my health GUI

WTF

rapaziada... q jogo maneiro da "muléstia"... hahahahha
E esse graficos, audio meu Deus...
Estão de parabens...

Invejinha de quem sabe desenhar assim... hahahahahhaa

Unica coisa q não curti muito, é quando os inimigos estão atrás das arvores, e não conseguimos ver de onde eles vem... Numa dessas, deixar a arvore 50% transparente, ajudaria...

No mais...jogo perfeito..

Parabéns.

This is very polished, the graphics and amimations are fantastic! Great job :)

# Win the game!
- Fantastic art work and audio. You are pro-team.
- The concept fit the theme perfectly.A man start his adventure with nothing and end with nothing.
- The counter system is little strange because it cannot "predict" attack, it's more like wait-and-go-ahead system during playing.
Got lots of fun from it, thank you guys.

Start with nothing and end with nothing, with the exception of maybe some skill...

Very nice! Art was quite top notch and music fit very well. I really liked the difficulty (expect you could have hinted the read weapon thing in the game too). I already gave up once before noticing the text about it in the description. After that it was quite smooth sailing. Either the dash timing was a bit strict or the hitboxes were quite unfair, not sure which. Well at least the final boss swing hitbox was ridiculous. But he was the final boos so I'll let it pass. Just could have given him a bigger sword... :wink:

The enemies really liked to be passive and hang around off screen. Especially so on the second level where I spent most of my time not understanding the red weapon mechanic and not paying enough attention to the second swing of the enemy. The enemy passivity (them running away if you're too close and getting closer if you're too far), they just need to be baited too much and it felt a bit slow and tedious to play the waiting game with them. And the terrain hitboxes were kinda big and weird (at least too vertical) on some places at least.

The randomness of health drops made some runs way easier than others. Like on my second and final attempt at the boss, like every enemy before that (and those waves were super easy because the enemies get stuck in the terrain) dropped a heart so I could have even face tanked the boss. Nice touch btw that you refill the health between levels. Very minor details that could have easily been disregarded but not having the player be at an disadvantage after successful level clear is the way to go especially since there is no real punishment for dying. Of course it would be different if there was a maximum death count or something like a scoring system which punishes one for dying.

There were some very minor graphical glitches. Like at least once the between levels doors slid on top of each other so that the handles were on the screen edges instead of meeting in the middle. And quite ofter there were some z-ordering issues with the sprites, but that's not anything to bark at really.

Anyways, good job! Finished wanting more so that's a good sign I guess. But just making it longer wouldn't cut it, would need more enemy variance etc.

@phillserrazina Thanks a lot!! We definitely could tweak some things here and there :D Thanks for taking your time to play and review!

@hajden Thank you very much! :D do you know which stage exactly happened the door thing?

@seththefirst hsuheusheusheusheu Vlwzaço man xD!!! galera muito profissa msm kkkk ficou feliz que tenha curtido, malditos ninjas se escondendo na vegetação!! xDDDDDDD

@clemonades Thank you!

The door thing started at level 2 and kept happening for every level after (if it matters I played the web version, fullscreen on a screen with resolution of 2560*1440)

@antti-haavikko First of all, Thank you for the thoughtful review!! I agree with everything. I believe these points would make the game a much more polished experience. Maybe in a post-jam version? xD thanks again!

@hajden going to check it!

@justuspan Thank you! We're glad you liked it! :D

Well done on the game guys! Wonderful graphics & music!

@los Thanks a lot!

@seththefirst Valeu cara! muito obrigado. Huehehehehehehe

@clemonades Thanks so much! We loved create this game. Would be awesome spend more time to improve it!

Super fun! Really like how it looks, plays and sounds! Fantastic work on this one. Really love, that you can't get lost in the rules, as everything is explained well. Bravo!

Love the artwork and sound design. Controls could be a little bit more intuitive, but I had fun once I got the hang of it.

The artwork is so beautiful TT amazing job on this, the mechanic is a bit finnicky to get the hang of but is an interesting take on fighting games!

Absolutely love the game art! And the fact that you don't have anything except skills when you face your enemies is spot on with the theme. Very well done!

Gorgeous aesthetic, controls were a bit tough to get a handle on at first but overall was quite fun

Really fantastic work, team! I am wowed! :smile_cat:

A really immersive art style, and very fitting audio to go with it!

I love the art style and the mood. Reminds me of old black and white samurai movies! The game was pretty hard though.

Reminded me of the time when I myself was practicing Kendo. That intense feeling of duel X)

Amazing art style and mood, as many others have written before. But besides just looking good, it is also excellent in communicating gameplay - it's clear to me where I can and cannot go, it is clear where the enemies are and it's very clear when an attack is coming. Reading patterns is also quite straight forward which makes the game feel just that much more polished.

I really enjoyed the buildup and how everything felt like it was giving me enough time to understand and adapt to the various changes and challenges.

While the controls were odd to get started with, I didn't at any point feel like the game is punishing me, rather that I have not practiced enough which is the delicate balance a game of this kind really needs. I can really see this being expanded into a strong, full fledged game either as is, or even mobile with touch controls.

All in all, amazing game, well done! Congrats!

Man this game is AWESOME! Congratulations!

The art style and sound effects are on point. The parrying is a bit chalenging to get used to but I think that playing it with the controller may make things easier.

Great entry!

Amazing art and nice mechanics, I really enjoyed the simple idea and controls. Mood is set great. Great work!

The art and music fit very well together I really liked the mood ^.^. The gameplay was a bit hard at first,but it was very fun and satisfying to parry multiple enemies at the same time. Also thank you for the checkpoints !

Great game! art style, sounds and gameplay where awesome!
Good job!

Wow! I love the artstyle!

You guys did an amazing work with this. Best game I tried for this jam. I'm totally in love with your transitions and title arts. This 100% fun, polished and respecting the theme plus we can feel you enjoyed making it. Congratulations !

Really nice looking game with some stellar music on top of it. The game mechanics are really unique and really suits the theme well. Great execution and overall experience!

Just two worlds: Absolute Perfect ;)

I loved the game but I got glitched out because an enemy got stuck in the top left corner on ancient hallway and wouldn't attack me or move.

Belo jogo, parabéns pelo empenho.

Nice, but really hard ... for me :-s

Very good game. I really love games that really build themselves on a single mechanic like yours. However I had issues with how enemies and the player would get hidden behind certain environments. Regardless very good game.

Great game ! Once you get used to the timing of the counter everything flows perfectly. Incredible work :clap:

It reminds me of undertale

Very great game, which gave me the best feeling by now. The gameplay of directly facing enemies' attack and giving reaction makes me think of Seriko. Wonderful combination of music, graphics, gameplay and environment, nice job!

Pretty good, but. Could not figure when I'm supposed to dodge red face's strikes. Needs some tips. Also, big part of field is obscured by props.

I like the concept: a bloodless fighting game. It fits the theme well. You also did a great job with the mainly B+W graphics. A very good effect.

I love it when a sword goes flying. No lack of suspense here.

The mood is good. Pretty hard to understand how counter-attack - took a much time to adapt. Can't beat boss because he laggy move through the upper door and stucks out the screen.
Good game anyway.

Nice game with great art and music !
The dash movement didn't feel really smooth though.
Solid entry !

Super stylish! A little hard to get the hang of, but I think the concept of the cool samurai counter-attack as a main move is a pretty interesting concept. I also had an issue where some of the enemies moved offscreen and were impossible to interact with, but I suppose that's mostly my fault and I should have drawn them upwards anyways.

Very nice work!

Well at first i couldn't get the timing right, but then I realized there is a sound cue just before you need to dash! Also i really liked anemy variety, and that gorgeous art style for me personally 10/10 your team did awesome job.

Amazing art, music and mood. I really felt like samurai there.

Great game, Love the art style.

Hey @selkkie ! Thanks for your comment! Don't worry, it wasn't your fault!!!
We're working to fix the enemies being impossible to reach as soon as possible!

Amazing work, i love the mood, the graphism and music, and the system work very well :) good job to the team

Such a original aesthetics, I saw this during the ludum dare and added it to my mental playlist to look after once the ludum dare was over. Gonna play it just now

Just tried it with the keyboard, but this seems much cooler with the controller so I will wait to play again with it to be able to give a proper feedback, nice wind loop sound btw

I really liked the art style of the game. It reminded me of games like samurai shodown and last blade. Enemies were too hard for me to deal with so I didn't get very far into the game but I still liked the main idea behind the game mechanic.

Thank you for making this game! I enjoyed it a lot!

Thanks everyone for your feedback! It really means a lot to the team.

We've tried out a few tweaks to the movement and ai parameters from what we noticed on playtests, and we also fixed that scene transition glitch some people were having.

If anyone has an opinion on the movement changed please let us know!

It was very difficult for me to play, I died a lot... But this game has an amazing style! It looks absolutely great for my taste. Sounds and music add to the mood. Big plus for the atmosphere, guys!

Great game guys! Nice graphics and sounds, only downside maybe was really hard to find the timing to counter the enemies. Had a lot of fun playing. Good job!

I loved the art style, music, and presentation! It really fit the samurai aesthetic that was presented. Unfortunately I had some difficulties with the gameplay and couldn't get very far. Some of the collisions felt off to me and I got hit even though I was dashing. Regardless, great entry!

Wow, amazing entry!

It was interesting to see how you chose to use the theme as part of the narrative AND the mechanic, it fit together very nicely.

Aesthetics and the atmosphere are incredibly immersive and it shows everywhere up to the level transition screens. I really like the limited colour palette, and the music in particular is beautiful, I could keep it playing in the background the whole night.

Gameplay was also quite polished, a simple core mechanic well executed, and that could have potential to be expanded with more variations or side mechanics. Trying to focus on your enemies for the counters felt challenging and really satisfying when you landed them.

I managed to beat it after dying a few times, but I loved every moment (even if there were a couple of times where I was hurt and I wasn't really sure that I'd got hit, but perhaps it was just me :sweat_smile: )

One of my favourite entries so far without a doubt. It would be great if you kept working on it after the jam Congrats! :clap: :clap: :clap:

PS: After playing this I feel like retaking Sekiro again too :laughing:

Dripping with atmosphere, and an excellent take on the theme (and genre). Great work!

WOW!!!!!! The mechanics is amazing and just out of the world. And art.... I just love it. It gets hard at the end but it never gets boring. The music goes well with the game as well. Well done.Congrats on your submission.

@daria-toni thank you for playing our game even though it was hard. We're still trying to figure out how to adjust its difficulty to get that "just right" feeling

@guilb thank you! Great you hear you had fun with the game :smile:

@jusw85 we're still thinking of how to handle the dash and counter hitboxes and timing and will probably have a blog post about it soon. Also I think we have to tweak the hit reaction animation triggers. They're not very good atm

@ithildin wow! Thank you for the detailed comment. We really had fun with this jam and want to stop and think about what we do with the project post-jam. Also you're right about the hit animation. It doesn't always trigger correctly.

Also, about sekiro: we definetly drew a lot from it, but nobody except one of the artists in the team actually played it. We might do it as a celebration afterwards, since we're having so much fun with the jam and post-jam

@gold5games thank you so much!

@noobdev thank you!! We're really happy about y'all who had fun even if you found it hard!

I'll pass on the compliments to the rest of the team. You're all very kind! Also, I'll try to get a post about the hitboxes and parry timing done!

The art direction is super sweet! And I like the soundtrack you guys used! Maybe it's a part of the challenge, to learn when to dash into enemies, but I would LOVE to have some minimal graphic of some kind to indicate when attacks will occur.

Although it seems like it's designed to have players learn animation patterns. Super dope!

Awesome points for presentation! Art and mood stand out a lot. Had some problems with hitboxes not working as seen visually sometimes, but overall it was really a cool experience!

That was fantastic! Such a great mechanic properly explored with good variety of enemies and levels. Dripping with style from its visuals and audio.

This is such a nice gameplay mechanic. You dash at the right time to throw off the enemy's weapon. And the art in this game is phenomenal. Same for the audio. Superb Entry!

It's a very cool game, style and mechanic is awesome and It's a curious way to use jam theme.

Very cool entry, very smooth. I did find myself getting a little frustrated at the controls, they felt unresponsive at times. Loved the art. Great job guys!

extremely polished, the art, sound and gameplay are super solid, and the overall feel is perfect. Little to question, awesome job!

wow. this had realy good gameplay. i like parry mechanics. this got some realy good potential. :dog: :dog:

finished the game, had great fun. the concept is easy but hard to master. 1 detail thing: change the health point to something suits the art style maybe?

Love the presentation of this, and only being able to parry is a very interesting idea.

I do wish the dash was a bit more smooth. After you dash you're stuck running in place for a bit, I'd either add some kind of recovery animation or make that flow more smoothly into normal walking.
Also, in a few stages the enemies kept attacking out of the room, made it hard to see what they were doing.

This is a really cool game! Great presentation, and a system that is easy to pick up, hard to master.

At first I thought the timing and/or hitbox of the enemy sword and your parry was a bit off, it felt really tricky to get it right. After a while it got better, as you learned how to work with it, but I never really lost that feeling that something was off, like I didn't know exactly where on the enemy to aim, or at which point in time to dash for a successful parry.

The collision of the environment was a bit too large compared to the art, so there were many places where I wanted to/felt like I could walk, but instead got stuck and cornered by the enemies. It wasn't too bad since you could stay in the bigger areas instead, but something to keep in mind.

The red sword twist was really cool, and with some more time I'm sure you could have added even more variety on the enemy styles, there's a lot of potential!

All in all I really enjoyed it, so I hope you take my feedback for what it is, really good job on the submission!

Cool mechanics and nice art style!

@phillserrazina we fix the walking speed and add some tutorial on the second enemy introduction scene, add some small fix on the enemy behaviors as well...

@hajden we fix the big doors (transitions) in different resolutions. Needs some more polishing, but wont bother or or disrupt gameplay.

@guilb we tweaked some of the enemy behaviors some of the dash parameters, should be more easy to hit the enemies now.

@smileyface we tried to optimize the collisions of the environment (big trees) so they don't overlay the enemies!

Thanks guys, you're all are the best! Our game plays a lot better now! **new build on the link bellow** <3

https://tryangle.itch.io/bloodless

**Play or download the new build here!**
https://tryangle.itch.io/bloodless

Thank you so much for the feedbacks everyone, this really means a lot for the team. Some of us worked together and spent the whole week discussing your comments. We put a **new web build on itch.io** with the tweaks some of you suggested, we are really enjoying how it is becoming a nice game, thank you so much for helping us playing and being cool with us!

I definitely evolved as a game developer with all this affection and knowledge of the Ludum Dare community! <3

@clemonades @justuspan @los @kenarf @kushimoto @aconfusedragon @johan-alexandersson @brokenmirrormedia @khaotom @ender7 @arzi @tab1bit0 @pedro-miranda @danielcmcg @akadenki @amigopadilha @paude @ferdi @tobb @importantcreations @emiliabea @bismark @keithdae @elektroney @dimlight @baturinsky @gamebuilder @saintheiser @antoined73 @selkkie @mateusz-wojtkowski @wdebowicz @fear-games @tori @velvetlobster @mrerdalural @daria-toni @jusw85 @gold5games @noobdev @opaqueplacebo @pranjalbisht @jam373 @bilalch213 @tort60091 @death-is-cold @sol-roo @lombax @tofuman @celdur @pio

Hey guys, that's was really important for us! Thank you so much for the feedbacks and kindness, really means a lot for the team. We put a new web build on itch.io with the tweaks some of you suggested, we are really enjoying how it is becoming a nice game, thank you so much for helping us playing and being cool with us!

Comments like yours, with all this care and attention, motivate me to be a better person and a more careful developer. People are the best part of this industry, I will never put anything ahead of them. Thank you so much! <3

@antti-haavikko @dawnscream @ithildin @druvsaft

Thanks for commenting on my game, I saw yours being played on streams but I didnt catch a name.

Good game, bad player. Took me a while to figure out a good way to fight red swords :P

- I feel like the enemies sometimes get confused when you go behind the trees and don't follow well. Could be a design decision for line of sight but it looked odd.
- When swapping levels your graphic is stretched out really badly. Probably noone will care but swapping scaling to nearest neighbour would improve aesthetics.

Genuinely surprised by the quality and the perfectly tuned aesthetics. Played it through and loved every second of it, amazing job!

The only nitpick I have is that the hitboxes don't feel right sometimes - it felt like the dash hit should have registered, but it didn't and I either missed or even got hit by the enemy. Maybe it's due to my playing on a keyboard where I don't have as precise control of dash direction as on a gamepad (i.e. I had to line myself up with an enemy correctly in addition to dashing towards them at the right moment). This didn't reduce my opinion of the game :)

Great aesthetics and mood, quality gameplay that had me engaged and the game was content complete - well done! I particularly loved the transitions, the death screen was awesome! The only improvement I can think of is maybe increasing the player speed just a tad sometimes I felt a little sluggish

Also out of curiosity what does バクラウ mean? It's Katakana so I don't recognise it as something Japanese, Is it like a way of saying Background?

Either way well done, I enjuyed the game and you created a great product.

Wonderful work, great concept, fantastic graphic and music, great gameplay! It fits the theme and it's really fun to play! I loved that! It's challenging but it gives you all the skills to win the game, and everytime i was able to defeat a new enemy I felt rewarded. Good job!

God, this game is magnificent. The art style is impressive, combat system is easy to learn, but hard to master. Difficulty balance is smooth and enjoyable. Well done!

I loved the pixel art, its character was wonderful, and the game art itself is amazing. The couter mechanics are very good. good work

Beautiful game, both visually and the music/sfx. Would have liked to see more counter techniques, maybe throwing enemies at one another? Either way great work!

Super polished and beautiful. Took a second to learn, but by the end you felt pretty awesome :D Yeah, more combos etc would be cool, but this was great for a quick jam game!

Really fun and beautiful game! The timing mechanics (also the theme) really reminds me of Sekiro, and I love that game! I really had fun playing this game, until this level though. I got stuck here, the enemy won't move. Or is it how it should be, but I'm just too impatience too wait? Nonetheless, I had a blast playing this game! Awesome work!

Hey @joellikespigs! Thanks for appreciating our submission!

About the meaning of バクラウ:
It is kinda of a inside joke/easter egg for us. Most of the team are from Recife, Brazil - and recently a movie called Bacurau (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2762506/) was released here. The film meant a lot for us and we're all still excited and being influenced by it. While deciding the name someone joked about it, saying that we should call it Bakurau as a tribute and the joke stayed funny throughout the weekend - translated into katakana to be less weird for the people that actually knew the movie. In the game, Bakurau is the name of the Shogun's family.


@caio-rmota That's awesome and love this little bit of Bloodless trivia. Thanks for sharing - I'll see if I can find an English sub of the movie

This game is really really really amazing. At first I was stunned by the music and the visual style. After I got hang of the mechanics the game started to be really fun to play too. Then I died and I thought to myself "it's a shame that you don't give a continue option or something" and a few seconds later I got to restart the same level so I was relieved :D Definitely one of the most polished games I have played this jam :)

@marcin-j thanks for the advice and for being so considerate! We're definitedly gonna fix it in the next update.

@ahistyap @ithildin @dimlight You guys have no idea how flattered we are to hear that our game reminds them of Sekiro. Thank you! <3

About the screenshot... it probably is a problem with the collider of the pillar blocking the enemy path. It should be fixed by now, but we're going to check again to see what's happening.

Cool idea and well executed! Has a very good mood, and the art and audio really suit it. The combat was simple but worked well enough, though sometimes it was tricky to get the counters just right. All in all a really enjoyable game though, good job!

The level transition animations are super sick. I like how you incorporated the kanji for the level numbers behind the kanji for the level name.

The timing feels a bit off at first, not a bad thing just a matter of "git gud". Nice animations, smooth game play, balanced and yet challenging level design, good music, good sound effects, perfect harmony and ambiance. Amazing work all of you!

very fun core game loop and ideas also art! Also pretty smart usage of color in a black and white game to indicate more danger, but the player movement feels very sluggish and stiff

Very cool idea, its not the kind of game I am usually into but i can appreciate it as a whole. It captures the essence of skill based combat systems very well.

The idea is really interesting, the difficulty is well balanced too.

The art is superb!

I enjoyed the game. The art style and music are all fitting well. The dashing is quite fun.

From the design perspective, I've found that action is not supported by enough feedback - when dashing, it is hard to say if I actually hit or not... Except for a dead body afterwards. The hit should provide more feedback I guess... maybe some physics, camera shakes or something to visually highlight the success of an action. Now it feels more like fighting the ghosts. And I understand, that can be a design decision - old 8-bit games didn't have a proper feedback after all :)

Rapaziada, que jogo foda! A ambientação tá incrível, os gráficos casaram muito bem com a trilha e os sons. Essa mecânica de parry com dash combinou demais com a temática, evoca bastante o feeling de Samurai X huahauhau

Dei risada quando li o "BAKURAU" no fundo do logo, só brasileiro mesmo pra fazer uma coisa dessa (valia deixar o rating de humor só por isso)

A equipe de vocês é a maior que eu vi nessa ludum por enquanto, fiquei curioso pra saber como vocês dividiram as tarefas.

No mais, adoraria ver mais fases, padrões de inimigos e o dash com mais variações. Parabéns galera!!

@vcesauron pô man, valeu por ter jogado! Que bom que você curtiu o jogo. Hahahahaha, durante um período da jam o nome do jogo ia ser Bakurau, mas optamos por deixar só como easter-egg msm hehehe.

Então, do caralho que você ficou afim de saber como organizamos as tarefas. Vou escrever um blog post sobre isso. =Hoje publicamos um sobre como fizemos o level design do jogo. Link abaixo:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/bloodless/bloodless-level-design-process

Enquanto esse blog-post não sai, adianto que nós utilizamos bastante o Trello para gerenciar as atividades e o Discord para discutir com a equipe em tempo real (tinha gente que tava trabalhando remoto).

Também fizemos umas planilhas: uma de Version Release, mostrando o que entraria no jogo a cada build gerada durante a jam ; uma pra servir como GDD improvisado pra todo mundo entender como seria o jogo ; outra pra gerenciar o quanto de coisa tem pra fazer como uma timeline da jam (mas não funcionou tão bem)...

@invader There's an animation the for the player character and some particles around him (a circle plus a shockwave below), and a metal clang sound, plus the enem!y's sword flying away and bouncing.

Maybe the visuals are hard to notice because of the limited color pallete?



Camera shake is a great idea, I'm not sure we discussed it as a possibility, but it could be a good one to add

I don't know if it was me or if it was because I was using a keyboard, but I could not disarm more that the first guy. The art and music were great, the mood was awesome, I think the mechanic was interesting, but I think I just sucked at the game. Good work over all.

Nice graphics, challenging game. I included it in my Ludum Dare 45 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/ZqT_X6b-pfk

Liked the art style, sound, mechanics, liked it all! nice game :)
Maybe a 3trd color to "good effects""

Really cool game the art style is cool but the counter attack is difficult to understand as you feel like you should counter attack during there charge up animation instead of the attack animation

Bloodless really is a good game: nice take on the theme. Parrying an enemy is very satisfying! However you often get hit because the hit-boxes are really large, or because the timing is not easy to catch. But still, it's a solid entry, good job!

Nice job! Congrats for the dev team. I really enjoyed the graphics (:

Quite challenging Game on timing the parrying/counter-dashing. Clever take on the theme.. It got frustrating when the opponents keep strafing away off-screen as I assertively trying to rush-in to disarm them. It does take quite a number of runs to finally move forward on the level progression.

Que jogo lindo! Mandaram bem demais no jogo, jogabilidade excelente! Parabéns!

Niiiiiice.

Everything here is really detailed and polished -- the whole package really comes together to sell the entire thing and keep you engrossed.

I feel like there could be a liiiitttlee tweaking of the dashing gameplay, or maybe a little more...."juice" to it somehow. It's a very vague feeling where it doesn't =quite= click right away, something about the timing or visual feedback or something where during the first few screens I didn't really feel very confident in what I was doing wrong or what the correct timing for the dash was supposed to be.

After some practice I think I settled into the proper timing just fine. I think it's perfectly OK (probably even a good thing) if you need some time in order to really learn the rhythm of the gameplay, but I think what bogged me down a bit was not knowing for sure what the =correct= timing or spacing looked like -- therefore I had to do some awkward trial and error in order to figure it out. Sorry I know this is quite nebulous but it's a minor point and something that I feel like can only be fixed by minute tweaking. It's =really= close, so don't take it as a knock on your execution, I just wanted to point it out because I feel like it's the only part of the puzzle that's missing.

Anyways, that aside, great job on the overall aesthetic! There are a lot of nice details here that I definitely appreciated during my playthrough.

Love it! Makes me think of Sekiro.

Your game has SOME style! Unfortunately could not pass Ancient Hall - enemy stucked in corner.

Really like the style, the mood and the main gimmik of the game, though the timing is a bit odd. Personally I would prefer if you could counter at the same time the enemy attacks, not just some frames later.

Really love the music and mood in this one! And the gameplay was fun and a still got challenging in the end. Had a bit of trial and error aspects with the last guy, but not in a bad way.

Great game and unique concept. I think this a great interpritation of the Start with nothing theme. I also think you guys nailed the difficulty. I felt myself get better and I didnt get too frustrated along the way. Movement speed felt a bit sluggish and hit boxes felt a bit bigger than they should be on the red enemies but besides that amazing work!

Great entry! A lot of good stuff here. I love the mood and samurai theme, and I love the polishes on it, such as the level number in kanji behind the title of each stage. The graphics are fantastic for the style you were going for and with the limited color pallet you used. The music and sound effects were very good and thematic as well. As previous comments have said, the enemy AI is a bit awkward, the basic movement was a bit sluggish, and I felt the dash wasn't quite right. Felt like the distance you cover is too short for the speed you move at, and the freeze too long at the end of a dash. The knockback from the enemies was a bit too much, and you could really use some i-frames after getting hit, when 2 or 3 enemies are grouped up, that's basically instant death if they hit you. The hit boxes for disarming felt a little strange as well, sometimes you seem to dash through the enemy with neither taking damage or disarming. All in all a great entry. The ending animations were beautiful to see. Well done!

Played your masterpiece game. Simple but involving mechanics. I alo read back story, I like the plot, it is kinda deep and has clear and peaceful message. Very good idea, I want a movie with your plot, sir!

I confess I did not get the Bacurau reference in the Katakana in the first time @caio-rmota ... and I feel very stupid now ... being from Brazil too I loved so much that movie I am glad you put that reference in a game ...

A solid experience and a fun game! Love the innovative mechanics of the game, and the sparse palette really helps to set the mood, the music is superb and lifts the whole experience to the next level, as well as solid sfx! All in all a great entry to this LD! Great job! Cheerz!

The mood is great, and the graphics and sounds harmonize nicely to reinforce the oriental feel of the game. The gameplay would also translate nicely to mobile using a swipe to dash mechanic. It was quite fun and challenging.

Well, apart from red hit-box being a bit too big and some of the horizontal dash disarming not registering, its a perfect entry! Aesthetics executed perfectly in all things, from music to graphics and UI. Nice difficulty curve.
It's great to have a nice challenging gameplay without being overly frustrating, perfect length of the game as well! Thank you for this game!

I loved the visuals and the sound! Really nice feel overall. Would be nice to see some additional moves in a post jam version, like counterattacks/weapons and enemy types?

Really nice sound direction, the animations were fun and did a great job of building the mood!

:relieved: :ok_hand_tone4: :heart:

It took **FOREVERRR** for me to learn how to time their attacks on the first level :tired_face:

But alas I did!

I'm really glad you did not make me start all the way over when I die on a higher level. :grin: And the hearts occasionally too, did compensate!

I started off confused about this game, but now I really love it lol.

I would say though, the Shogun was pretty easy to defeat. Dashing as a way to dodge their attack, I was able to just keep dashing until I saw him use a white sword, then I just timed it the second time, and he was done for. Maybe give him 2 lives? (he pulls out another white sword when you disarm the first, and also uses a different attack progression?) Just my suggestions, because I enjoyed this lol :rofl:

Loved the theme of this! Took me a bit of time to figure out how to play well, but once I did I found the game pretty fun. Got a little challenging but nothing I wasn't able to ultimately overcome. Great one!

Really nice complete experience! The art, music, and theming were all very fitting. Execution was well done. I felt the hit boxes were a little finicky, but the timings felt just right. Really love that you don't start the entire experience over when you die.

Graphics, animations and music are amazing! I was a bit slow to understand how to time my counter based on their attack but once I got it I enjoyed the game :) Really god job!

Very fun experience!

This is really polished and stylish. It oozes quality, and it has a solid mechanic and game loop to back it up. I predict this will score very highly indeed. Well done team.

Good stuff :8ball:

Very well executed. Timing and hit boxes as others mention could probably be polished a bit more, but overall a very good submission.

awesome game! great work guys

Overall the game is really good, I would have nothing to say, but 8 people worked on the game, so its expected

It is so good!

Wow, I actually had an game idea of dashing to counter attack as well! Good Job!

This was really cool, I love the art style and mood of this game. I love the backstory and how that ties into the theme. Fantastic work!

This is a beautiful entry. The graphics, art style, and music are all sublime, and combine to create a fantastic atmosphere. The pacifistic fighting style is a breath of fresh air, too. Unfortunately, I am *shockingly* bad at this game; I gave it two goes, and both times I died on the third wave of the first level :joy: I dunno whether it's the timing or the positioning that I can't get the hang of, probably both. I'll have to give it another try someday and see if I can get at least to Level 2 :joy: