Samarkhanda, the Dancing Sword by Mak

[raw]
made by Mak for LD32 (JAM)
In the land of swords, every little kid wish to become a great warrior, to slaughter thousands of foes to bring honor to its name.

But Samarkhanda is different. It is disgusted by violence and doesn't like to kill people. It wants to be no warrior... It wants to be a dancer!

Armed only with its dreams and its special "Spinning Step", the dance move it itself invented, it marched to the biggest of discos, where the greatest of dancers compete to see who is the most stylish.

But there's a problem... the other dancers are soft creatures of flesh and blood, if it pierces them with its powerfull edge, they'll sure will die, so it will have to dodge them while trying to be best.

Will Samarkhanda be able to realize its dream? Or is it the destiny of all swords to become mass murderers?

How to play:

-While you spin, your style will increase.
-Pick the red 'S's you'll find across the scenario in order to get extra style.
-If you hit a dancer with your edge, you will kill them.

Controls:

-Move: A, S, W, D
-Spin: Left and Right arrows

-Restart : R
-Exit : Escape

Download the music: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lcs6cok2y0jspp0/Dancing%20away%20%28Samarkhanda%29-%20Rebor.mp3?dl=0

Credits:

-The music: Made by Jesus Martinez Rebordinos (@jesusrebor on twitter, jesusrebor@gmail.com)

-Sound effect of cutting people: Made by me with Bfxr

-The rest: Made by me, Cristobal Herrero Iglesias (@MakG2nd on twitter, tomomajico@gmail.com)

Ratings

Coolness 47% 1383
Overall(Jam) 3.04 675
Audio(Jam) 3.19 324
Fun(Jam) 3.04 528
Graphics(Jam) 2.15 925
Humor(Jam) 3.20 350
Innovation(Jam) 3.19 451
Mood(Jam) 3.00 549
Theme(Jam) 3.19 636

Feedback

nassi
21. Apr 2015 · 15:13 UTC
Came because of the name, stayed for the setting :P.

Interesting idea and the music was cool too. The rounds were somewhat too long and it didn't feel like there was much point to it at the moment. Maybe it would've been better if it had progressively harder levels, for instance on level 1 you would need to get some amount of points without killing over a certain amount of other dancers and the limits would get stricter which each passing level. Maybe the other dancers could also move more slowly at first and there could be less of them.
Huo-cuo
21. Apr 2015 · 16:44 UTC
I liked the song, is it available for download? Playing it was fun and quite some challenging, I just missed more songs.
WhoaConstrictor
21. Apr 2015 · 19:34 UTC
I really love the core gameplay here. Would be nice if it was broken into a series of shorter levels with increasing difficulty, since playing for two minutes straight was a little exhausting since there was so much to keep track of. Including little challenges of "acquire X score without killing Y people" would also be really cool. A final neat touch could be increasing the speed at which you spin the longer you spin in one direction, resulting in more style points (but being significantly harder to control + more dangerous to other dancers)

Cool game!
elpaulo
21. Apr 2015 · 20:07 UTC
Wow.
Wow.
Wow !
My favorite so far. Quite easy but... i don't know, the mix of the great music, switching color tiles and the sword movements... that was crazy fun.
Also, maybe i'm a little psycho, but i like to think the sword is actually a chainsaw :-)
lois6b
22. Apr 2015 · 10:14 UTC
i like it so much! you dare yourseflt in order to obtain more and more points and at first being respectful with the other dancers.. but then you become a real killer muahahaha
the music is awesome and makes you stay alert. congrats :D
F. Wiktora
22. Apr 2015 · 23:43 UTC
It is as simple as it is great :D not visually, but in terms of fun!
Newt_
22. Apr 2015 · 23:44 UTC
Unique gameplay, catchy soundtrack! The only thing I can think to improve would be the graphics. Great work!
jprogman
23. Apr 2015 · 00:04 UTC
I really like how you can rotate the sword around so the enemies can be killed by the blade. You should stick with that idea on your future projects with different level designs, enemies, and so forth.
Kasmilus
24. Apr 2015 · 21:01 UTC
OMFG, THAT'S PERFECT :D Love that game, description is even better ^^ Just that colors make it hard to look at it but fun is incredible!
tughan
26. Apr 2015 · 10:16 UTC
Loved it. Also very cool background plot hah :D
Jajo
26. Apr 2015 · 11:37 UTC
100 seconds of dancing and stabbing = fun. Graphics weren't that brilliant, could have made some sort of sword. Loved the audio.
rburema
03. May 2015 · 12:21 UTC
thoughts:
- I'd anticipated more games that flipped the theme on it's head like this (not just 'do something unexpected' with the theme... that would be about half of them, luckily), but out of all ratings I gave so far, you've been only about the second one to make the 'weapon' property into something antagonistic to the player :-)
- Had some sad music (of my own) playing in the background, and originally thought it was part of the game... was just a bit disappointed when I figured out that only the club-beat was supposed to be in. It created this great dissonant, melancholy/tense mood that fit well with the way you've interpreted the theme.