This was awesome! Took me awhile to even notice the giant spike of death, and notice that the heart was always infront of it (at first I thought it was about finding the heart). Once I understood that though, I thought the mechanic was very novel! Audio is snazzy.

Cool game! Overall I've enjoyed it, though I think that with each enemy difficulty spikes up quite a bit - only managed to get first two.

I like how you made it on pico-8! The graphics and sounds were well made and the overall combat mechanic was interesting. Good job!

Great submission! At first, I thought the spike was pretty slow, but after defeating few enemies, I took my words back very quickly. Graphics are on point, I love them! And very good choice of names.
I have to take a look at pico-8, seems like an interesting engine!

Ahh I can't beat Rousseau^^

Fun little game, it gets really satisfying when you start getting a good grip of it. The same kind of satisfaction I get from Tetris.

I think a great addition would be a key to speed up the hit once you cleared it's path. With a nice swoosh hit sound. It would make starting over the easier levels a more pleasent experience.

I really enjoyed it!

I have never seen something like that before. However this mix of genres seems a bit awkward for me.

That is the most innovative idea I've seen yet! Turns out my poor tetris skills transfer to this game as well but at least I managed to defeat Rousseau after only a few too many tries. :D

Nice take on the theme, really enjoyed the battle mechanics with the cards. Nice entry.

Things I liked:

-Innovative and creative mechanics with the sword/heart/card system

-Nice pixel graphics

-Good music although the loop was a bit short

Improvements:

-I think the sword/heart/card mechanic could really stand on its own! The innovation and creativity with that system kind of trivialized the fighting mechanics since there was not much you could do except press X

I enjoyed this game! It takes a bit of practice, but I think its quite addictive because I keep wanting to retry to get better (I get a bit further each time).

I like the graphics in this game, and the card mechanic. You found a clever way to interpret the theme, very creative.

As for improvements, I agree with what goodwinek said, and don't really have any to add beyond that!

posted review for another game here by mistake, doh.

Cool, a pico-8 game, very inspiring. The graphics were top notch for an 8-bit game, one nitpick though is I don't see how it fits the jam theme, is there a story behind the characters?

@vegmuffin The theme is where I got the idea from; the duelist(Dante) is trying to penetrate deeper and deeper into the chest of the enemies (what isn't super clear is is what people are perceiving as armor are actually bits of the enemies armor that you are weaving your rapier into to get to the heart); so stabbing deeper and deeper into enemies.

That missing connection here for not being obvious is definitely my fault as I didn't have enough time to get back around and polish that part of the UI to make it more obvious.

Thanks for playing and rating!

Novel idea indeed! Nicely excecuted. It would be really great if the initial part where you actually slash (or run into) the enemy was a little more complex or exciting as well.

This is a neat idea. I love the mechanic and the art direction.
I really had trouble at first to understand how the cards were moving. Was I moving the whole column? Was the cards tried to move up or down? It took me few tries to understand that you actually move the empty slot.

Fuck. Voltaire.

Yeah, this is the one where I gave up. The first two were pretty fun once you got the hang of it, I really enjoyed doing them AGAIN AND AGAIN BECAUSE VOLTAIRE IS BULLSHIT AND I HAVE TO START OVER.

Really solid game, such a blast. Congratulations

Very good game. The Gameplay is new and I think the Old NES feels give it a full spolight.
The graphics are on point.

PS : I hate Voltaire

Solid game, very innovative idea which works surprisingly well (once you know how it works). The audio and visuals help sell the game, they are nice. The loop on the music may be a bit on the short side, but that's a bit nitpicky.

I liked the names of my enemies, the puzzle mechanic feels very juicy and the idea of guiding the stab to the heart is awesome!
One of the best ones out there.

I was certainly an original take on the theme. It took a bit for me to realize that the arrow keys were moving the empty space up and down, it was actually quite fun after I realized that. It could be nice if there were a bit more to the initial fight, like jumping to avoid projectiles. Anyway it's great as it is, well done.

Nice! It feels like a genuinely innovative idea. The difficulty ramps up quite quickly, but I'd rather that than games being too easy. I really like it, and plus points for using Pico8!

Innovative. Though it would be better if you'd not have to redo all easier enemies after losing, imho.

@barturinsky good idea; I think I'll do a new version of the game after I recover with a few days rest and add something there; how about if you flawlessly defeat an enemy your progress is saved?

Cute game! The sprites were adorable, and loved the characters names!
The spike was definitely going a bit slow and a way of speeding it up would have been great. Sound effects were pretty cute. The first section felt like it didn't matter much how to play it and spamming X seemed the best strategy.

Very unique idea, I really like it. I think the difficulty compounds a bit too fast, as more blocks are added each round *in addition to* the sword speeding up. That's a bit of a nitpick though. I can see how the mechanics could be expanded with more time, like adding a minigame for blocking or perhaps partial damage for partial penetrations. I really enjoyed it, love seeing really unique games!

Really dig the music! Especially the credit music, a wonderful miniature, one arpeggio, one melody. Boom!
Music geek stuff apart, dig the game and the mechanic that is quite subtle and unfolds as one plays the game. Congrats!! You made me want to learn pico 8

EDIT: had to play this again. I realized I always wanted to play Dante and Nietzsche in a game AT THE SAME TIME!!! For the next jam I expect a tri-fold mechanic which also includes Julius Caesar.

Hi,
this is really cool. Especially for pico-8! Love the music and the gameplay is very unique.
I found it a bit hard but that just requires extra practice on my side.
The theme is a bit of a miss for me but after reading your comments here I can understand it.

Thanks for reviewing my game!

Good theme interpretation. Very interesting gameplay mechanics, I like it when a game comes along with an experience I've never seen before.
I actually stopped mid-comment here to test something, and realized that the same minigame starts wether you hit the enemy or they hit you. I think it'd be cool to have both an offensive and defensive minigame, maybe a failure at one gives chance at the other, like a counter-attack?


Took me 7 tries or so, this game is brutal! I absolutely loved your game. I am actually glad you depicted the lock with negative space. It's less obvious than moving actual squares into place for example, so for me I really liked that it racked my brain a bit trying to move pieces so fast. Great job on choosing the difficulty for the game, it was right up my alley.

One interesting side note about your concept: with normal fighting games after you land a hit, you then play an execution "minigame" of comboing your opponent for a reward like max damage. I found it really interesting you managed to achieve a very similar effect by using an actual minigame, rather than using combat mechanics. That's something I really haven't seen before, and it's an interesting design to think about.

I love innovative ideas and this one is one of the better ones I've seen in a while. Hope you keep doing future LDs!

At first I found the idea and mechanics a little confusing but got the gist after a couple turns, good fun and it gets very stressful in the later stages.

I was totally confuse during my first try, but when I get it It's pretty cool :fencer:
I like the concept and it's pretty well implemented
Great job!

This was a really neat mechanic and super clever. you managed to make stabbing very stressful! The art is really cute as well, and the sound track is great.

I wish the minigame expanded a bit to become more of a puzzle rather than a speed test (maybe something like curved blades and two openings in each column so that you had to create a path (other than a straight line))

I really enjoyed this mechanic though!

Very cool and creative mechanic, the minimalist art and music was also nice, but I have to say, I didn't get very far

This mechanic is pretty interesting, however after the first two enemies it got way too hard (at least for me). I also like the music!

Oh man, got to the third level and boy that was insanely hard. Music was great, and I'm always so fascinated by the cool ideas that pop up with a Pico 8 engine. Great job! Super cute game with a neat and interesting mechanic that fits the theme nicely.

I'm loving these Pico-8 games and this one was no exception! I have to say this was a very creative and clever use of the theme and I loved the music.

Woah, this is a killer concept. Seriously well done!

Really interesting concept which looks great and is very challenging. The music and sounds were awesome. Loved the controller support. I'm not sure how close to the theme it was but it was definitely a fun game. Great work!

That was super cool! Pico devs still scare me, just getting stuff working is neat.

I liked the game, especially the duel mechanic, I never seen this one before! I also LOVE pico8 games, I must say
I am curious: why all the ennemies have philosoph names?

congrats for your entry, I really liked this one!

deeper and deeper! This one made laugh man... thats a fun humorous game with cool fight and puzzle mechanics and somehow is mesmerizing and you want to finish it. Ive enjoyed playing.. Great job!

Super tiny pixels are great! Thanks for your cool game.

This was fun to play, and extra fun with the enemies names!

Very cool game, has some nice art. The main fight mechanic took me a few attempts before I fully understood what I was meant to do, but it was interesting once I figured it out. Got quite difficult quickly though.

I didn't manage to go over Voltaire, but this was fun to play, and an intersting yet simple gamelay. Well done!

I just can't beat the 3rd enemy. I feel like the controls for up and down are somehow in reverse.

Nice puzzle battle! :thumbsup:

Really liked the idea of swapping between the two main mechanics. Graphics and controls were clean and the game fit well with the team in really interesting way. The music loop was enjoyable but a little bit short. Great work!

Cool mechanic, even if the game becomes really hard very quickly !
The fact that it is the hole you are moving in the mini game makes the control a bit counter intuitive, maybe with a translate animation it would help people understand quicker what is happening.
The art is really cool too, but I'm not sure it's how Voltaire and Rousseau looked when I learned about them at school. They are way more badass that way !

These Pico-8 games are so impressive :smile:

A _very_ good game! Sound and graphics are very good for the platform, the game mechanic is quite nice. Also, perhaps the the most creative interpretation of the theme I saw so far! No bugs either.

Voltaire was hard! I beat him only with light-cheating: pausing the game and pre-planning my finger movements in advance!

Sorta like @jrevel mentioned above, I found it extremely hard to internalize the idea that my controls where moving the empty space. Even after I understood that this is the way it worked, I apparently had some kind of block: my brain and my fingers were not working together to make the right play! (I found this amusing... perhaps because in games I normally control something, and in this case I was controlling "the nothing"?)

Thanks for making this game, really enjoyable!

Great visuals and audio. It was a very interesting combat resolution mechanic, but I found moving tiles to be unintuitive. I feel like if pressing up moved the blank space up and pressing down moved the blank space down, it would feel a lot better.

Other than that, this was a fun little game. Great work.

oh dear, that gets very difficult! I like it. Maybe I should try on keyboard instead of controller. Great work with pico-8! And a very bizarre and cool use of theme

Cute game with innovative fighting mechancis!

I enjoyed playing with my keyboard more than playing with my controller.

I wish I knew how far along the game I was when I failed again. In the beginning, I would have liked an option to finish the attack sooner, because it was quite simple and I was often waiting for quite a bit. On the other hand, the later challenges were too hard for me, so that I never managed to finish the game. :smile: If it wasn't for the screenshot by @peachtreeoath I wouldn't have known that there was an end. :wink:

Nice entry, congrats!

What a nice idea - I got confused by controls in the beginning (maybe a write up next time would be nice?), but then got a hang of it. Even though pico is not the best thing for graphics, I still find it fascinating that the most unique game I find are made using pico. Great job!

I felt little else other than pure contentment taking a "stab" at this. Thanks for this solidly put-together experience!

I felt little else other than pure contentment taking a "stab" at this. Thanks for this solidly put-together experience!

Nice entry! Graphics and music are cute and functional, and simple enough gameplay to learn it quickly.

Started off easy and quickly progressed in difficulty too. Really interesting combat mechanic.

Well done!