My second LD, but this time I’m joining the solo comp. At first I thought about giving up, given the theme. But after a good night of sleep I came up with a rather decent idea (imho). I’m focusing more on the artsy stuff ATM, won’t rely on top notch mechanics.

Trying to emulate sumi-e paintings.

Now its time to add those darn animations. Wasted quite some time figuring out how to animate stuff on AE, for the sake of the graphics quality. Dunno if it was worth it, initially planned to have a couple of enemies, dunno if I will be able to do more than 3 or 4 of them. Anyway, better rest a bit.

Yay!

Got opening and ending screen done. Got some sfx made with sfxr and music made on Chirp. Now I will try to add as much enemies as possible. My final goal is 7 samurais, but I dunno if I can make it haha.

Flash Version (download the SWF)

After so long since the compo, I’ve finally got some time to sit down and write a postmortem about One Strike.

What went right:

• Art Style: For some while I’ve been wanting to try this art style. I mean, something made only of strokes, as a sumi-e of sorts. Well, it worked quite well, if you ask me. It was fast to produce the illustrations and it worked really nice.
• Gameplay: The gameplay was in my mind since the very beginning and wasn’t supposed to be complicated, not at all. Just a game of patience/timing. I could add more depth and make it more fun, like, adding a chance for the enemy to feign his move. But nah, wanted to focus more on a game with good art and solid and really simple gameplay.
• Coding: Using Stencyl on my full time job made the coding a breeze. Seriously, it barely took me 2 hours.
• Feedback: You guys are amazing. No, seriously, your feedback is really, really great and really appreciated. That being said, this game might spawn something longer with deeper gameplay since many people got hooked by the art style.

What went wrong:

• Animations: First I was like “Yeah, I think I can animate that on Photoshop”. Then I was like “No way I can animate that, frame by frame, on Photoshop, I need something where I can use bones or whatever”. Then I moved to learn After Effects. Bad move. It took me too much time to figure how to properly work on AE, I’ve hopped for something simpler, like Flash, but nope. After I’ve got done with the third samurai I’ve figured out how to make everything as fast as possible, but it was too late to improve any animation at all. Maybe If I’ve had learned it properly, I could make a single great samurai animation, make a script out of it and automate the process, since all of the are broke down in the same body pieces/layers.
• Music: First I was like “Yeah, better learn how to use some cookie cutter tool some days before the compo, I’m no composer.”. So, I’ve proceeded and taught myself how to use MusicShake. I even ‘composed’ some great stuff (imho). But then, once the theme came and once I’ve got my game concept on my mind I was like “Yeah, I can’t use MusicShake for that”.
• SFX: Just nope. I really can’t make SFX. Maybe if I got a decent mic I could beatbox some stuff. But I don’t have a decent mic and didn’t had time to properly learn SFXR. I think if I had actually did my homework BEFORE the compo, I could have done some good stuff there.

What went kinda right/wrong:

• Music: Gladly, Rezoner made Chirp and it was more than enough to make something ‘japanese-duels-like’ (and I’m really sorry if I’ve ofended someone’s culture by using that stereotyped song).