Tiny Ronin 🎋
You are a tiny ronin cursed with immortality for the crime of killing 100 samurai. To regain mortality and escape the endless grind, you have sworn to kill 10,000 bandits. This is your story. It will never end.
Hold X to charge your sword and release to slash. Press Z to roll backwards and avoid incoming attacks. You can cancel your attacks with the roll or another attack.
To start a new run after death, you must clean your sword (hold X or Z).
There are now eight achievements to unlock. Three of them will change the look of the game.
Update 1
Rewind Selector!
With the first update you can now toggle the rewind feature in the PICO-8 pause menu. Turn it on to make enemies back off after a successful kill.
Mifune Mode!
You can now play the game in classic Chambara black and white. Just pause the game and activate “Mifune Mode” to turn it on or off. As intended, as they say :)
Cheat menu
There is now a semi-hidden cheat menu for more options like invincibility, slow mode or hardcore mode. Access it by tapping the D-pad down during the splash screen.
I also added two new environmental unlocks. Keep playing to unlock them.
ENJOY!
What a great action arcade game!
Here are different playstyles I've experimented with:
- Frequent small slashes, occasional light charge slashes when enemies are trailing each other.
- Roll away from enemies until they accumulate and then large charge slash.
- Charge all the time, and slash for both kills and mobility. This playstyle is depicted in your second gif.
They each have their merits, but option 3 is my favorite. I stay centered on the screen and charge the slash, wait for enemies to appear before releasing, and then charge slash back to the center before an ambush occurs. I really like how you can interrupt your charge slash movement by holding the charge button again. Interrupting the charge slash movement helps me from moving too far to the edge of the screen, where surprise ambushes are most problematic!
I really like the scenic touches you've created. Enemy kills are fantastically exaggerated, making it even more fun to slash through a pack. The rain starts falling when you're on your final hit, and cleaning off your blade between rounds is so cool!
There are some neat surprises in the game too, and I expect there's even more since I have a few unlockables remaining. My current high score is 1680 after ~15 plays, and I know it's possible to go much higher with practice.
Great job, thanks for sharing!
Really fun!! The animations and controller response and atmosphere are all very rewarding for a casual game, exactly as it should be. The repair sword idea is kind of genius. Keyboard controls on desktop feel much faster and more responsive than they do on my handheld, which may be just the nature of the beast. As a beginner, I'm having problems taking out long lines of bandits in a row, so my games are very short right now :)
Thanks! Dealing a long slash and ending up in a safe spot is the hardest part, I agree. I'm still thinking about ways to tweak this.
Other things I will add in future updates are an ending after defeating 10,000 samurai (not in one game 🤣) and a few more cosmetic unlocks.
@randomgoober I think they need to be popcorn enemies to keep the flow going, but you gave me an interesting idea! Stay tuned.
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