Website redesign complete
We made it through the crunch time of the XNA competition. It's about time to rework the website to match the quality of our current game "Samurai Soul Hunters". Here we go - nice and plain!
We also managed to grab a fairly decent gameplay video of a four player session.
[flash streaming video - 40MB]
Samurai Soul Hunters - entered in the DreamBuildPlay competition
Samurai Soul Hunters is an action game, a Samurai hack’n’slash brawler to be specific. While it should feel familiar to any who picks up the controller (I caught my wife fighting the last boss in the demo when I came back to the console after taking a break) it’s also a unique experience that defies easy categorization. It blends elements from Space Harrier, Ninja Gaiden, and vertical shooters into a unique pseudo 2D environment.
The game itself plays and handles like an older 2D arcade game trying to look 3D when in actual fact it is a fully 3D environment. We used a good amount of custom vertex and pixel shaders to achieve the final result and have it perform fluidly.
Crunchtime - things are falling into place
It is just over a week to go before the deadline and the game is starting to feel like something that is fun to play. The first multiplayer tests were very encouraging - though the way they played it showed a different approach to what we expected. It was more about getting points - collecting the free essences rather than doing elaborate sword play or special moves. It was a mad shoving and ranting but the fun level was really high.
Now it's a matter of finetuning the way the enemies spawn with increasing numbers of players as well as the strength of the bosses.
A few more images and animations and the new enemy class "shogun" and we are good to go.
