Preview: Samurai Soul Hunters

Hail!

D-Mac forever!

Thanks for the nice comments derek, though, i think you qualify for the patron saint of indie’s before I do. You have the hair for it!

I’ve updated the video on the site with one that’s has a lot better sound quality, it’s still slightly loud but it shouldn’t blow your speakers… ;)

Gotta love this game, it plays as well as it looks!

Fantastic work for such a tight timeframe!

Hasn’t the D-Mac been develloping a samourai game since like the dawn of times?

I didn’t think I’d ever see it completed. Anyway well done, it looks nice.

@moi: You are referring to Katsu, my first real attempt at indie game development that I stubbornly refused to let go of. It was my attempt to make something for casual gamers but also something that interested me. In the end it was like trying to make a game that appeals to the Korean and US markets equally. Their just too different, I couldn’t make the game how I wanted it because casual people wouldn’t like it and if I made it how casual gamers would like it, I started hating it.

With this game, I just went with what I wanted and all of a sudden game development became so much easier. :)

@Taro: I’ll happily be compared to Castle Crashers, the quality bar that The Behemoth sets in its games is nothing short of amazing and something we aspire to match. Sure there are some similarities, but these things are bound to arise when you create a game in the same basic beat-em-up genere. I’ve played Castle Crashers and while the emotional experience is somewhat similar the controls and mechanics in SSH play quite differently.

Dan/Chris, that’s looking *really* great! It’s got some Samurai Jack going on. Wicked.

Ohh, that looks good. Yeah those SpaceHarrier esq games of the late 80’s early 90’s were probably one of the largest influences. Though cannon to nearly all these games is the fact that the are shooters and they plaster the player right up at the screen. I wanted to take elements from those games but instead make a hack’n’slash game. To be honest at the beginning I wasn’t sure if it would work at all.

We experimented first with different scroll speeds, allowing the player to dictate the camera position in the level, and then decided to auto scroll the camera but allow the player to move in and out of the visible area of the level.

Another big influence for us at least early on was ninja gaiden, I really loved the feel of the controls in that game. But by the end I had pulled nearly all of it out, the only similarities that remain are a 3 swing combo, and a slash up / slash down move. The button layout started similar to ninja gaiden as well, but migrated away as I saw that my kids were having troubles with them. I simplified the controls and it made it easier for us all to play together.

So, while we certainly borrowed from a lot of pots (some of the level design influence came from vertical shooters), we mixed it in our own way . If you play the game it should feel a lot like games you’ve played before but at the same time have it’s own unique aspects that feel fresh and new.