While flipping through Twitter, my eye was caught by a unique looking fighting game. The combat style and speed was like nothing I have seen in the genre. A frenzy of limbs and weapons, reminiscent of a Shaolin monk showcasing his skills. The game is One Strike.
One Strike is a 2d fighting game with fast and furious gameplay, memorable characters, and an 8-bit retro aesthetic! Choose between one of six unique fighters, travel to medieval Japan’s beautiful pixelated landscapes and fight to become the greatest warrior in history.
Only one hit decides a match. A duel in One Strike rarely reaches more than 10 seconds. Plan quickly, attack, defend, dodge, lure your opponent to a reckless attack and finish the duel before you are finished by the blade of the enemy. But don’t worry, if that happen, pick up another warrior and try again.
Developer Danilo Barbosa the one man army behind One Strike was kind enough to give us some behind the scenes knowledge of his project.
Hi Danilo, Tell us a little about yourself and/or team:
Hi all! I am Danilo Barbosa. And that is it. That’s the team. I have a graduation as an electronic engineer, even though I’ve been working as a software tester for the last 4 years. 2 years ago I’ve decided to study and try to make games in my spare time. As a solo dev and pixel artist I’ve accomplished the feat of finishing 4 games (1 android and 3 edgames) and I am currently working on 2.
Even though I am working alone in One Strike. I did hire an artist to make some amazing artwork that will be in the game and very talented musician that will give the players awesome tracks and sound effects.
Your game looks quite unique in concept, with a very fast paced combat system, as opposed to the traditional kick punch block seen in other fighting games. Why did you make this choice and what experience do you hope to bring to players?
Well, for a few reasons. The first and most important experience I want the player to have the feeling of being in a real duel, where decisions are made in split seconds and the results a dead serious, like well, being killed or killing the opponent. The idea for this game was conceived after watching 7 Samurais with my wife. There is this scene, close to the middle of the movie, where 2 samurai are dueling with wooden swords. Both of them strike at what it seems to be at the same time, but the older samurai claims victory, enraging the other combatant. How to solve this? A real duel, real swords and no more dispute after finishing. Or you win or you die.
The second reason that fit perfectly with the first is that I needed a simple game concept for a 10 days gamejam, themed as gameboy games.
The game did ok in the JAM but the best part was to be featured on Kotaku, briefly I know, but sent thousands of new players that wanted to try the game and that fueled me for months to develop this game.
http://kotaku.com/game-boy-jam-shows-everything-that-made-the-handheld-sp-1787859278
What tools and technology are you using? Was there a specific reason for this choice?
I’ve been using Unity and Photoshop. The reason behind it is that they are the tools I am most familiar with.
What are some challenges you have encountered during the process? ( Technical, scope, creative, other)
There were a lot of them. After the jam, the first thing I’ve decided to do was add an online multiplayer feature. As a very inexperienced developer, it turned out to be too much for me and it almost made me drop the project. Luckily I gave up on the multiplayer and decided to attack smaller tasks and features such as creating new characters. After finishing the second character and having nobody to help me test it, this new character turned out to be very unbalanced and to make the changes that would make him fair cost me some time. My wife tried to help testing but She didn’t like games at all, leading me to the first good decision I took since having the idea for the game: Create an AI system. It took way shorter than I though to finish it and it helped me IMMENSELY. The pace of the development almost tripled now that I had something to help me play the game with and test everything I was making in real time.
The real challenge now is to get the word out. The game is getting close to completion and even though I am very active on social network (twitter, facebook, instagram and tumblr), I am worried that won’t have the attention I want it to have. So a very big challenge still.
Thanks for your time, I look forward to a gameplay demo!
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Interview end.
The game is set to launch on Steam in October, so I would keep an eye out, looks like great fun.
For more info you can visit the One Strike‘s Twitter account or official website below.
https://twitter.com/dmbarbosa1
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