New Years' Check-in

Hello everyone, this is just an update post for those of you following on Itch.io.

The launch of the Steam page for the new premium version of First Cut has gone very well:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2193490/First_Cut_Samurai_Duel/

And so has the official Discord server:

https://discord.gg/nkA8XhJXVt

Thanks to those of you who wishlisted the game, and those of you active in the Discord.

I thought it was time to do a round-up of new features I've been working on since my last post.

New Stuff:

I have been working on improvements to the AI - I added some parameters to allow for more distinct behaviours and playstyles.

This setting makes the enemy stay aggressively close to the player and try to dodge behind them when possible.

And this one makes the enemy play defensively and try to maintain a safe distance.

Laser swords have been added as a bonus feature. I stress that these are laser swords and not the copyrighted equivalent.

The new version of the game has switched to a 16:9 wide aspect ratio - as opposed to the original 4:3 version. I've been working to replace the original backgrounds with newer, wider versions in the updated artstyle. The waterfall stage was redrawn from scratch for a greater level of colour depth and detail.

I've also been working on new ones, which I have been constructing to work as both scrolling stages and individual arenas.

The background system has been improved to allow for blood to splatter on the foreground elements as the stage scrolls along.

Custom blood colours are another bonus feature. There's also the option for psychedelic multicoloured blood, but the resulting gif was too much for Itch's filesize limits to handle.

Finally, I was lucky enough to catch the attention of Youtube's RandomMadness, who featured the debut trailer in his new video:

The segment can be found at 3:26. I've been a fan of his channel for a while, and I'm very pleased that the trailer caught his attention. If you're looking for other gory or destructive games I'd recommend checking it out.

I'm still not ready to settle on a launch date, but development is ongoing and I'll announce it as soon as I have a solid timeframe.

Thanks for reading.