We reached a beautiful milestone today. Two Strikes innitial version would have 6 characters to start. So today we reach this magical number even though there are a lot of things that aren't ready still, but at least now you have a proper fighting game, with enough characters to create very exciting duels. Thank you for
Who is Yasuke?
(This character is based on a historical person).
Yasuke was born in Mozambique, in an inland village away from the coast, as the youngest of three siblings. In his early childhood, he was enslaved by a Portuguese raiding party, who took him and his siblings captive. After a succession of transfers, he was brought for sale to the Estado da India, the Portuguese Indian colonies in 1553. Even as a young boy, he was incredibly muscular and was selected for service in the Portuguese colonial army as an indentured soldier. He fought in the Ottoman-Portuguese conflicts of 1538-1559, including serving in the Battle of the Gulf of Oman under Dom Fernando de Meneses. After saving one of his commanding officers from being beheaded by a cannonball, he was given his freedom as thanks. Separated from his brother and sister, he returned to Goa, the center of Portuguese power on the mainland, where he searched tirelessly for them, to no avail. In 1574, he made the acquaintance of Reverend Alessandro Vagliano, an important Jesuit missionary, who hired Yasuke on as his combination bodyguard valet. Yasuke accompanied Vagliano first to Macau for four years, and then all the way to Japan in 1579, where Vagliano was to be the official representative of the Catholic Church. During Vagliano’s 1581 diplomatic overtures to Oda Nobunaga, a Japanese warlord, Oda took interest in Yasuke, and hired him a few months later as one of his retainers. Yasuke and Oda grew far closer than Yasuke and Vagliano ever had been, and Yasuke eventually rose to be Oda’s personal weapon-bearer. He accompanied Oda throughout the final years of his power until Oda was forced to commit seppuku by the forces of the rival warlord, Akechi Mitsuhide during the Honnō-ji Incident. Yasuke was captured and brought to Akechi, who decided that Yasuke was free to leave, so long as he traveled directly to the Christian missionary church in Kyoto.
But that didn't happen. Why would Yasuke be here in the eternal tournament? To be revealed later in Two Strikes story mode!
Gameplay
Yasuke is a powerful warrior with his skills valued by Oda Nobunaga himself. Yasuke's move set consists of: Weak Attack: His weak attack is fast and has a long range. Really great to poke the opponents, but his recoil is also big, leaving time for his opponents to get in range. Strong Attack: Yasuke unsheats his sword after a long preparation delivering one of the farthest strikes in the game.
Both of his attacks can be canceled.
Dashback: Normal dashback with quick transition
DashForward:This is where it gets interesting. If the player performs his dashforward while he is moving or idle, he will perform a special technique that will break the opponents defense and trigger a quick counter attack that is impossible to defend. If the player started an attack animation, if they dashforward, a situational dashing will occur. A normal dash to get closer to his opponents.
For more details on his move set, I did a video explaining it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdxpep113qg
Yasuke is a very unique fighter that took me a long time to figure it out his design but I super excited to finally deliver him to you, I hope you like him as much as I do!
Gameplay Changes:
The perfect parry effect on the defender changed. Before the character would continue they defense animation, now it goes straight to Idle, giving more time to perform a counter move.
All the characters received a buff speed. I want to give the player the ability to rely not only on his dashes, but also his normal movement to play the right fotsies game. Also, this change makes the game a lot more dinamic.
I decided to increase the brightness of the blood spurts when the player is hit. Some stages were difficult to actually see it. Now is shining in the player faces. Some might think it is too much and they look weird, but I believe it is more important to give both players the current status of the battle just by looking at the floor.
Uff, there are so many of them. The implementation of the clash duel and perfect parry weren't perfect and I took this last month to finish fixing every bug I could find with these two new mechanics.
Other bugs squashed: - the AI was stucking in the hurt animation sometimes - Some colliders were off, specially Tomoe weak attack collider for player 2 - The best of "5" was not appearing on the round counter. - Finishing rounds were taking longer without nothing happening - Fixed many AI interactions (more on that later) - Fixed many characters end fight animations
Price Increase:
Like said in the last piece of news, the price will be increased to 12.99 US$.
Next Steps
I will start working hard on the AI again. It is time to fix a lot of things and flesh it out to produce more difficult and easier enemies. I have many ideas that I started implementing and many more to test!
Yasuke's Release Date Revealed, Early Access Game Price Increase and Discount!
Yasuke, the Daimyō’s bodyguard will be available on May 30th!
We are very close to the release of our 6th character: Yasuke! I can't hold the excitement of this release because, after the brand new remodeling of his skill set, he became one of my favorite characters in the testing version.
Road to Yasuke!
After adding the latest new features, especially the perfect parry, Yasuke's old moveset became quite obsolete and, to be honest, it wasn't communicating with his art design.
Old Yasuke
Before, Yasuke was a very defensive character, slow and reactive. In his early design, he didn't have a dash forward, instead a special skill that would counter attacks. The idea was that the Yasuke player would need to time perfectly the moment of the active attack frame from his opponents and as a reward, his counter move will be a weak hit if the opponent was in the range of his sword. Which, after some testing, was difficult to pull off and with the new perfect parry, simply too risky. Also, his strong attack, which is low, but long ranged strike wasn't using the cancels in a useful way.
New Yasuke
A brand new redesign was thought out to make the character work. So, the first thing was to give him a new special ability: The defense crusher! Now, if you synchronize your special skill (dash forward) with the opponent's defense, you will break the enemy's defense and score a weak hit. Still, not easy to pull it off, since your opponent knows that you have this ability, but a lot easier than before and creates synergy between his art design, being a strong tall man, and his skill set.
Solving the strong attack problem
Yasuke couldn't be a defensive character with this new ability anymore, so to make it more versatile we are adding his dash forward back. But, you can't only be using it while canceling a weak or strong attack. It might sound confusing to some players, but it makes a lot of sense for his character design since canceling is the most efficient way to make your opponent use the defense in vain, and consolidating that with a way of moving forward faster, makes it a great combo for the character.
Price Raise
Alongside the release of Yasuke, the early access game price will have a small increase from 10.99US$ to 12.99US$. But don't worry! You will have from May 22th to May 29th, the day before Yasuke will be released to get the game with the current price plus a 10% discount! I hope this shows my appreciation for everyone that believed in the game from the start!
Why?
I kept the current price for more than 2 years now and the reason was that the game had a long series of production problems which made it impossible to give you constant updates and improvements on the game. The game was released on early access with 4 playable characters and I had planned for the vanilla version 6 playable characters. The reality of the vanilla version will now be another: The first 2 planned DLC characters will be added to the vanilla version plus a non-playable character summing up 9 characters compared to the 6 planned initially. Unfortunately, I couldn't avoid increasing the price after having to work for two more years.
This week's update
I decided to wait a little bit and release it all with Yasuke on May 30th. There are a lot of bug fixes, balancing changes and improvements on the new features. So I hope you forgive me but it is for a good cause!
Exciting new game mechanics, tons of improvements, and squashed bugs!
Perfect Parry
It's a game-changer. What seems to be a very simple addition, transforms the game into something different.
After watching the players in the last two events, I noticed that some exchanges could be long and not interesting. Attacks and defenses are the keys to the game, but so are footsies, timing, and canceling. More players than I would like to see kept spamming attack after attack and even though, defending gives you the head start on the next attack, it was clear that it was enough to create interesting moments. The perfect parry comes to add a new strategy to attacking because defending is a lot more interesting now.
How does it work?
Now defending with perfect timing opens the opponent to a light attack. The defense animation is now changed: It starts as usual, with some preparation frames, but then it shines and the weapon will flash a reflection. It's subtle but visible. That's the window of the perfect parry. After that, the defense continues normally, finishing the defense finally with some vulnerable frames.
Effects on the fighters:
The attacker that hits a perfect parry will play the strong reverb animation. So a long punishing animation. The defender will continue their defense animation until the end like no attack was defended. Meaning the defender will have a bigger window to decide what to do next, going for an almost certain weak attack hit, preparing a strong attack, etc.
Duel Clash
This new feature added to the game now eliminates the double knockouts. Two Strikes duels are usually pretty fast and the DKOs instead of creating memorable moments like in most traditional fighting games with lengthier fights, were doing the opposite. To fix that and continue to build up tension in the duels, I've created the Duel Clashes.
How does it work?
Now, if the two players hit each other at the same time (0.1 seconds window after connecting attacks) the fight will stop for half a second (the cinematic effect will play) and then the fighters will be separated.
Effects on the fighters:
Now, the fighters don't take hits after being separated. They are pushed back the same distance and are ready to fight at the same time, once it finishes.
Character Voice Overs
Yes! I am adding voice-over to the characters in-game. For now, only our beloved Kenji has it. I want your opinion on it! Tell me what you think in the comments. The voice actor for Kenji is no other than Sora the Troll, a very famous Japanese YouTuber. Go check his channel, he is pretty funny. Kenji attacks also have names, now. Can you guess what he says?
General Changes
Kenji, Tomoe, Goemon, and Ayai defense animations have more vulnerable frames at the end to avoid defense spamming, making them a little bit longer. Since defending got buffed, I didn't want players abusing the defense as well.
The game's beautiful songs can now be played more and without being interrupted so many times. The game over or won matches will not reset the songs any longer.
New sound effects for when slashing the enemy and a super new cool sound effect for the final death. Much more impactful.
New sound effects for perfect parry and duel slashes.
Bug fixes
To begin with, I would like to thank all the players sending bugs on our discord channel, you are key to the development of this game.
The oldest bug in the game was finally fixed. When defending, sometimes you could get hit as well, at the beginning or the end of the active defense. It took me years to finally squash this one. I thank you for all your patience.
Ayai was missing a frame after being defended, which made her disappear for a millisecond.
Some scenarios were not filling the screen entirely, leading to some weird effects. You shouldn't see this anymore.
Song overlapping and looping were stopping for 1s and sometimes not restarting. Now the music transitions are seamless.
Game Balancing
This was pushed to next week.
Why I didn't release Yasuke in April?
Well, I'm sorry about it, but with that many changes, it was impossible to work on him too much this month of April. Also, with the new perfect parry mechanic, his design became a little bit stale and needs some rework, but don't worry! He will be released for sure at the end of May.
New game mechanics coming soon and happy birthday to me!
Birthday Celebration!
Today is my birthday! 37 years old... Just want to thank you all for being here and supporting the game, that by itself it's already a great birthday gift!
But, if you want to do a little bit more, just because it's my birthday:
Add a steam review if you haven't done it
I want to see the best plays and I want to feature them in my socials! Send your best videos to the drive folder and have a chance of winning prizes and get featured!
Tell a friend about the game :)
New Game Updates!
Enjoying the chance and not to spam you with too much, some very interesting updates are coming soon to the game (tentatively later next week, it will depend on the QA results) that will change the gameplay and luckily make it even more enjoyable and exciting to play:
The end of double KOs. Soon the two players will clash swords and be pushed back. This was not working for a game like Two Strikes, forcing the players to continue the duel is more exciting than killing them both so quickly because they matched each other.
Adding a new perfect parry mechanic. This changes the game. Attacking is now riskier, which after some testing proved to lead to more footsies and canceling, a direction that I'm trying to push the game.
Which leads to:
Defense times will be increased a little to avoid defense spamming. But only the end of the defense, where the player is already vulnerable.
Many balance changes (Give you the details later).
Fixed the most old and ancient bug, when defending, sometimes you could get hit as well, in the beginning or the end of the active defense. It took me years to finally squash this one, so one of the beers I will drinking today will be just to celebrate this.
Of course, with all this fundamental changes, the release of the new character will be pushed to May alongside new game difficulties.
No updates this week but good news for April.
Hello all! I just wanted to update the community on the development of the game these last couple of weeks.
Lately I've been involved in some gaming events, publisher talks and little work was done, unfortunately. Last week and this one I was working on fixing some serious bugs some players reported, but I will not be able to finish the implementation until tomorrow and what happens tomorrow? I will go on a small two weeks vacation with my loved partner and get my batteries charged up.
I'm sorry I couldn't keep up with the two weeks updates but it is for a good reason and once I'm back from vacation we will be very close to the release of our sixth character: Yasuke.
Huge Performance Update! Remodeled starting menu!
Hello duelists! This week is packed with very important updates!
For the last two weeks, I've been working on remodeling the whole start menu. Adding some key quality-of-life features to the game that was long due.
At the same time, I had some external help from a very dear friend, Rinaldo Bueno, that helped me solve most of the performance issues that were plaguing the players with less powerful machines, making it impossible to play the game after the Ayai Update.
But let's go to the details:
Performance Improvements:
- Initial loading times should be drastically reduced because the game is now loading resources gradually and removing them from memory once it is not used.
Starting Menu:
The starting menu was completely remodeled, and a huge refactor was made making it very easy to add more options to the menus in the future. - New Settings menu option added: Now it is possible to change the resolution that suits the player better. - New fullscreen mode added: Now it is possible to play the game outside fullscreen. - Volume sliders added: Now it is possible to adjust master, music, and sound effects volume.
Other improvements:
- Support for Nintendo GameCube and Switch Pro controllers added. - Once the player comes back to the menu, it goes straight to the menu options, instead of playing the initial screens again.
Bug fixing:
- Ayai is now properly backfliping back after her weak attack. - It was possible to play an attack animation while dodging, which allowed the character have a faster next attack since the animation would only play the rest of the clip. (Bug reported by Napparatus)
Full controller support added to Two Strikes and Ayai's great reception!
Big thank you!
For those who missed the big update last two weeks, I've added the fifth character to the game, Ayai: the personification of anger. I just wanted to thank the players' support for the positive messages and the care they showed for the game. A lot of messages with bug reports and improvements were sent that just warmed my heart on how the people want this game to succeed! Again, thank you!
Full Controller Support Added
I know, I know! It took a long time, but it is finally here! I've been testing like crazy for the last two weeks and it works with all the main controllers, Xbox360, XboxOne, Ps4, Ps5 and even Nintendo JoyCons and of course, the support for the second controller was also added. Just plug two controllers and start challenging your friends!
Performance Measures
This last two weeks were also used to solve some performance problems some players experienced with the new patch. The option to change the refresh rate from 60fps to 30fps was added. But, after a lot of testing, it doesn't seem to be working properly in some monitors. Please be patient because next weeks goals are to continue working to improve the menus and add more options like graphics quality, resolution options, volume sliders.
Bug Fixing:
Besides those important updates, I've been squashing bugs like a maniac!
Animations were having different times once cancelled by defense of blocks. Which were creating a very unpolished gameplay.
Attacks that moved the character were also having issues with how much they would move depending on some interactions.
Goemon's kunai was not being shown after being defended.
Small Patch Version 0.6.2
Bug fixed:
- Player 2 could select unfinished characters.
Ayai is finally here! Two Strikes welcomes the personification of anger!
Ayai is the fifth character to be added to Two Strikes.
Gameplay
The fastest warrior in the game so far, Ayai can reach her opponents very easily and at the same time fake her lighting-fast attacks like any other character in the game.
Ayai doesn't have strong attacks, but at the same time, she possesses two quick weak attacks that are very difficult to be defended. Her dash forward travels a great distance and her dash back is a key weapon to mix with the attack cancels making her an unpredictable force of nature.
Being Ayai extremely agile, controlling her might not be the easiest thing in the game, so, mastering her takes time but it will be worth it.
Being so fast also brings other disadvantages. Being defended creates huge holes in her defense, becoming easy prey for counter-attacks, so, be careful and time your attacks well!
Small lore peek: Ayai was born in a small village by the edge of the Amano River as the sixth daughter of the clan chief. She had a mostly peaceful early life, with a loving father and mother. She originally trained to be the daughter of the chief, but as she grew older, became fascinated with the blades and bows of the hunters of her village. She loved stories, especially the story of Sitonai, the Snake Hunter. More later in the upcoming story more...
New Game Features:
Casual Mode added. This is the first step to the training mode a lot of players requested. For now, you can choose the AI enemy you want to practice against, but this will be evolving in the next updates.
Blood Spurts: Visual indicator for weak hits. Some players complained about the lack of indication when they were getting hit. I hope this fixes the problem without adding UI to take the focus of the action.
Sound effects remastered. We have here a full revision of the SFXs we had it previously.
New dash effects.
Bug Fixes:
There were so many bug fixes in this period without updates that are very hard to map all of the ones that were fixed in the update. Some of them are:
Hozoin AI working properly
Hozoin sprites weren't full HD for some animations.
Ayai slashes her way into Two Strikes!
January 30th! Save the date!
But this is only the beginning of new content for the game! I’m so happy you all can’t even imagine! After this crazy last year without any updates due to technical problems we are finally ready to start bringing you new content, new characters, game modes, stages and musics.
Get ready because 2023 will be a great year for Two Strikes!
