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Sword for Hire's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- GDD: Well made with accurate descriptions of mechanics, sounds and gameplay. Taking the time to map out timelines can be important, especially in group work so having the timeline filed out and update can help if necessary. Art: Great implementation of both 3d graphics for the battler and 2d graphics for the enchantment selection, I especially enjoyed the combat with the minions wailing on each other. The heads of the characters made it for me. Theme interpretation: Having consistency of the sword and variability of the wielder with different stats was a very creative interpretation of the challenge. Good job! Gameplay: Sword for hire is a great little autobattler where you choose different enchantment combinations on yourself to defeat the enemy. I enjoyed the smooth integration between choices and actions. Including player agency in having to choose the right affects to counter the enemies enchantments is a simple but elegant gameplay loop that hit the spot for me. I would love to see a mouse over of total power before combat, as it was not clear to me how some of the support enchantments like the "permanently increase x damage type" was stacking. The inclusion of set bonuses (ice/fire or speed/electric etc.) that give further benefit would be a great stretch goal to the game. I did have a couple rounds where some interaction caused massive damage to either me or the opponent that wasn't quite clear. I started a round with 10 hp for some reason, not sure if that was a bug or not! Overall, very well put together game that was enjoyable to play and kept me engaged for longer than was wise. Great job!
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AIq19TMIY6TWu9wK90lqnDCEAiWP_Kzu47ETtzP7eoI/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.lr899156xjnx
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarise your game!
The player is in charge of the enchantments upon their sword that is wielded by random heroes against random enemies. Using knowledge of your heroes abilities and the enemies, the player must pick and choose the most fitting enchantments to improve their chance of beating the enemy.
The player must do this until their sword reaches 10/10 Reputation and earns its place in Swordhalla.
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
You play as a weapon, a sword wielded by different champions every round. You, as the sword, want to improve your reputation to be wielded by greater heroes and to face greater foes.
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
We want the player to be able to design interesting combinations of enchantments that lead to quick and chaotic matches. Do you have any thoughts on how that aspect of the game felt?
We also want the player to be able to make interesting design decisions in response to changes in their champion and the opponent. Did it feel like you had to make interesting choices between rounds?
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Comments
I'm almost insulted that you had a mute button, the musicality of your game is such a treasure! The game play is also wildly addicting. I was not able to get 10 consecutive victories, though someday I might. Very well done!
I'm not sure we can compete with the Broccoli Opera but I'm glad you liked it.
Really cute characters, love the personality and style. I found myself laughing at these little goofy guys! Seems like a lot of care and effort was put into making this! Congrats to the team!
Thanks for playing!
Really fun music (although I think there was an audio glitch when the game loaded, and it played a bunch of the main audio loop several times over itself, but after the loop ended the audio corrected itself). The art style was also very fun, kind of like Nintendo DS vibes mixed with Miis from the Wii. The gameplay was intuitive and fun! My only complaint about the gameplay is that I didn't fully understand what some of the stats meant. Like if I get 0.6 life steal is that 0.6% chance to steal my weapon's damage in life, or do I steal 0.6% of damage as life, or something else? But that's not a big complaint because at least I know I'm getting life steal, you know?
Thanks for playing! The audio glitch is a known bug, I ran out of energy at the end to chase it down. I agree the stats are a bit confusing. Life steal returns X% of damage you deal to you as health, but that wasn't clearly explained.
Cool Game! I like the idea of building your sword with different enchantments and creating powerful combinations.
I encountered a bug where I could not see the descriptions of the enchantments, only the ones on my sword and in the shop. But the description boxes were on the edge (or outside) of the right side of the screen. So, I could not really see what enchantments the enemy had or what enchantments I had in my inventory. Also when dragging the enchantments, they were not on my mouse pointer but more on the right side of the screen.
But in the end, it all worked out and I reached Swordhalla! :-)
Thanks for playing! And congratulations on reaching Swordhalla. We definitely have bugs in the UI like you describe when something unexpected happens to screen resolution. Are you on a high DPI system?
Yes, like you said, it's the screen resolution. I played the game on my 4K TV yesterday.
Now, after I tested it on my 1080p screen the UI looks fine.
Awesome. Thank you for trying it on the other device. That's useful for us to understand the issue.
Haha this games vibes are insane. I had a really good time trying to get a good build going and beating my opponents. The colorful furry masks and stuff just looked crazy to me. Good job using Bevy! The music is unhinged, I love it. There were moments I thought I won or lost but just in the nick of time some effect would go off and kill one us for the win. I think making the attacks feel more juicy with screen shake, more flashing of health bars and bigger numbers, font size not actual values, would make this even better.
Crazy game. Good job
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. More juice is definitely something we would do with an expanded version of the game.
The fight button doesn't work for me when i click it. Sometimes the screen just turns red when i click it.
Hmm. That's weird. The preparation screen looks similar to the screenshots? What browser are you using?
Yeah i have both of the sword slots filled. Chrome.
Are you on a high DPI display? We've had reports that some UI elements are broken in that situation.
The music is hilarious! I really like the deck building mechanics for this, but it is really hard to view the cards sometimes which is definitely an issue since knowing what your cards do in a game like this is crucial. The art is good and really fits the overall game feel. I did usually feel like the cards you received between rounds were still important and it was also nice that you had more than one chance. An easy way to improve a game like this would be to remove game overs, the loss of time from losing a battle is punishment enough for the players, in my opinion at least. Obviously, if you were trying to design this game around having permadeath then punishing the players should definitely be done differently, but I think that the current system is a nice in between :). I really liked your game, you did an awesome job!
Thanks, that's great feedback, we really appreciate it. The part about the cost of the game over experience is particularly interesting to me. We've discussed a few ideas about how we might approach meta-progression and the experience of extended play in an expanded version but I at least hadn't thought about that friction.