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SLASH DASH SAMURAI

Slash Dash Samurai makes the swipe the central focus in a  high-action endless runner, where free-angle swipes propel the player through enemies.
My main goal was to make a mobile game that rewarded skillful play. Being the first game since founding SkyCanvas Games, I wanted to lean on mechanics known to work on mobile and to add our own spin that can't be ignored. The central focus of the game are limited slashes and jumps that can be reset through killing enemies and promote chaining of kills.

 

Game:                           Company:

Slash Dash Samurai        SkyCanvas Games

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Game-Engine:  Unity
 

Role:

Co-Founder, Game Designer, Art director

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Team size:  5                  Time:  18 months

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Website:

http://www.skycanvasgames.com/games/

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PROCESS WORK

The swipes can be drawn from any starting point on the screen and your angle drawn will be emulated by the player character. I wanted to set up the slashes to be as accessible and instinctual as early as possible. 

Swipe to slash

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Core Gameplay Loop

Exploration and codification of core gameplay Loops

Jump UI

When we ran into major trouble with multi-touch detection in differentiating slash(swipe) and jump(tap). We opted for a dedicated section of the screen for jump, in an area players are unlikely to use for swiping in their natural play habits and keeping fingers away from blocking vision of incoming enemies. 

Platform/Enemy Rollout Doc

Planning document for spawn chances of enemy/level chunks

TRAIL

INFO
PROCESS WORK

I wanted a trail who's main job was providing a visual spectacle that enhances the players feeling of momentum and also acted as a visual reminder of the player's current movement resources. Ultimately, landing somewhere near Mario's simple diegetic size represented health system.

We have a layered trail that the main character leaves behind. We have a Red trail representing slashes, and a white representing jumps.

As you use your abilities up, the corresponding trail disappears.
Trails reappear on kills, allowing you to earn a visually appealing trail combo of white and red.

  difficulty of of enemy bunching and not enough time for players to swipe/ slash causing player to get caught in ground and make speeding up along ground by slash

MONETIZATION

Currently, we have Interstitial Ads play after a fixed amount of runs. I believe first impressions have a strong effect on a player's view of the Ad play rate, so no matter the fixed Ad play rate after runs, whenever you start up the game, I wanted the first run to never play an Interstitial Ad.

We offer an opt-in Ad watch that multiplies coins gained from a run. It's set to appear infrequently, relieving a feeling of a forced Ad watch that can be emotionally flipped into a lucky rare-chance reward. This also allows mental space for min-maxing whether to use it on a bad run.

We also implemented a timed Ad watch for coins to bring players to explore the shop and also help compel players to open the game.

We had plans for a real world currency, but was ultimately cut for time.

2x Coin Button

Timed Ad Button

It was important for me that players could replay the tutorial freely, so its currently always accessible from the settings menu.
This also keeps the game accessible for returning players and those who needed another run at it.

PROMOTING CHAIN KILLS

SHOP

To act as a motivating tool, upgrade-able shop items have a progress meter, this motivates players to treat shop items as a checklist to complete.

In order to draw players to the shop and make use of the progression mechanics, an alert pops-up under the shop button when they have enough coin for something to buy. The new icon draws players towards the shop.

Score Menu

Upgrade Progress Bars

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Shop Item Study

Study of power-up costs in Temple run 2

My main goals with the tutorial were to teach players thoroughly, to be hidden, and to be quick and painless.

The tutorial is easy and doesn't frame itself as a tutorial on the outset and streams the player into the main game seamlessly without loading. There are also no time freezes during tutorial text, keeping the player's perception of control the whole time. Even back in previous games we implemented a similar system into, when we'd ask them, this style tended to leave players not consciously knowing they ever did a tutorial.

The teaching loop of instructing and practical testing is kept efficient. Only struggling players will likely trigger re-spawn checkpoints to facilitating repeated practice, effectively restricting it to only those who need it.

TUTORIAL

trail
monetization
shop
tutorial
promoting chain kills

To push the players towards our ideal way of playing, we reward players the most if they chain kills between enemies. But we make sure players still have the freedom to play there way if they so choose, by not punishing them for say, landing on the ground for a break or avoiding enemies to maximize lifetime.


Here are the benefits that promote players to chain kills:

1. A kill reset a charge of jump and slash.

2. The Trails are a visually appealing red and white when you have charges of both a jump and a slash.

3. Kills add toward both the score and coins, while most rewards only grant coins.

4. We added a combo counter for how many kills you can chain without landing, we reward bonus score per chained kill.

5.I added an animation for the score breakdown which highlights sources of resource awards and the specific amounts, acting a lot like damage numbers flying off of enemies in an MMO.

 

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