Oh my god YES!

"En Garde!" was one of my top favorite student games in IGF a few years ago, and they're ( @simongigant + others) making it into a final product! It's a real game now! YES!

Best swashbuckling game I've ever played. This is the Zorro / Robin Hood game I always wanted, but you're a kickass lady instead. https://youtu.be/zle9-F_w9bg

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En Garde Reveal Trailer - Future Games Show Summer Showcase 2023

YouTube

YOU CAN PET THE CHICKENS IN En Garde!

THERE'S A DEMO. GO PET THE CHICKENS.

@simongigant is making the GOTY, 10/10, no notes, pettable chickens!

Holy fuck En Garde! is incredible

Pettable chickens aside this is literally one of the best games I've played this year and this is JUST THE TUTORIAL.

Fuckin hell this is immense. The writing and humor and timing are pitch perfect. The witty banter and reparte in the duels is dead on.

And it's a tiny team.

and I can't express enough that this is just the tutorial! In a lil demo! Fuckin HELL they did not have to go this hard.

Of course now I can't beat the "boss" of the tutorial in a way that feels completely broken, which is immediately souring me on the demo at the worst possible point. That's a huge bummer.

I'm sure the final game will be fine but this is a pretty unfortunate note to end a demo on. I'm just having to quit. Then I'll never bother replaying the demo because well, why would I? I'd have to go through the whole thing all over again just to get to a weird brick wall

EDIT: oh thank god there's an invincibility toggle in options.

Oh I get it, it's because the boss does that bullshit where you MUST counter properly. There's a move type you must "counter" and another you must "dodge", and unless you do those and immediately keep attacking his pose recovers.

Which functionally turns this into a weird, shitty Sekiro boss fight.

Guess which Souls game is the only one I've not even bothered to get past the first boss on.

Anyways! I beat it thanks to the invincibility toggle. Maybe I could have beaten it once I understood the mechanic, maybe not, don't really care to find out. Counter-based combat is probably my least favorite mechanic in existence, it's incredibly inaccessible. Your reflexes will dramatically worsen as you age, it's a physical reality, and forced counters are a pure test of nothing but visual acuity (guess what also decays with age) and reflex so- yeah. Whee.

So this is a game I'll turn invincibility on for bosses maybe? Whatever, still great. Hopefully they steer away from that kind of artificial difficulty before final tho.

@glassbottommeg the invincibility toggle is also how I beat Tunic. Phenomenal game but I wasn’t going to practice my snap-response time when I couldn’t quite master the mechanic. Hate when a game feels like it comes *that* close to hitting every aspect

@cpgsaw yep, same

I actually got super motion sick because of some of the boss fights- that game made a ton of bizarre choices in blending really accessible stuff and INCREDIBLY not stuff.

@glassbottommeg Thanks for the recommendation and wishlisted the game as I love counter-based combat. I do understand this style is not for everyone, but this is one of the more lenient implementations I know with parry and dodge tells and focus on crowd control and environmental awareness than heavy mechanical combat like /Sifu/.

I am curious though how this combat system can be made more accessible perhaps with options to slow down enemy attacks perhaps?