Going about this update in what’s probably a reckless manner, I’ve made some drastic changes to Jump/Boxer and reworked it into iaidoka_interlude to address its criticisms and make it a better game. It’s possible that you’ll need to reinstall the game (12MB) to receive this update due to the amount of changes. Below is a list of changes with more information provided a little further down.
- Reworked combat
- Tweaks to platforming abilities
- Major changes to all graphical elements
- Addition and removal of enemies
- Tweaks to many screens/rooms
- Addition of several screens/rooms
- Replaced soundtrack
- Addition of a little bit of plot
As for the additional information on this update, I’ll try to make it as thorough and as brief as I can while trying not to sound like I think I’m more important, or something like that, than I really am. There is a lot of necessary information to cover, though.
When I started developing this game, I originally developed it as samurai_jazz before deciding that samurai_jazz wouldn’t work too well as a platformer (a little more information on that can be found in this ridiculous post). Despite feeling that way, I did want to finish this game as what would’ve essentially been some odd approach to the concept of having Ayame and Rikimaru or Claire and Leon sides of the story. However, the Greenlight campaign for samurai_jazz influenced me into trying to turn this then unfinished platformer into a stripped-down version of the concept I had in my head for The Way of the Pixelated Fist.
Then some amount of months ago, I thought about a lot of the stuff that I just mentioned and considered making free DLC for Jump/Boxer that would’ve just been a re-skin of the game with samurai_jazz assets and the Bushido Blade-influenced combat that was originally there. It was something that I wanted to do purely for kicks, but then I realized that going about this would actually result in a better game since the criticisms towards the combat and graphics would have been addressed.
From that, I decided that I should do this as a very large update and finish the platformer that I started in a manner that meets the expectations that anyone would have when going into Jump/Boxer without replacing the game entirely. That platformer I started (before it turned into Jump/Boxer) is a film-noir and samurai drama-inspired parkour platformer highly influenced by NES-era Castlevania games with some Bushido Blade-influenced combat, so I read through the Jump/Boxer reviews again to figure out how to accomplish this task.
So after a lot of thinking and reworking, combat no longer consists of spamming the low-kick, bigger differences between the enemies’ attack patterns exists, the controls feel more intuitive, kunai knives no longer come out of the walls with very little indication of where and when, barrels also don’t do that anymore, the levels have been tweaked to be more sensible, and there is some additional content to expand the levels in a more pleasant way.
Despite this next bit of information likely being unnecessary and excessive, this game is part of the samurai_jazz universe (samurai_jazz, this game, Hinedere Beat, and Shin Samurai Jazz). It takes place in that universe’s equivalent of the 1990’s (back when I was jamming the Game Gear and feeling good in my mind about noticing the guitar riff in “Creep” by TLC despite not knowing that a guitar could sound like that), so it takes place between samurai_jazz and Hinedere Beat since samurai_jazz takes place sometime in that universe’s equivalent of the Edo period and Hinedere Beat is in the near future. Shin Samurai Jazz’s story is my attempt at a samurai_jazz-like twist on Momotaro folktales, so that game fits in as this game’s universe’s equivalent of a Momotaro folktale. Regardless of all of that, each of these games are unrelated, standalone stories within one universe in different time periods and areas.
There is more to cover but all of the essential stuff has been touched upon at this point, and having typed what I already did feels like me thinking that there’s more interest in this game than there actually is but I’m really just trying to make it up to everyone who was dissatisfied with this game and give the people who did like it something better to play through again. With that being said, I’m very sorry about any dissatisfaction that anyone had with this game and am very thankful for all of the support and patience.
Lastly, I am working on updates for other games of mine but none of them will be as title-changing-drastic as this.
P.S.
It is possible to revert to Jump/Boxer by following this guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2108634472
