Dancing Duelists is a New Free Card Battler from Slay the Spire Developers
Oct. 17, 2023Dancing Duelists is a New Free Card Battler from Slay the Spire Developers
Dancing Duelists is a new and free proof-of-concept roguelike card battle from the famous indie developer Mega Crit, creators of Slay the Spire. It was developed as part of the recent Jump Ship Jam wherein developers were challenged to create games on an engine they aren’t familiar with.
Mega Crit, theindiestudio behind the fantasticalSlay the Spirehas just released a new game called Dancing Duelists. This free game is a result of the developer’s efforts in the recent 3-week game jam.
Mega Crit has also taken pride in the fact that this is their first game on the Godot game engine, as they have started moving away from Unity.
Dancing Duelists is a new auto battler that has players take the dance floor and out-dance all their opponents. As of writing, there are 10 different dancers who have three unique cards each. You augment the starting deck by choosing from a general pool that everyone has access to, allowing you to create strategies and synergies.
The rules of Dancing Duelists is simple – players win the game by either reducing their enemies’ HP to zero, raising their own HP to 50, or the enemy’s entire deck is used up. Most of the actual game comes in pre-planning as the game automatically plays the cards based on your draw order. After this clash, you go on to try and get either 7 wins or lose 3 times overall.
Before each clash, players can select two additional cards to augment their current decks. Every other round, players can also obtain various trinkets that will give them powerful buffs and other effects.
Dancing Duelists’ art style is something that is sure to immediately grab your attention. Their use of thick black outlines to create colorful characters definitely makes everything pop out of the scenery.
Animations are simple, yet effective since what is there is done whimsically well. Characters perform entertaining dances as they sway back and forth, only to be interrupted by attacking or taking damage themselves. The background crowd also jumps up and down in excitement at all the combat going on.
The game’s art is also quite far from Slay the Spire, which made use of more muted colors and less emphasis on character outlines. Instead, the previous game looked like something made out of oil paint instead of a colorful marker.
This feat is further compounded by the fact that Mega Crit’s team of 10 consisted of only 3 artists. Imagine what the developers could do in a year considering the great proof of concept they made in 3 weeks.
Mega Crit who partook in the recent game jam called Jump Ship. This is a challenge proposed to indie developers all around to “jump ship” from the game engines that they currently use. It was meant to help promote alternative engines in the midst of the move away of many developers from the Unity Engine.
While Dancing Duelists is far from a complete game, any news for a follow-up to Slay the Spire is welcome to fans of the roguelike card battler that arguably sparked the genre. Their experimentation and exploration into Godot will further help in their unannounced project. Mega Crit also recently confirmed that they are moving development entirely from Unity into Godot.
Dancing Duelists is a free experiment available on itch.io. It is available on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. Be sure to check out other great card-based games, such asForetalesorSea Horizon!
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Auberon
Writer at Fextralife. I really like vanilla ice cream.
