Hello! It's me, Richard!
First of, sorry for the radio silence! It's been a MANIC few months here, not least of all rebuilding our ENTIRE combat system from scratch, designing new levels, new characters, new enemies.... It's almost a whole new game!

The Short Version
This is our new demo! We're affectionatelly calling it the Combat Alpha Demo (catchty, right?) and it showcases exactly that! We've stripped out the level dialogue and left you with pure combat to get a real feel for what we offer. And what is that?

- Thunks new 5-Hit Ground Combo!
This is a huge departure from a previous, a 3-hit combo ending in a lengthy ground-slam. Fun, but ultimately hard to do anything afterwards, and felt repetetive quickly. The extended combo looks better, is much smoother, plays better with our weapons... it's just an improvement all around. But where's that Ground Slam gone? Well...

- Defensive Special
Every character now gets an area-affecting Defensive Special for those times when you're surrounded by too many goblins/skeletons/other people at the bar. You know how it goes. This exchanges a little portion of health for a devestating attack with huge knockback. 

- Charged Attack
Another attack? Dang! Hold the Attack button for a couple of seconds to combo into a powerful step-through gut punch. Wouldn't want to be on the end of this. The best part? Can easily transition from your ground combo into it!

- Stomp Attack (Not in this demo!)
It's not in THIS demo, but it's remiss not to mention ALL the new toys we have. A Stomp attack is perfect for... well, anything too short to punch. Or something so gross and gribbly that you just want to stamp on it. Not saying it's spiders-the-size-of-dogs, but... eugh, Could you imagine?

- Weapons
Weapons! We love them! You love them! A variety of weapons to collect, with unique weapons in most levels. Goblin spear? Pick it up and stab 'em! They come in three flavours at current - Spears, Swords and Large Weapons (like the new Chefs Cleaver unique weapon that we've left at the start of the level for you to just enjoy! Later on you'll have to fight a miniboss for it. You can probably guess which one.).

- Shields
Shelds are a big change too. NO MORE ACTIVE BLOCKING! A shield will give you bonus HP as long as it's equipped (and in most cases, a form of damage resistance). But the Block button is still VERY useful as it's been turned into...

- Parry
Hit Parry just before an enemy hits to whack 'em with your shields, do a huge amount of knockback damage AND reduce the damage you take from that attack to 0! Takes some practice, but very worth it. 

- Enemies
As mentioned in the last post, on TOP of all this, the enemy AI has had a HUGE rework to create interesting, varied enemies who don't just mob you into the ground. Fun! 

So that's the Combat update! Try it out and leave your thoughts below!