WARD
In development
A top-down action game where every duel is a negotiation.
A three-input timing duel: read the enemy a beat before they commit. Fight four elemental sages, then choose to kill or spare them; you answer who you are by how you fight. In development, with a playable slice and placeholder art.
Background
WARD starts with a single moment: your master is killed in front of you, and in that half-second you reach for whatever is left behind. Everything that follows serves that feeling. The game is not a power fantasy. It is the conversation of blades, the half-beat where you read an opponent before they commit.
Combat uses three inputs: strike, parry, dodge. The view is top-down so you read the whole duel at once, both fighters and the distance between them. Each fighter's state is color-coded, and the colors are the language. Amber is the tell, red the live strike, muddy brown the opening to punish.
The king sends you against four elemental sages. Each yields instead of dying, and you choose: finish them for raw power, or spare them and gain an ally. The game never asks who you are. It watches how you fight. The lineage runs through early Zelda and SNES-era RPGs, with Sword and Sworcery restraint.
Where it stands
A playable vertical slice in Godot 4: the opening, the king's hall, four distinct sage duels in any order, kill-or-spare, and an ending. Three weapons, four sages, placeholder art. Keyboard and gamepad.
What's next
A feel pass on the timing in hand, then the look. Art comes after the duel is right.