YOKANZI's BLADE blends knowledge-based progression with precise, high-intensity melee combat - set in a Lynchian nightmare world with deep lore and quirky characters.
This project began as a prototype in Karachi, Pakistan, back in 2019. It was impulsively started and quickly abandoned, a habit I was accustomed to at the time. The idea never fully left me though — the vibe of the game world from that original prototype lingered in my mind, as did the mechanical premise of a souls-like boomer shooter without guns, where all the items are Cards. Over the next few years, I continued to explore and expand on it, often in idle moments or through daydreams.
When I arrived in Denmark, I decided to revisit the project, initially thinking I would polish it just a bit for my portfolio. What I imagined would take a week turned into over a year of continuous development, fitting in between day jobs and personal challenges. Working on it has taught me invaluable lessons not only about game development but also about humility, consistency, and perseverance.
Throughout this process, the project kept referencing some of my other game design ideas and coding projects, like Reader's Fortress and VOLLEYEBALL.
Explaining the development is no easy task — it’s as complex and obscure as the game itself. That said, the majority of its development is well documented in videos and screenshots. Below, you’ll find some logs I began keeping towards the end of 2024. While they don’t cover everything, they offer insight into my design ethos and the meticulous detail that has gone into the game’s creation so far.
Thank you for your interest in YOKANZI's BLADE!
24-04-25 DEVLOG
#24-Apr-2025 2:10:59 AM
enemies will not dodge while stunned
flare card should now only work on floaties
trees have collision-resistance now
major knife animation tweaks
added "hitstop"
strengthened mosh effect
lowered smoothing value by 0.04
hands move towards look direction
(they still move away from movement direction)
Floaties Sound Design
#19-Apr-2025 3:04:21 AM
Eye Floaties
#18-Apr-2025 12:39:21 AM
The energy system in Yokanzi’s Blade has always been more than just a limit — it’s a language. It dictates the pace of combat, inviting restraint and measured timing. When you push too far, you enter the Burdened state: a simple, blinking red dot where the energy bar once was. You can choose to wait it out, or fight your way back — each option part of an underlying rhythm that pulls at you like a tide.
Recently, I felt compelled to soften that system. Playtests indicated it was stalling the flow of combat more often than I had intended. While I received no direct complaints, the overall pace was breaking. The adjustments made the action smoother and easier, but they also stripped away a key element. In my own playtests, I missed the challenge—the thrill of pushing past a limit with precise, deliberate strikes.
Feeling a bit demotivated, I took a step back. I considered reverting to the old energy system, but I knew that the focus shouldn’t be solely on battling your own stamina bar. Instead, I shifted my attention to the real work - refining enemy AI.
The enemies originally had the ability to dodge your strikes by blinking out of range—unless they were caught at the perfect moment or trapped against a wall. Without the Burdened state to slow you down, their dodges became all too predictable and, frankly, frustrating. To counter this, I added a system where enemies could only dodge a limited number of times before tiring and becoming vulnerable. Each enemy type had its own dodge limit. On paper, that solution made sense; in practice, however, it risked turning those dodges into nothing more than extra hit points — diluting the game’s core emphasis on one-hit, ultra-precise combat.
Then, during playtesting, I noticed a recurring moment: the fight would momentarily stall, leaving me with the capacity to press forward but no clear way to do so. That’s when an old idea resurfaced — a thought I’d dismissed months ago as “too arcadey,” originally earmarked for a late-game boss.
I decided to integrate that idea seamlessly into regular combat. Now, whenever an enemy dodges, they release a small, floating eye. This glowing “eye floaty” orbits the enemy for a brief moment. If you’re precise and quick enough to click it, the enemy becomes stunned — opening them up for a clean, decisive hit.
The eye floaties don’t disrupt the flow; rather, they give structure to it — creating fleeting moments of opportunity that reward precision over brute aggression. It’s as if they were hidden in the game’s fabric all along, waiting for the right moment to emerge.
Development Continues
#10-Apr-2025 1:44:47 AM
Taking a step back to finally integrate this project into my portfolio has meant quite a bit of looking over gameplay footage. I took this opportunity to observe and address some feedback received from testers and others who've seen the game. We're right back to work, implementing some solutions to those issues.
Today's problem: The knife doesn't appear to make contact / kills lack "impact"
This is something I'd definitely noticed on my own too. To fix it, I first reduced the kickback from the knife impact. This took effect on the impact frame exactly, so when viewing gameplay footage in slow motion it was evident that the knife was not fully extending to the crosshair in the middle of the screen, instead getting jerked back. I added 3 frames between impact and death, which seems like a very short amount of time, but makes a huge difference and adds a real sense of weight to the attack (besides allowing the knife to fully extend to it's target in the center of the screen and linger there for a couple of frames).
The second part of the solution was to create a smoke effect that would fill the area where the enemy was with a mostly-solid shape that then proceeds to dissipate, creating transitory visual. There was already an animation in its place, but it was too quick to really notice, besides having been created in 2019.
Finally, I added two impact flares - the same 8 rayed flare that appears when attacking walls and other items, and another smaller more "special" looking one inside.
There were already a lot of effects in place for when an enemy is struck, and while making these changes I was constantly asking myself if it's "too much" and trying at the very least to let each visual element leave space for the other.
I'm okay with the result for now.
Have a look at this video, and see if you can spot all the elements mentioned above!
Hollow Genre
#01-Apr-2025 1:32:05 AM
Yokanzi's Blade follows what could be described as a "Hollow Genre" or Inverse design philosophy. This approach involves stripping away the defining elements of a genre—either mechanically or aesthetically—and building new systems around the void left behind.
A key example of this Inverse design can be found in a question that has shaped most of my prototyping decisions: How can I create engaging, high-stakes combat without relying on a fail state and respawning? My answer to this challenge is the Void-Tether system and the Glyphs currency.
At the start of the game, players begin in the Tethered state. Taking even a single hit from an enemy throws them into the Voided state. The difference between these two states is subtle, and most importantly, there is no death.
The fight continues, so players experience less immediate frustration. But it also means there’s no relief from a difficult battle either—the tension doesn’t just fade away.
The key mechanical difference between the Tethered and Voided states is that in the Voided state, story progression halts. Players must step through a fire gate to purify themselves and return to the Tethered state. In doing so, they exchange all their power-ups for the ability to continue progressing in the game. This creates a roguelike rhythm, offering different "runs," but with the added freedom for players to choose when to reset their build and try again. Moreover, there are ways around the fire gate, giving players the option to bend the rules and hold on to their power-ups.
The Glyphs currency plays a central role in the game’s progression. Glyphs are collected by slaying enemies and are required for both player and story progression. Think of Glyphs as the game’s version of Gold. Taking damage from enemies costs 20% of your Glyphs, meaning that failure comes with a tangible price. As your Glyph count rises, the penalty for failure becomes steeper. In this way, Glyphs also function as Health—the more you have, the more you stand to lose.
Certain Cards grant players destructive abilities, which cost Glyphs to use. Thus, Glyphs also serve as Ammo, further underscoring their importance. This single UI element at the bottom of the screen is responsible for much of the game's mechanical weight, and I wanted it to carry real meaning throughout the experience.
In classic retro FPS games, players typically start with a melee weapon—a knife, crowbar, or wrench. What if the entire game revolved around that first weapon, and the more powerful tools (pistols, shotguns, lasers) never appeared? That melee weapon would become a surprisingly powerful tool—a one-hit kill as long as you can land it. This is where Card spells come into play: they represent the game's version of "progress" and enhance the utility of the basic knife.
This isn’t just an aesthetic decision. The choice to focus on a single weapon and Cards instead of traditional power-ups is integral to the design philosophy of Yokanzi's Blade. In fact, this design choice is significant enough that it warrants its own exploration, which I’ll save for another time.
Split, Divided by Dark Prism
#25-Feb-2025 2:49:45 PM
The lore has become so intricate, split into many esoteric systems—so much so that I often feel it's too complex for me to manage alone. There are times when I imagine a collaboration, where different parts of this realm are dreamt up and woven together by a handful of creative minds. I would love for perspectives beyond my own to shape the world within the game. Until that day comes, though, vague maps like the one below will have to suffice.
Status Effect Symbols
#23-Feb-2025 5:22:12 AM
Recently added these Status Effect Symbols. These appear at the bottom of the screen and can be moused over in the card menu. While they don't give much info besides the name of the Effect, they're adhering to the "mysterious" and "esoteric" qualities of the game. The symbols can easily be referenced later, either in a manual or otherwise, with lengthier explanations. Keen players could also just notice when they appear, disappear, and change, and together with the Name of the effect, learn more about the game mechanics in depth.
Guilty Presence
#01-Feb-2025 1:29:47 AM
MOULD MAN TEXTURE
#31-Jan-2025 00:48:21 PM
JOHNNY NARANJA
#23-Jan-2025 1:04:31 PM
Speakers added. Now dialogue specifies who is speaking. Each speaker has their own colour and font. A message from Johnny Naranja:
A-W / 3-C / 3-W
#22-Jan-2025 11:18:58 AM
YOKANZI's BLADE
#13-Jan-2025 5:43:36 AM
YOKANZI's BLADE is a surreal, horror-filled adventure through dimension-hopping worlds. Wield magic cards and a blade to battle shadow monsters in a dark and mysterious journey.
Bug Report
#05-Jan-2025 10:55:53 AM
- 1) - FIXED - Attack stopper issue
- 2) - FIXED - Holding tab when level starts
What Do You Seek?
#02-Jan-2025 12:47:19 PM
- (dialogue options)
- Death
- Freedom
GLYPHKEEP
#01-Jan-2025 6:55:37 PM
[Every time you would lose glyphs, only lose 1/2 as many]
AOE [Raise Spikes, killing everything in an area]
Rain should stun enemies.
"doofus canoe"
In Semiotics: The Significance of Cards
#31-Dec-2024 7:31:28 PM
AI-assisted research:
In semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, cards (such as playing cards, tarot cards, or collectible cards) hold significant meaning because they serve as both physical objects and symbols rich in cultural, historical, and communicative value. Their significance can be analyzed in several ways:
- Cards as Signs
- Signifier: The physical card (e.g., a playing card with a specific design).
- Signified: The meaning attributed to the card (e.g., the Ace of Spades symbolizes power, mystery, or even death in Western culture).
- Symbolic Meaning
- Playing Cards: Represent structure, order, and randomness. The suits (hearts, spades, clubs, diamonds) symbolize social classes or life aspects, while numbers and ranks reflect hierarchy and chance.
- Tarot Cards: Used in divination, tarot cards are deeply symbolic, with each card representing archetypes, emotions, or universal themes.
- Collectible Cards: Often symbolize value, rarity, and individual identity within a shared culture (e.g., trading cards like Pokémon or sports cards).
- Indexical Meaning
- A deck of cards indexes gaming, entertainment, or chance.
- A tarot spread indexes mysticism or self-reflection.
- A sports card indexes fandom and memorabilia.
- Cards as a System
- In playing cards, meaning is relational: the Queen of Hearts has meaning only within the context of a deck.
- Tarot cards derive meaning through their placement in spreads, where their relationship to other cards affects interpretation.
- Cultural Codes and Myths
- Luck and Fate: Playing cards are associated with randomness, evoking ideas about chance and control.
- Mystery and Power: Tarot cards suggest hidden knowledge, often tied to myths of prophecy and intuition.
- Games and Strategy: Cards symbolize competition and skill within structured rules, reflecting societal views on fairness and intelligence.
- Cards and Communication
- In playing card games, the cards communicate actions, intentions, or strategies.
- Tarot cards use visual symbols to convey abstract ideas and narratives.
- Trading cards reflect personal or cultural identity, serving as a medium of exchange or status.
In Summary: Cards in semiotics are significant as symbols, signs, and tools of communication. They represent a blend of randomness and structure, chance and choice, and cultural narratives, making them powerful objects for interpreting human meaning-making systems.
Syntax
#31-Dec-2024 5:22:21 AM
A Syntax is nothing more than a small selection of cards that can be arranged in the order you specify. This arrangement can be easily cycled through. Syntaxes were implemented out of necessity; going into the card menu in the middle of a battle introduces too much of a delay and a distraction and simply mapping the number keys to the entirety of the card menu didn't work either. Not all cards are useful in battle. Besides abilities, there are passive effects, key cards, and lore cards. A significant reason for using cards in this game, conceptually, is their homogeneous diversity (different, but the same) so organising them into separate categories wasn't the way to go.
Pretty soon, synergies emerged between certain abilities. "Split" allows you to instantaneously unalive individual opponents from afar, but in order to collect the glyphs dropped you need to be very close to where they die. "Dash" subsequently lets you zoom in to collect, and then quickly put some distance between you and any other monsters lurking around, ready to snipe them again with "Split".
"Spark" is the projectile card, allowing you to shoot curse words gooped together from glyphs and liquid shadow. When two projectiles meet, they freeze in place and form an orb. This tends to happen naturally when lots of enemies are shooting their own curses at you, and the "Undoing" card lets you detonate these frozen orbs, creating a large area-of-effect attack. When combined in a Syntax, these two cards allow you to turn an offensive action -> into a defensive action -> into a little ultimate attack, which can wipe out a group of enemies in one boom. Chain a "Dash" card in there and now you can sweep through the aftermath, harvesting the reward. Some battles are timed events so, the faster you accumulate a large amount of glyphs, the better.
Skin and Bones
#29-Dec-2024 12:53:40 PM
Beware the use of the word "aesthetics" to mean a superficial coat of paint over the "true form" of a work. What I have here is Skin and Bones. The mechanical structure is present, and strong. It clicks and clacks, swivels and pivots, it holds the thing upright. Most of the time you cannot even see it. Then there is "meat" (most of which is missing), the content, the tutorial, dialogues. Finally the skin, the protective layer, the interaction, which is constantly renewing itself.
Gameplay Loop Struggles
#16-Dec-2024 6:12:38 PM
The last few weeks have been a painful reminder that my time and energy are finite. When rent's due and someone is relying on you, "passion projects" fall to the wayside. That said and truthfully, the distance brings perspective. I have redoubled my efforts, bringing the actual gameplay loop to fruition. Perhaps a bit too excited about "shiny" cards, some time was wasted trying to perfect a lava foil effect. The realisation that implementing this beyond just a visual effect would require a refactoring of the card inventory code -- by far my least favourite section of the code for its array-heavy structure.
A card would no longer simply be an object pointing to a List and asking what it should be... every individual card the player picked up would have to be a list unto itself, having its own unique properties (shiny or not shiny?). This added more exciting gameplay possibilities, more card attributes to add, more systems that would surely unfurl in a glistering globule of glory. But for the first time since I started reworking this game, the ideas weighed me down, and I just lost the energy to see it all through. There's a fear there, fear that I might be making a bad game, and the "loop" won't kick ass enough. There is no choice but to push through, and keep realigning the work with my vision every so often.
The shiny cards do look pretty cool though, don't you think? ^ ^
Animation Testing
#21-Nov-2024 6:54:16 AM
Discovering the purple background to the animation testing screen was a cool full-circle. The sprites look great against that colour. Animations can be tested, created and exported to clipboard. These are WIP animations for Pachinko (the vendor)
Theory vs. Gameplay
#25-Nov-2024 6:41:50 AM
Like most art forms, theory is something you learn only to eventually forget. This is true for the deep lore-building I've been doing with Yokanzi's Blade. At the end of the day, I'm making a game that requires levels and progression. When you place an obstacle between the player and the next step in the game, how it takes shape often reveals itself naturally. What's more important is ensuring the game is satisfying to play.
If things don't come together immediately, it's okay to leave certain parts of the lore ambiguous while you focus on making the gameplay solid. After all, the gameplay sets the vibe. It can't afford to be vapid or boring. The tone of the game needs to resonate clearly, always.
Long story short: Don’t worry about who the shopkeeper is. Just make sure they’re rigged up, delivering dialogue, and ready to sell. This lets the player buy what they need and move on to the next stage. Keep the ball rolling, and let the game evolve. If something’s weak, it’s weak. But the game will exist regardless.
Another really important note is that measures should be taken to allow improvement. There's a balance between shallow placeholder and permanently etched into the BIOS. Don't make doubling back to change something a nightmare for yourself! Best Practices!!!
Arenas
#215-Nov-2024 3:01:53 AM
Circular arenas where enemies spawn continuously either for a fixed time period, or indefinitely. There is always Fire between an Arena and the Hub world.
Glyph Collection
#20-Nov-2024 3:04:19 AM
Time spent liberating opponents, speaking with characters, and discovering new areas lead to the collection of Glyphs. These Glyphs can be exchanged in a variety of ways to help you progress through the world. If you're not careful, they can also be taken from you in great quantities very, very quickly.
Gateways
#20-Nov-2024 12:36:10 AM
The first gateway in the game, which leads to the temple of the knife, is activated by staring at a painting. Almost every gateway after that one requires you to close your eyes (visor) to traverse. This is a mistake and solution should be more congruent. The intro needs to be reworked entirely.
Stamina Bar as Vehicular Choreography
#18-Nov-2024 6:39:04 PM
Stamina bar as vehicular choreography.
The Knife as a Wand
#18-Nov-2024 4:45:50 AM
The Knife is effectively a wand.
The combat system is tight, and has the potential to be varied and challenging and satisfying given the right level design and pacing. I worked really hard at those goals. But finishing the demo means unearthing all those story ideas that have been hibernating in the dark corners, and transferring that information to a player through various object and character interactions. So we've come full circle. It's time to face the music.
I won't add an "F" or "E" general purpose INTERACT key. Everything will be done with the Knife + Card combo, or closing eyes to look inward. Books wil have to be read by facing them and closing your eyes. Doors will be hacked open. A character will have to be stabbed to death, just so another one can emerge from their corpse, shedding it like a cocoon to deliver the dialogue required to move the player forward.
It's a game about MAGIC and the knife, the knife is a wand.