GAMEPLAY MECHANICS REVEAL TRAILER
I’m HYPERMAD – solo developer of BLOODFALL: The First Temple – a first-person combat game built for SPEED, PRECISION, and 100% physics–driven simulation. Today I’m excited to launch a 5-minute narrated Gameplay Mechanics Reveal Trailer, which will clarify many of your questions about the inputs and interactions in BLOODFALL.
SCREEN-SPACE WEAPON CONTROL
BLOODFALL’s basic controls follow standard FPS conventions. You use WASD to move your character, move the mouse to rotate around, and as you would expect, your weapon stays in the same spot relative to the screen. But this is where BLOODFALL begins to depart from the classic first-person shooter formula. You can reposition your weapon relative to your screen by holding down the right mouse button while moving the mouse. When you let go of the right mouse button, the weapon stays in the new position, and you can look around as usual, but with an adjusted weapon position. There are no pre-defined positions. You can place the sword anywhere on screen. If you push your sword off the edge of your screen, your camera and character rotate to keep up with the sword, ensuring that the action is always visible.
KINETIC FIDELITY
All of the movement and interactions in BLOODFALL are driven by Physical simulation. This includes character and weapon movement. As a result, if I strafe my character side to side, my weapon organically collides and bounces off the environment. If instead I stand still and move the mouse around to rotate my character, the weapon still collides accurately with the environment. And if I use the right mouse button to move the sword directly, the same rules apply. The collision sparks and sound effects vary in intensity based on the strength of the collision, allowing you to feel the difference between hard and soft collisions. Whether you’re moving, turning, or swinging at high speeds, weapons maintain accurate contact with the world and with each other. You’ll never see a weapon move through another solid object without a collision response.
BLOCKING
Using the right mouse button, you can quickly flick your mouse and respond to all attacks with precision and speed. It really feels like the weapon is an extension of the physical mouse. However, If you panic and move your mouse too far, you’ll force your character’s body and camera to turn, disrupting your visibility of the opponent and making it hard to see the next attack. The game incentivizes restraint and minimal movement to achieve your goal. This combination of speed and precision makes the skill ceiling of BLOODFALL very high.
DEADLOCKS
When weapons clash, they don’t always bounce away from each other. If the attacking weapon keeps pressing into your block instead of retracting on impact, you’ll have to hold your block. This leaves you vulnerable to subsequent attacks while your weapon is preoccupied. You can abandon the deadlock and focus on blocking the new attack, but that leaves the deadlocked enemy weapon free to hit you. The better thing to do is to push your sword hard into the enemy weapon to force a retraction. This frees up your sword for the next move.
PARRYING
Now let’s talk about defending linear attacks. While blocking them is possible, you have to be extremely precise, as you risk the incoming weapon glancing off your sword and into your body. It is usually safer to deflect linear strikes by pushing them out of the way. This requires precise timing. If you push too soon and you push the air, it doesn’t help. If you push too late, the incoming strike will already have landed. You can parry in any direction, but parrying down is not recommended as the incoming stab will fly into your lower body. The idea is to push the weapon out of the way. So parry right, left, or up.
THE CROSS-GUARD
As you may have noticed, the sword’s guard is not decorative. You can use it to block, catch and redirect incoming weapons. The size, angle, and position of your guard plays an important role in combat.
FULL-BODY DEFENCE
You can press space to jump over low sweeps, or left control to duck under head-level attacks. Combined with blocks, deadlocks, and parries, the result is a complete self-defense system that protects your body from head to toe and challenges your reaction speed, decision accuracy, and full-body awareness.
FREE LOOK CAMERA
And because there are no camera locks, you are always free to turn and face a new target. You are always in control of the camera. BLOODFALL is designed to provide fluidity and precision regardless of whether you are fighting 1 on 1, or against multiple enemies.
