Devlog - Polishing Combat Feel & Visual Readability & More

This month was all about refinement, taking your feedback and using it to make every hit, animation, and visual cue feel sharper and more satisfying. Many of you mentioned readability, pacing, and feedback clarity, so that’s exactly where our focus went.

Hit Reactions & Impact Feedback

We toned down the screen effects and camera shakes that occurred when taking damage. Instead, we shifted the focus to hit stop to make impacts feel weighty yet clean.

The player character now also plays damage reaction animations when hit, making combat exchanges look more believable.

Enemies with shields have been reworked too: they now play proper blocking animations when deflecting sword hits instead of just sliding backward. It adds a lot more physicality to the fight.

Arrows now visibly stick to enemy bodies, which feels oddly satisfying.

Refined Weapon Flow & Combo Logic

The way the player holds the greatsword has been updated, and transitions between short sword and greatsword are now smoother.

Both weapons now feature fully implemented combo chains, and each has situational advantages. Some combos are better for:

• Bleeding enemies

• Breaking guards/postures

• Hitting through blocks

• Disabling shields

The greatsword also received a big balance pass. It now deals more damage, closer to the short sword but with slower swing speed and wider impact arcs, allowing players to hit multiple targets at once.

Pacing & Damage Balance

We’ve adjusted overall combat pacing to feel faster, riskier, and more tactical.

Enemies at your level can now typically be defeated in 5–6 hits, and the player can also die after roughly 5 hits. This makes fights more momentum-driven, removing “damage sponge” encounters while keeping tension high. You’re stronger but also more fragile.

As your gear and stats improve, your survivability will naturally increase.

Enemy Armor & Damage Types

Each enemy type now reacts differently to your weapon types and damage sources.

• Heavy units (like brutes) take little damage from short swords but are weak to greatsword strikes.

• Knights are resistant to arrows because of their heavy armor.

• Light enemies tend to dodge heavy attacks, while armored enemies try to block or endure them.

Readability & Environment Polish

Many of you mentioned that during fights, characters blended into the environment a bit too much. We spent significant time improving visual contrast reducing environmental clutter, rebalancing ground detail, and tuning color contrast in grass and dirt layers.

We also added small environmental details like footprints, mud stains, and grounded props to add realism without sacrificing clarity.

Now, it’s much easier to track both enemies and yourself in the chaos.

Combat Dialogue System

To make battles more immersive, we added a new vocal reaction system for enemies. They now respond dynamically to combat situations, shouting or reacting when:

• They hit you

• You hit them

• A friend dies nearby

• They see you flee or chase you

• They spotted you

• They dodge or block your attack

Right now, it’s using generic placeholder lines for testing, but the system supports context-aware dialogue so in the future, enemies will react specifically to what’s happening.

For example:

Kill the biggest one in a group, and another enemy might shout, “He took down our strongest!” …or if you kill the weakest, they might sneer, “You picked off the weakest — I’m not like him!”

It adds a surprising amount of personality and energy to fights.

New Enemy Type — Archers

We also added archer enemies to the bandit faction. They make fights more dynamic, forcing you to stay mobile and aware of positioning.

Next, we’ll be introducing crossbow units for the Knight faction to expand ranged combat variety even further.

Cleaner Enemy Health UI

Enemy health bars were redesigned to be more minimal, stylish, and unobtrusive. They now convey health and guard state clearly without cluttering the screen, especially during multi-enemy encounters.

That’s all for this month’s update. Thanks again for all your feedback, it’s been incredibly helpful in shaping how Ashbound feels to play. If you’d like to support the development, please wishlist the game on Steam, it genuinely helps a lot. See you in the next one!