One Finger Death Punch is an on rail fighter that one man described as “beating up a thousand dudes”.  It’s true, you will be able to beat up a thousand dudes, and hopefully if we work hard enough you’ll enjoy doing it too.  If you compare the two trailers you’ll see some of the progression the game has gone through.  One person wrote a comment in our video saying “needs more blood”.  So in an attempt to please them, we’ve changed the blood effects and added in some throwing attacks for some of the weapons.  We also added in a trap that decapitates the enemies.  We have plans for 6 more traps in the future.  All of these little features are going to add to the games violence.  Like we’ve mentioned before, we are purposely trying to achieve a certain level of violence to help separate this game from other non-violent fighting games featuring avatars.  Avatars are extremely popular amongst XBLIG consumers and there are already many  great avatar fighting games already on the market. There happens to be strict rules about violence with avatars for XBLIG.  These rules allow us to use violence to visually separate ourselves from the other fighting games mentioned above.
Violence isn’t the focus of the game though, nor should it be of course.  As you can see from the video, it’s the fast paced, hopefully easy control scheme that will make this game special.  I was visiting my parents one weekend and my dad said “It would be nice if the characters were larger”. (In reference to the characters in One Finger Death Punch) I told him that we picked the size of the characters for specific gameplay reasons, although I too wish they were larger at times.  Beating up thousands of dudes is nifty but we also want more personal/up close fights incorporated into the game.  So we created a mini fight we called brawls.  These fights happen when you attack a particular enemy indicated with a crown above his head.  You’ll notice the screen zooms in close during brawls making the fight much more personal.  When the fight is initiated a string of X or B buttons appear on the center of the screen.  That string combo is also indicated at the bottom of the screen before each brawl even happens to allow the player time to preview the combo.  Not that it’s necessary.
The brawling enemies are orientated on the left or right of the screen according to the X/B combo you must press, just like the other enemies in the game.  This is to insure that brawls feel and play like the rest of the game.  The last thing we would want is for a player to learn the game twice to accommodate a “mini game”. 
We also spent much time making sure you can enter and exit a brawl seamlessly without feeling like the action stopped or you were taken away from the main gameplay.  You’ll notice from our trailer that brawls come and go very quickly, that’s are attempt and making it feel seamless.
We are always asking ourselves “What elements of a kung fu movie are we missing?”  One thing that came up was kicking someone through a pane of class.  Which turned into, glass, wood beam, or stone pillar.  To the best of our abilities we constructed buildings for each stage.  The building’s sole purpose is to provide a pillar of some kind that could be broken during combat.  Just because we thought kicking a guy through a pillar would be cool.  We also have a barrel you can kick someone through, and we have plans for 6 more breakable objects.
One challenge this game has is since you’re not moving progressively through a level, let’s say left to right, once all the buildings/breakable objects are destroyed how do you add more?  We thought “Why not just have the buildings, objects, and traps simply fall from the sky or rise from the ground like a stage of a play was transitioning from scene to scene?”  So we tried it out.  For the time being we think it seems to work.
In our first preview trailer the game featured a special game mode that only required the A button to play.  Since then we’ve scrapped that game mode.  It was fun and really worked well, but we felt our XB mode is more fun and works better.  Our philosophy is why incorporate a lesser mode that no one will play. The A mode might sound good on paper, but if it’s not as fun as another mode in the game than there’s no point in including it.  So it’s gone.
Our second trailer features gameplay from our extreme mode.  In the extreme mode there’s no button guides to assist you.  You fight like anyone would fight.  You simply punch your enemies when they’re near.  This mode has always been there, but we felt it was important to highlight in this video for one simple reason.  We received the comment “So you basically press buttons when the computer tells you too, pass.”  To a viewer who hasn’t played the game it may appear that way.  The reality is quite the opposite and I think our extreme mode showcases that brilliantly, as there is nothing but your raw skills to guide you.
We are many months from completion.  When our friends play the game they’re still saying “Am I done yet?”  Good god that’s not the reaction we’re looking for, but that only means we must work harder.  The gameplay mechanics are near completion but the game as a whole still has a long ways to go.  We’re working on 21 passive abilities players can collect/select throughout the game, a world map for players to explore/choose different level paths, and another kind of bonus stage.  We’re also still struggling to make graphics as we have no artist, no money and we pretty much suck at making graphics.
We want to ask everyone out there to help us make this something you want to play.  Let us know what you want to see in the game.  What kung fu clichés are a must?   What’s the stupidest weapon someone could fight with, like a rubber chicken, or a frying pan?  We want to include some Jackie Chan like humor if possible.  Tweet us at @sdgames or write us at.  Thanks so much for checking out our second preview trailer and thanks for reading.
Many thanks,
Jon Flook