Bernard the Battle Bard

First person sword and horn game, where you must retrieve your stolen song sheets from a dark dungeon. Created solo for Honest Jam 5.

https://honestdan.itch.io/battle-bard

I had been keen to work on a “Sword and Board” first person game, after being impressed by a game made for a previous Honest Jam by a community member named Bauke. I had recently just found the game Dark and Darker in beta too, which had really got me hooked on the idea of slow and deliberate first-person melee combat.

Along with a sword, the hero of this game hard a horn as he was a bard named Bernard. You could find song sheets and learn new songs, which when played would effectively buff the character or help them find items within a dark and maze-like dungeon. A wieldable torch was also key for helping you see and navigate.

The project was a great excuse to work with first person animation that drove combat gameplay. I also worked on some basic AI which was useful to refresh my skills in Unreal Engine AI.

Sadly the deadline of the gamejam came far too quickly, so the actual player experience was pretty poor. It was not obvious what to do for players, and definitely could have benefited from better player onboarding.