The typical sword fight. You're the one on the right.
Sword Fight is an Adobe Flash (later ported to Unity) game by Tovrick released in 2017. It's an Idle Game in which you play as a swordsman who fights other swordsmen. Eventually you level up and earn skill points which can be spent on skills to boost fighting prowess and gold which can be spent on pieces of equipment and upgrading them. After some time, many complex systems open up which affect gameplay significantly, like Masters and Disciples, Rivals, Scrolls, and Archives.
This game provides examples of:
- A.I. Roulette: Grand Master Rotvick will randomly switch between fencing and two-handed style. To get past his third tournament, you will also need him to randomize his stance.
- Anti-Hero: The Blight Management campaign features Rotvick as its main protagonist, with him being playable in story-focused maps.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Critical Hits function as these, doing a set percentage of the opponent's max health ignoring any armor or damage resistance. Technically they deal the opponent's base health in damage, an amount that is multiplied by their health segments, which only goes up with rank and level.
- Auto-Save: The game saves automatically after every fight, though it can be turned off. It also saves automatically to the cloud every 5 minutes, which can also be turned off.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Van in the Blight Management campaign is a specialist in Infection, which weakens living swordfighters and spreads the Blight, but uses it solely to study the Blight's effects in order to learn how to control and cure it.
- The Berserker: The Area 2 unique Assault stance, which is part this part Lightning Bruiser. Relying on damage reduction instead of defense and gaining boosted stats every-time they're hit.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Downplayed. You can pay real money to get Gold Lineage Coins more frequently or just buy a pack of them instantly. They are far from needed and you still have to earn Silver Lineage Coins by beating levels anyway to make them useful, but they do make the boosts purchased for Silver Lineage Coins even more convenient.
- Challenge Run: The game encourages reaching milestones while restricting yourself with certain Awards, for example reaching level 50 as a Novice (this would mean not having crucial benefits from higher ranks for a while) or becoming a Master without spending any Gold (so only starting equipment at level 1 is usable). Quests often invoke special limitations as well.
- Chromatic Arrangement: You usually face of against a set of three enemies at every rank - a red Glass Cannon, a blue Mighty Glacier, and a yellow Fragile Speedster. Later in the game, this is expanded to instead be an orange Jack of All Stats, a green Stone Wall, and The Berzerker nearly Lightning Bruiser purple opponents.
- Combat Pragmatist: You can be one in fights with Rival Masters, albeit you'll be penalized for it. In the initial challenges, you need to abide by certain rules in order to get the second and third star. In special training, there are special rules for the dual and you get -200 or more to Atk, Def, and Hit for every rule that isn't followed.
- Combo Breaker: In the Head Master Rotvick quest, Gromit's first tourney is against an infinite combo opponent. Gromit is in the wrong stance, as such Freud's needs to take his place with the Barrage stance.
- Consolation Prize: Losing a tournament still gives some gold as a reward depending on how many opponents were beaten.
- The Corruption: The Blight. Encountered during quests and the Blight Management campaign, the Blight creates undead from fighters who fall within it and slowly spreads. Fighting within it inflicts "Weakness" which reduces stats by a %, leaving even the best sword-fighters with 1 in all their stats if trying to fight with 100% weakness. Purifying it is possible, but also makes the remaining Blight in an area stronger, resulting in you learning to spread it as well as-needed to control it.
- Critical Hit: You have a chance that an attack will be a critical hit, which acts as an Armor-Piercing Attack dealing the opponent's Base HP in damage, which can be anywhere from a third to a tenth of their total HP depending on the opponent's rank and level and doesn't depend on your own base damage.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Dying does not result in anything, you just fight the opponent again and your health is refilled. Even dying during a tournament only means you can try it again after some time passes. In fact, losing fights can be worth more exp than winning them with the right abilities unlocked.
- Dem Bones: Skeletons make up some of the more powerful undead from the Blight, and collapse into a pile of bones if defeated.
- Dual Wielding: One of the four styles in the game, letting you use a separate sword in both hands. It is by default the most aggressive style.
- Export Save: The game save can be copied to clipboard with at least 6KB of text and pasted into the in-game window.
- Fearless Undead: Zombies regenerate and don't even try to defend themselves, despite otherwise being fully capable of sword fighting. Hitting them just infects others, but their lack of defense usually works against them.
- Featureless Protagonist: You/your disciple lack characterization, or even a face since they're seen from the back at all times, and is the only entity you never fight against.
- Flash of Pain: You and the enemies flash red upon getting hit, orange when deflecting an attack for reduced damage, or yellow when an attack was defended but broke through from higher impact.
- Flawless Victory: Encouraged with the Vigilance Training skill owned by certain Rival Masters, which gives +200% experience per level and +1 Training win if unharmed at the end of a duel.
- Foregone Victory: Once the enemy runs out of Stamina, they're unable to fight back and their stats plummet, letting you lay the smackdown for as long as you don't run too low on Stamina as well, which will cause the both of you to stop and recover.
- Fragile Speedster: Yellow-colored enemies are fast and rely on combos of critical hits/Armor Piercing Attacks, giving them an advantage against slow armored opponents.
- Glass Cannon: Red-colored enemies usually attack first and hard, letting them drop lighter enemies with as little as one or two hits, but unable to defend themselves easily when countered.
- Good Armor, Evil Armor: Full Plate armor worn by your character is white, while Full Plate armor worn by enemies is darker, color coded, and may contain other menacing elements.
- Headless Horseman: Or Headless Swordsman, rather. Originally a boss in the Halloween event, he shows up disguised as the leader of a gang of bandits in the Blight Management campaign and is the effective boss of the Farmlands area.
- Heel–Face Turn: Grand Master Rotvick is the boss of the game's first quest, but reforms after being beaten, becomes playable as part of a unique quest, and becomes the effective protagonist of the Blight Management campaign.
- Idle Animation: Different styles have different animations while resting from low stamina, sometimes taking poses they didn't start the fight while stepping left and right.
- Jack of All Stats: The Attack stance is this, though it's later outclassed by specializing in one of the 3 main stances. Area 2 introduces improvements to the Attack stance in a new triangle of stances, but it retains its focus in being overall balanced and technical.
- Last Chance Hit Point: With the third star from Grand Master Edward, Vigilance Lv. 20 makes you survive with 1 HP once per battle if damage would reduce HP to 0.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Area 2 unique Assault stance, which is part this part The Berzerker. In return for their combination of high offense and damage reduction, they rarely bother to actually block attacks, which helps feed the boost they get every-time they do take damage.
- Maximum HP Reduction: Because weakness affects base HP, your maximum HP is reduced every time a zombie hits you and for every area in the Blight you try to conquer. This can eventually drop your max HP (and other stats) to 1, leaving you incapable of fighting further.
- Mighty Glacier: Blue-colored enemies are good at both blocking and taking hits, specializing in counter attacking, their heavy equipment such as two handed words or shields usually leaves them to be slow.
- Necromancer: The Halloween event maps typically feature a boss character named Vlad the Necromancer as the effective Big Bad.
- New Game Plus: As is common for idle games, it comes in 3 tiers. Retiring lets you train a new disciple with faster growth and reduced costs to learning skills of your previous master. Building a new school starts you from scratch again, but lets you invest in your previous school's fame and influence or even convince a rival to act as a co-founder for unlocking unique benefits. Last but not least you can go to a brand new area, which has entirely new skills, equipment, and abilities to learn and bring with you to new schools.
- Non-Standard Skill Learning: First are achievement unlocks to learn skills that will eventually be considered basic use. Eventually, the player will found a new school, and recruit rivals to allow advancing some skills to level 30 (required to get the final rival stars). Some fighting tactics are obtained through quests.
- Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award: Completing one of the awards unlocks additional content, intended for later students.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: "Phantoms" appear in darker corners of the Blight and are capable of sword fighting like any other undead. They slowly suck the stamina out of their opponents, and leave no body when defeated.
- Our Zombies Are Different: All the zombies here are swordfighters! Though, usually no more than Provost in rank.
- Regenerating Health: Some of the monsters in the blight, such as zombies, slowly regenerate their health or stamina. They're only encountered during quests.
- Skill Point Reset: There are several ways to reset skill points, including those spent on Fighting Skills, Mastery Skills, and Lineage. Only the third one is initially available and can be done once every 24 hours, the first two require specific Lineage.
- The Smurfette Principle: The Blight Management campaign introduces Joan as an explicitly female playable swordfighter. Not only can she slay Undead like the rest of the guys, she's also an expert on Purification.
- Stance System: At first there are only the Attack(Orange) and Defend(Green) stances. Early on you learn Barrage(Red), Blitz(Yellow), and Guard(Blue) which includes color coding all the enemies using those stances aswell. Area 2 introduces enemies who instead specialize in Attack and Defend, and the new Assault (Purple) stance, instead of the 3 the player has usually been using up to this point.
- Stone Wall: The defend stance is this, with the highest defense and damage resistance boosts in the game, but with almost no chance to attack and deal damage. Area 2 introduces improvements to the Defend stance in a new triangle of stances, letting it parry attacks to wear opponents out quickly and disarm them to force them to surrender.
- Surpassed the Teacher: The objective of the Disciple and Master system. Once you're done raising your character, you retire them as a Master with knowledge of Fighting Skills and Mastery Skills that makes learning them easier for the Disciple. In most cases, you want your next Master to be better at most things than your previous.
- Sword Fight: The literal name of the game, usually involving 1v1 fights varying in style and stance. Some quests will involve 3v1 fights, where enemies may switch whomever is engaging the player's fighter.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Done with the Stances. Barrage > Blitz > Guard > Barrage. The Technique skill grants boosted stats when following the triangle. Area 2 has a separate triangle, Assault > Defend > Attack > Assault
- The Undead: Created by the Blight, the ranks of the Undead include classic Zombies and Skeletons, but also ethereal Phantoms and even Possessed Armor.
- Undead Counterpart: All of the Undead enemies are variants of normal training opponents, with added abilities and altered sprites.
- Warm-Up Boss: Grand Master Greg is the introduction to Rivals and is not a significant challenge. He's only level 100, which is the same or less than the enemies you are training on a this time. He does have very high attack and damage, but you only need to win once to unlock his first star.
- Warrior Undead: All of the undead opponents are fully functional sword fighters with a stance and style just like you and every other fighter. More advanced undead will even use flanking tactics when outnumbering their opponent.
