Day 7 - Samurai Shaver
Rhythm Game, Nudity, Bangers ·
Skeeter’s Take:
Have you ever wanted to be a samurai barber who shaves oddly-patterned hairy men with his samurai sword to the rhythm of sick beats? Yeah me either, but boy howdy I do now!
This game is simple, but I had so much fun with it. Like any good rhythm game, the sum of its parts is carried by the music, which I really enjoyed. It’s like someone took a koto and paired it with a chiptune tracker.
Your goal is to shave all the hairy dudes that have come to see you for the world’s most dangerous haircut. You follow along to the beat, and slash in time - an initial tracker will show you the rhythm pattern, and then it’s time to slash. Thankfully, the odd hair patches on these men are perfectly lined up to the rhythm(how convenient):
A successful shave leads to a hairless man, and a satisfyingly cheerful “Yaaaaaaaay!” out of their mouths. But be careful, one off-beat slash and the results can be fatal:
After all, we aren’t playing with training swords here. There is no way to lose - you are only trying to get as many perfect shaves as possible, but my favorite feature has to be the end screen which shows you all the people who have come through your door that day, and the results of their shaves:
I go by the “Demon Barber of Amidaike-Suji Street” now.
There are 8 levels in total, each one featuring its own music track to slash along to. If I had one criticism of the game, I would say I would like another mechanic to mix it up and add a little depth. Maybe adding some hair that the customer wants to keep and the tracker doesn’t highlight in the beat, so you have to avoid certain patches? I’m not sure - I just felt like a little extra element would kick this game up a notch. That being said, I love it how it is all the same.
I don’t know why smashing my space bar to a beat was so fun for me. I think it was a combination of the setting, the odd concept of being a samurai barber, the hairy men yelling “Yaaay” or “Uhhhhh” after every successful and unsuccessful shave, and the soundtrack. It all comes together in a really great package that you can easily kill 20 minutes with. Ultimately it succeeded to do what Guitar hero did all those years ago for me: It made me feel cool hitting the notes (or in this case hair) like I’m some sort of musician (or in this case Samurai Barber). I had a great time with this game.
Recommend: Hell yeah
Replay Percentage Chance: 25% - I kind of saw all I need to see and there isn’t much replay value, but I could see myself coming back to this for a quick smile.
Time Played: 25 minutes
Sam’s Take:
For as simple as this game is, there are some more subtle hints that this DDRKirby fellow knows what they’re doing. First of all, the silly browser-based shaving game has calibration in the settings. I’ve played about 1,000 awful flash rhythm games because I’m sick on the inside, and I’ve never seen this in my damn life.
Second, to make their very fun pencil sketch aesthetic work, the visual cues for timing your hits aren’t super clear. This could have been solved with lines going across the screen to denote quarter steps, or replacing the hair tufts with more defined square areas, but of course that would destroy the style. They work around the restriction of their visual style by having each body be a short 3 to 10 note challenge, and giving you an auditory preview beforehand. The short preview beforehand is really what you’re following. To prove this point, I got a perfect score on the first level with my eyes closed (not a joke, I actually did this):
With audio doing heavy lifting in terms of gameplay, the visuals are freed up to be a little more stylized at the cost of functionality. The result is a simple cool looking game with a funny concept and some snazzy tunes.
A few days ago when reviewing Baby Shooter, I commented on the developer’s excuse of it being a shitpost by noting that if you have to say it’s a shitpost, then it’s a bad shitpost. I think Samurai Shaver really proves this point from the other side. Obviously this is a dumb idea. It doesn’t bring anything new outside aesthetics to the rhythm genre, and really I can’t imagine playing it for more than 30 minutes. It’s a shitpost, a funny snack of an idea that probably won’t remain in my head for too long. Unlike Baby Shooter however, Samurai Shaver puts in the effort to seem effortless. I’m going to give this a low replay percentage chance, because there’s really nothing more to gain from it, but for a game made on a weekend (itch.io does love a game jam), it’s cute, fun and everything it needs to be. Itch.io continues to kick the shit out of Newgrounds.
Recommend: Absolutely
Replay Percentage Chance: 3.1415%
Time Played: 15 minutes
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