While with many indie titles I’ve come to appreciate the fact that simplicity can sometimes be a path to satisfying play, I can’t say that appears to be universally true either. While the streamlined beat-em-up experience of something like One Finger Death Punch 2 can still capture the essence of the genre, and use a mix of humor and a satisfying challenge to your precision to feel fresh, not everything works as well. I think fighting games may be the most challenging genre to strip the complexity out of, and I believe that Sclash illustrates that problem well, being well executed but ultimately quite shallow overall.

In the game’s story mode you’ll play as a young samurai who is approaching the end of their training. Moving between enemies and some striking backgrounds your skills will be tested as one-by-one you’ll need to take on skilled enemies, trying not to fall to their lethal strikes. You’ll also have the option to play against a friend locally, where you’ll each need to work to feint, parry, counter, dodge, and strike, trying to outsmart each other more than necessarily outplaying them. There can be a challenge to that, and perhaps some delicious tension as any moment could be the end, but I don’t find that’s enough for a game to keep your interest for long.

There have been some other titles in the space that have tried to run with this formula and have met with some mixed results at best. The best example I can think of would be Nidhogg and its sequel, certainly delivering some of that same tense combat, but then pairing it with quite a bit of quirk and weirdness to help add some flavor. Here, you’ll absolutely need to be able to keep an eye on your stamina, as well as your breath, in order to ensure you’ll be able to make your next move. It’s a bit of a mix of a game of chicken and who can react quicker when playing a friend, but against the CPU I consistently felt like I needed to anticipate moves more than react to them, making the parry feel weird and inconsistent.

On the whole, I think two things bring the experience down a bit. The first is that the focus is so narrow and ultimately your options are so limited, that it’s hard to feel like the gameplay can remain compelling for long. The second is that whether you’re going up against a friend or the CPU, the fatigue doesn’t take long to set in. Mix in what feels like some responsiveness issues when tackling your CPU opponents and while I’m sure there’s a specific audience who enjoys this sort of challenge, there’s not enough to dig your teeth into here to make it worth recommending.