Sharpest Spear
A game by NPJarcade, made in two weeks for LowRezJam 2026
( downloadable version is recommended! )
- CONTROLS -
| WASD | Move around |
| LEFT CLICK | Attack |
| LEFT CLICK (hold) | Drag inventory items drag to heal / use flint |
| RIGHT CLICK (hold) | Lock-on auto-blocks while locked on |
| E | Grab items defeated enemies will sometimes drop items |
| SHIFT | Sprint consumes stamina |
| TAB | Open inventory / status screen the game is not paused while the status screen is open! |
- ENTER THE ARENA -
Keep your spear sharp... and your wits sharper
- Your goal is to gain victory in the arena by defeating all who oppose you
- You must gain the favour of the overlords. KILLS = FAVOUR!
- If you are chosen, enter the beam of light to ascend into the arena where the true battle begins with a high level foe
- Victory in the arena allows you to choose a perk/reward
- If you take too long, the purge will begin. Survive the purge and keep fighting until you are able to enter the arena
- TIPS -
- You'll auto-block incoming attacks while locked on to an enemy
- Keep an eye on your stamina - you can't block or attack when it reaches zero
- Your max health is also your max stamina, so focus on healing to maximise your stopping power and chances of survival
- If you're injured, enter the status screen [TAB] to heal, but be careful... foes may use this as an opportunity to strike while you're unaware
- Click and drag hearts onto your character to heal
- You choose when you enter the arena, so make sure you're ready for a tough fight!
- Use flint to temporarily sharpen your spear (used in the same way as hearts)
- You can loot defeated foes for useful tools to help you survive
- Make sure to choose a perk when you've beaten the arena!
- Defeated foes may sometimes drop items. Loot them by pressing [E] when the crosshair changes colour
- You can sprint by holding [SHIFT]
- ABOUT -
This game is my submission for LowRezJam 2026. Of ten optional themes I chose to create a game around the themes of 'Obey The Game Master' and 'You're Not Allowed To Win'.
The browser version can be a bit sluggish and has some graphical issues that aren't present in the downloadable verison. If you're enjoying the game, I'd recommend the downloadable windows version for the best experience.
Thank you for playing!
- CREDITS -
Follow me on Twitter/X @NPJarcade
Programming, art, music by NPJarcade, UK, 2026
Written in GameMaker Studio 2.3 - https://gamemaker.io/en
Audio edited with Audacity - http://www.audacityteam.org/
Music created using Beepbox - http://www.beepbox.co
Download
Install instructions
- Download Sharpest Spear (Windows).zip
- Extract your files to a preferred location on your PC
- Double-click the exe file and survive the arena!
Comments
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pretty good but my mouse got stuck in the top left corner when i tabbed out in fullscreen mode and had to turn off my computer to fix it
Really fun and well executed! The combat was fast yet demanded patience. Loved how it looked too!
Got till round 11 with 90 kills. Absolutely incredible game
Makes me really want to make a deathgame roguelite or something along those lines now. Frickin love this concept lol. I have a few questions about how you went about this because I really want to try my hand at a game like this, but first I'll give some feedback
The atmosphere was impeccable. At first I thought the resolution was a detriment for this game with how you needed to tell if any enemies were close enough to you, but then I started recognising enemies more by the colour rather than just the sprites and character design. The added darkness in later rounds definitely helped make this a little more tricky as well. That said, I do think some of the enemy colours could stand to contrast more with the environment though.
Having your stamina tie in to your health is genius and ensures that I was always trying to position myself so that I'd be able to use a heart safely. That said, I think there could be a better indicator for when you can pick up an item from a corpse. The indicator turning white was extremely easy to miss ( imo ). I also think there could've been a better indicator for the spear tips ? Maybe some sort of visual or sound effect to show that the current one broke or something. I really like how you couldn't run in the water as well. It made spacial awareness pretty important and made fighting in the water more tense. It's also why I think the upgrade for running through water might be a little too overpowered. I get that later rounds throw more enemies at you, but I think maybe this upgrade isn't really necessary ( Then again, you don't have to choose it lol. Maybe ignore this point ). Maybe a way to counterbalance this is that all enemies can also run through the water ( if they don't already ) but then it would make the water pointless.
( Side note : I also thought the stamina bar kinda blended into the environment quite a bit. At first I actually didn't see it at all )
Combat was great and tense, and the added timer of the purge wolves was great. The sound design in general really helped sell the tension of the game. I do think that the range of the spear wasn't as clear as it could've been. Maybe it was because of the over-the-shoulder perspective, or maybe it was just a skill issue on my part. My biggest issue with combat though was the red hue effect that pops up when you take damage. My issue is that the same effect pops up when an enemy dies as well, so it wasn't as clear as it could've been who actually took damage. The red effect is visceral as all hell and helps with the feel of the combat, but maybe having a different coloured effect for when an enemy dies or when you take damage would help here ?
That's pretty much all the feedback I had. Loved this game. Now I just have some questions, if you don't mind.
1. What's the enemy AI like ? How does it know when to block/strike etc. and more importantly, how does it prioritise between other enemies, the purge and the player etc.
2. Are you continuously spawning in enemies or is the enemy count fixed in a round ?
Hey! Wow, thank you very much as always for such generous feedback. It's much appreciated! And 90 kills, that's very impressive!
Completely agree some of those little touches such as visual/audio feedback could have used some more work. I found it tricky to make the pickups more obvious with such a low resolution for sure. There is a sound effect that plays when the spear tips break, but it's very similar to the sound effect for when you apply them, and gets lost amongst all the squelchy stab SFX so easily missed! I agree with all of your points though, especially about the hp/stamina bar. There were a few things I didn't feel were fully polished and that includes the perk system. Water originally had crocs to avoid and fish to hunt, which would have made the sprint in water perk a bit more important.
I gave the player the advantage when it comes to spear range, so that might be why it seemed a bit inconsistent, and the billboard sprites definitely confuse the sense of depth! Also the red hue is supposed to be black for enemy kills but I must have messed up the code somewhere on the flash effect without realising! Oops!
All really useful feedback and lots I'd like to improve on for a post-jam version.
And in answer to your questions:
1. Enemies have two states (idle or chase) and a very primitive detection zone based on distance to toggle between the two states. They're randomly assigned either the player or another enemy as their target and then an alarm goes off every second or so to check who they were last hit by - the player, a dog or another enemy which allows them to change target. And then some enemies will spawn in the 'chase' state to make things a bit more random, and means they'll randomly fight each other without the player getting involved, which I thought was cool! In the same alarm they're also swapping between an attack or block state. They'll only block when their target is attacking and only attack if they're within a certain distance to their target. The range and priority of attack vs. block is also randomised so you get some enemies who are blocking masters and others who just go nuts trying to stab you.
I think it would be good to add some more states in future, such as fleeing when low on health, or dodging instead of just blocking half the time.
2. There are invisible spawners all about the arena which will only spawn enemies if the purge isn't active, the spawner is behind the fog and the total enemy count is below a certain amount. So they're basically spawning out of sight, but it won't ever spawn too many. Then they'll stop spawning during the purge to give the impression that everyone is being killed off by the dogs!
I hope that helps, and thanks very much for playing!
That definitely helps. Thank you so much for the tips
Definitely want to try a post jam build at some point if you add more to this
Visually and technically impressive, fun to play.
I really like the art style you went with.
Very cool, definitely coming back to this soon -I only played in the browser and honestly I had no issues, but I'm going to try the downloadable version if that's the intended experience.
PS: I'd love a gamepad support, but know that's my keyboard-related skill issues speaking lol.
Great work and have a good Jam!
Thank you very much for the feedback and I'm really glad you enjoyed it! Good to know the web version worked well for you - maybe it's my browser that's the problem!
Completely agree gamepad support would be great for a post-jam version, I ran out of time to properly implement it unfortunately.
Ah no worries, I totally understand! I'll just get good lol
Really love this game, as a gamer but also as a rookie dev -honestly inspiring in many ways (from the art to the gameplay).
Again, amazing job!
WoW the art is really cool!