Gesture

Gesture is a skill-based 1v1 arena duel inspired by Dark Souls 3 combat. There’s no RPG layer, no loot, and no leveling. Two players pick a build, fight a best-of-3, and the arena resets instantly between rounds. The only progression is the build you choose before the match starts.

What’s there now

Milestone 1 is playable end to end: main menu, pre-match build selection, the duel, and a results screen, with pause and settings. There’s a Duel mode (two players, keyboard and mouse against a gamepad) and a single-player Sandbox against a training dummy, across three maps: an open Courtyard, a narrow Bridge with no room to circle, and a foggy Jungle with cover.

Combat

The combat is built around commitment and stamina, the way DS3’s is.

• Every action costs stamina, and it only regenerates after a short pause. An attack just needs stamina above zero to start.
• Attacks are committed: startup, then active frames where the hitbox is live, then recovery. The timing lives in 60 Hz simulation ticks defined in data, not in the animation files.
• Rolling is the main defense. The roll tier (light, medium, heavy) comes from total equipment load, weapon weight plus armor class, and each tier trades i-frames and distance against recovery time.
• Poise decides who gets staggered. Poise damage accumulates, and exceeding your poise interrupts whatever you’re doing. Heavy attacks carry hyper armor through it.
• Backstabs, parries (buckler, parry dagger, or a risky bare-handed one), ripostes, and lock-on are all in.

Builds are chosen before the match: a stat pool across Vigor, Endurance, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Luck, plus a weapon class, an armor class, and two throwables. Six weapon classes so far, each with its own moveset and feel: Dagger, Straight Sword, Katana, Spear, Halberd, and Greatsword.

Two systems give a build its character. Imbues cycle through Fire, Lightning, Dark, Ice, and Poison, and each element scales off a different stat (Fire on Strength, Lightning on Dexterity, Dark on Intelligence, Ice on Endurance, Poison on Luck) and adds its own rider, so every build leans toward a natural element. Consumables sit on a DS-style d-pad cross: an estus flask to heal, plus throwables like a firebomb, a smoke bomb that breaks lock-on, a dull bomb that blocks healing, and a poison ball.

Hits read clearly: a brief freeze on contact, camera shake on the fighter who got hit, and a ghost of recent damage trailing on the health bars.

How it’s built

The half I enjoy most is the architecture. Everything is data-driven: every weapon, attack, armor class, roll, item, and imbue is a Godot Resource, so tuning the game means editing data rather than code. The code stays strict: no god objects, composition over inheritance, one small class per file, and every system testable on its own. A headless smoke test runs a scripted duel with no window open.

The simulation runs at a fixed 60 Hz with input separated from the simulation logic. That separation is the point: the plan is Steam P2P multiplayer later, and a deterministic sim with clean input handling is what makes that feasible. Networking comes last, after the combat actually feels right. Notes on that question grow in the thought garden.

Status

A playable Milestone 1: real combat, six weapons, builds, imbues, consumables, three maps, and the full match flow. Networking is the next large piece. Combat feel is the metric I hold everything else to.