Sick Samurai Preview: A Healthy Challenge!

Slicing onto PC comes the 2D Top-down Indie Action game Slick Samurai, developed and published by Solideo. In this bloody adventure, you take on the role of a samurai-in-training who must prove their worth to their mentor, Genyu, by turning every building full of crooks and villains into a vibrant display of gore, blood, and viscera.

Don’t let the screenshots fool you, dear reader; this isn’t some hack-and-slash type of game. No, this is a one-hit kill kind of affair. With your foes able to take you down as easily as you can. So you need to time your moves well if you don’t want to end up going to pieces. The challenge this game offers is great. At times feeling almost like a puzzle game, given how you need to plan your strikes and how you’ll enter a room. But for more info, let’s get down to the preview.

Sick Samurai is set to release fourth quater 2026; the game can be wishlisted on Steam.

Story – Once Upon A Samurai

In Sick Samurai, you play the nameless student of Genyu, a chain-smoking former Samurai assassin who is training you to become the greatest Samurai on the island. All in the way he knows best. By having you go into buildings filled with heavily armed men and chopping them into well-sliced lumps.

Despite still being in the preview stages, the demo for Sick Samurai features a decent slice of the story. Providing a nice chunk of context. As well as leaving things ambiguous enough to keep you engaged for the full game.

Sick Samurai’s story is well presented.

The Sick Samurai preview build introduces the characters well. It is still too early in the story to indicate where they will end up. However, I could hazard a few guesses. Nonetheless, this is good for what it needs to be.

In addition to this, our nameless protagonist can give one of three possible responses when talking to one of the characters. Which is a neat feature, though I feel might end up being a means of setting up for multiple endings. But we’ll see about that.

Beyond this, the menus are easy to navigate. Though I do wish it were clearer how to add kunai to your inventory when that first comes up. But it is a minor issue.

Gameplay – A Cut Above

As mentioned towards the head of this preview, Sick Samurai is a 2D Action game where you have to defeat a building full of samurai of various varieties. Some are your standard grunts, whereas others can react so fast that you may need to bait them out rather than just attacking them head-on.

Each level is self-contained. And features a handful of foes to take down. Either with your blade, a kunai, bomb, or by kicking lamps at them to stun then slice them with your katana. However, you need to be careful, as whilst you can take down your foes in one slice, they can do the same to you.

Sick Samurai can give you some epic moments in combat.

Yep, it is a one-hit kill kind of game. But given how relatively short the levels are, and how quickly it can be to get back into the action, that isn’t the problem you might think it is.

The gameplay is fast-paced. And the controls are tight and responsive. Allowing you to learn them rather easily, yet ensuring the gameplay isn’t dumbed down to the point of being too easy. There are three difficulties to select from, which is more than welcome to me, given I’m out of practice with these kinds of games.

Bushido, yo!

One thing that I dislike when doing reviews and previews is drawing comparisons between games. I try to rate them on their own merits and only bring them up when I think they are relevant or help explain certain aspects of the game in question. With that in mind, the best way to describe Sick Samurai is that it reminds me a lot of Hotel Miami.

Now, I’m not saying it is as good as it. But this is a title where you play a masked individual who is thrown into a hostile environment to take down a building full of foes in a bloody carnival of violence. And much of the core gameplay feels similar.

This is a one-shot kill game. Not just on the enemies, but on you too.

Though I will say that during my time playing Sick Samurai, I never felt as sick as I did playing Hotel Miami. Not due to the content of that particular game. More so, the strange swaying that it had, which honestly made me feel rather motion sick. Yet, despite the speed of Sick Samurai, it never had that issue.

The levels are well built. And honestly, this feels more about reflexes and timings, given that you can just swing your blade around constantly. This ensures that each room feels meaningful, as one false move could leave you exposed. But there are times when I’ve lost my ability to swing because I happened to be just a little too far away from the door that I was supposed to smash through.

And in the grand scheme of things, that isn’t a killer issue. From a pure gameplay point of view, Sick Samurai feels very feature-complete. With a tight control system and more than enough of a challenge to keep you going. One that grows well, and makes me more interested to see how this one might end up.

Graphics & Audio – Rockin’ Ronin

Sick Samurai has a very distinct look and feel to it. Which really left a rather positive impression on me when I played through for this preview. The art style feels, in places, like it has an anime influence to it. Not to the point that it feels overtly anime-inspired. But moreso that the developers more than likely had a few series they wanted to tip their cap to without replicating the look one-to-one.

This is most obvious in the portraits of the cast that appear during conversations. And to a certain extent (to my ears at least) with the voice acting and performances. But that might just be a ‘me’ thing!

The soundtrack is great. It has this feel that is at times rather jazz-influenced. And yet at other moments it has a more lo-fi hip-hop or funk flavour. Which further gives this game its own unique sense of identity.

Like I say, I’m sure that there is a wealth of different sources that have influenced this piece. But they’ve only ‘influenced’ it; the developers aren’t cribbing anything from anyone wholesale as others might, and they are creating something that feels enough of its own entity. And in an industry of games that wear their influences very clearly on their sleeve, I appreciate the attempt at being original.

Sick Samurai was previewed on PC.