Scarred By Heaven: About

For the past year, the coastal city of Jadewater has been plagued by a string of grisly murders, with the bodies of five victims left lying lifeless in the city streets, completely drained of blood. As an unlucky delinquent finds out, however, the truth behind the deaths seems to lie in a different world entirely...

Scarred By Heaven is a beat-em-up about an otherworldly murder mystery, aiming to combine unique 2D brawling with a strong narrative and a small but content-rich sandbox.

You play as Sakiko Mizukawa, a brand-new young adult who's recently left her childhood home behind. Arriving in Jadewater by pure chance one night, she soon finds herself at the center of the city's paranormal mystery after a seemingly ordinary street fight takes a bizarre twist.

Wielding an otherworldly power tied to a strange new scar over her eye, Saki plunges into the 'other' Jadewater to discover the truth behind it all--but soon learns that she's not the only one to have been 'Marked'...

Scarred By Heaven features a beat-em-up system focused on fast-paced brawling, combos, and parrying--combining inspirations from beat-em-ups like 'Yakuza' and fighting games like 'Guilty Gear'.

Face off against against gangs of local thugs in the real city and monstrous 'Phantoms' in the Otherworld with an ever-growing array of attacks and weapons. The game also features several unique 1-on-1 boss battles with others who've been granted powers, each having their own attacks, tricks, and style.

Combat aims to provide a lot of potential depth, but still be enjoyable at all skill levels. The game will feature a robust set of difficulty modifiers, allowing you to pick from a selection of presets, as well as customize and fine tune details about the game like enemy damage, the leniency of parry timing, and more.

The strongest warriors know what they're fighting to protect.

Outside of combat, Saki can explore the city of Jadewater--a sandbox carnival of side content with a variety of distractions to discover, including shopping, cooking, fishing, arcades, eating at restaurants, and helping locals out with various problems in unique sidestories.

You'll earn small amounts of XP from exploring (as you also do from combat) that you can use to upgrade your combat abilities--as well as discover various other small rewards that can both help you become a better fighter, and further enrich Saki's life outside of combat.

Playable Demo

SBH is still mid-development, but I do have a playable Combat Demo you can try!

The demo shows off the combat system and the first handful of fights in the game devoid of their story context--including the first two boss fights.

You can download it here, or on itch.io!

About Development

SBH is planned to eventually be released in two standalone parts that continue the same story. Both parts are planned to be released for free on this site, itch.io and Steam when finished.

I've been working on the game in my free time for about six years now as a solo developer, and it's been a very large passion project for me! There's still a lot of work to be done, though, so expect to see a lot of silly placeholders in what I post, and assume pretty much everything is subject to change in the final version.

If you want to learn more about the game from here, then you can check out the Characters page to see the cast, or read my Blog, where I talk about the ongoing development a lot. If you like my work and want to support me, then you can also tip me on my ko-fi!

But regardless, thank you for your interest in the game! :)