Medieval combat sim Half Sword made a big, bloody splash at Next Fest last year when its tech playtest became the most popular demo on Steam. The physics-based melee brawler is equal parts gore and clumsiness as players face off—and try to slash each other’s faces off—with wildly-swung swords and axes and spears.
Players loved that tech demo so much the sim quickly rocketed onto Steam’s list of top wishlists, where it now sits in slot number 10 alongside big-budget games like Ark 2 and Forza Horizon 6.
The trailer begins with some bare-fisted boxing, but that quickly escalates to people’s faces being pulverised on the ground or against wooden posts. Then it moves on to combatants wonkily destroying each other’s bodies with hammers, axes, and swords.
But you’ve seen stuff like that before. What’s new here is that to violence is accompanied by lyrics like:
Hit his head
Make him beg
Crack his skull like a rotten egg
Push his face
into the mud
Bathe your blade in the bastard’s blood!
As the carnage ramps up, the singer becomes ever more gleeful and bloodthirsty:
Claw your way
To the top
Let their corpses be your crop!
Make them beg
Make them bleed
I shall give you what you need
Riches, power
Love of the crowd
Come and make your Dada proud!
Then comes the laughter. The maniacal, maniacal laughter. I don’t know why you’re reading this when you should be listening to it. It’s amazing. You’ve probably already wishlisted it like everyone else, but if not, you can find Half Sword on Steam.
