I’m not sure how I was invited to test out the Sword Hero Combat Arena demo yesterday. It’s not the kind of game I usually play.
Sword Hero, or at least the combat arena part of it, is a low-poly 3D game set in a ring world that was settled by humans just before their civilization collapsed. Now the remnants struggle to survive in an alien ecosystem which nonetheless would look familiar to anyone who has ever read or watched Game of Thrones. Low magic, deadly combat.
The game renders as a low-poly dark world that reminds me more than a little of the 3D dungeon crawlers of the PS2 era. The sound is decent, the few environments we get to see (an anteroom, a shop, the small fighting pit) are detailed. The game nails the sort of Kenshi-level aesthetic it’s trying for.
Even though the focus of the demo is on the combat, the developer included a little lockpicking mini-game to show a little of the other activities the game will offer. The lockpicking game reminded me of those old Hillsfar/Might & Magic lockpicking games. In this one, you rake the lock pins and take note the order in which the pins fall, and then hit them with the pick in that order.
Three classes are available in the combat demo, of the dozen or more planned. Karak the Warrior has the most health and fights with a sword. Silvio the Ranger has about 2/3 the health of the warrior and fights with a bow and axe. I haven’t tried Gylbard the Scholar yet, but I’m betting he wields magic. (Female characters will be available in the full game, I’m told).
The starting room contains books hinting at the history and current state of the wider world, a rusty sword and a spare healing herb. You’ll want to grab all those and sell the books and rusty sword to the merchant / arena master.
The arena master has set up a series of trials for you to show your combat prowess. It’s your mission to defeat them all.
Combat in Sword Hero is deceptively simple; left mouse button to swing/shoot, right mouse button to block/parry, middle mouse button to lock on to an enemy, allowing you to focus your swing on a specific body part. WASD to move, space to jump, ALT to dodge.
You can only take two or three hits before dying, and being hit at all means being staggered and opening yourself up for a follow-up strike unless you leap out of the way. Dodging or attacking uses up your stamina bar, so do too much at once and you’ll be unable to do anything at all. Successful hits and parries fill your Psi meter, which unlocks class-specific abilities — the warrior can kick his opponent away, as an example.
The first opponent is a drunk who moves and attacks slowly. Karak was able to easily parry and hit with a follow-up attack of his own and jump away before the drunk could respond. Sylvio just did headshots from the door.
Second fight is a bunch of large moles, easily picked off with the bow and not much more trouble with the sword. I found them harder to dodge, and being super aggressive seemed to be the answer for them.
Third fight was a wolf trainer with two wolves. Even though I’d bought a bow and arrows for Karak, I couldn’t manage to win this fight. Sylvio took care of a wolf from the door, circled around to take the second wolf, and then took potshots at the trainer until he died.
Fourth fight was against a bunch of gray aliens. They moved slowly and as a group, so Sylvio was doing fine, but he was running out of arrows. The occasional melee did nice damage, but the aliens would swarm. Sylvio might have won the fight, if he hadn’t backed into the fire. That makes me think I should have seen if the aliens could have been lured into it. Maybe I’ll try that later.
Sword Hero pushes back against the twitch combat of today’s RPGs and remembers the more slow paced and more difficult combat of the classic combat games of the 90s — think Bushido’s tactical and deadly combat more than Devil May Cry’s superhuman athletics.
In the demo, it’s game over if you die. Your only option, upon defeat, is to restart from the beginning. If the full game continues with the “first death, game over” permadeath rogue-like vibe, then this game could be very exciting, but probably also very short.
This looks to be the work of a single developer, and for that, it’s extremely impressive. I’m excited to see where it goes — even though I don’t think I’m the target market. I did manage to make it to the fourth wave of the battle, but it took a bunch of tries. I did appreciate how the game was subtly teaching me how to play by introducing new concepts with each fight.
Those gray aliens, though, should all burn. They should all burn in Hell.
