Release Date: TBD
Systems: Windows, Linux
Publisher: Half Sword Games
Time Spent: 14 Minutes
I actually heard about Half Sword during the previous Next Fest last October but I never got around to playing it. While I didn't hear/see any posts/talk about this game this time around, I was happy to see that the demo was still available. All I knew was that it was a physics-based game with historically accurate 15th-century European weapons and armor, and was talked about like QWOP with swords. That's all I needed to be on board, or at least on board this time.
Thankfully, Half Sword was a little bit easier than QWOP as far as moving goes as all I had to do was press forward on the joystick for the character to get up off of the floor and run toward the illuminated table with what I hoped would be something I could equip on my naked person's body. Movement was a bit wobbly, almost like using a joystick was an unintended but necessary cheat rather than alternating between the L/R shoulder and L/R trigger buttons to move. At the table, there was a hat of some sort (maybe it wasn't a hat, but it looked rather Colovian-like) and, I think, a long-handled sickle. The game prompted me to "Press E/Q to interact." And that's where we ran into our first of a few problems that ended in me not being able to totally enjoy Half Sword.
So as was the case with other games that weren't optimized for the Steam Deck, Half Sword needed a bit of tinkering with the controls, but only on my second attempt playing since I ran into this guy swinging a sword at me and promptly killed me. On my second attempt, I had to map Q to the L2 trigger and E to the R2 trigger. This actually allowed me to pick up the weapons on the table, this time it was a dagger and something else that I apologize for not being able to remember specifically what it was, but I do remember that it was a similarly sized weapon. Now that I was armed, I took a couple of practice swings, fully anticipating another attacker to show up, which he eventually did and I died again.
Now let's get down to a couple of points that I glossed over to help keep the narrative flowing.
During my first attempt, I discovered that while I was unable to pick up either item on the table, I could swing my arms wildly about by swiping my thumb across the right touchpad. For a hot moment, I thought I might be able to punch my way out of the altercation with the armed guy but his quick thinking to swing his sword up under my left arm was what quickly led to my death. That and not really knowing what I was doing. The game then cordially told me that I had died, not unlike in Dark Souls. And then there was a number 30 at the top of the screen that I was fully expecting to start counting down, but it didn't. It just stayed at 30. And then I discovered that I couldn't move the cursor or select anything on the screen. Holding down the Steam button didn't bring up a cursor either, but I was able to bring up the Steam menu to force exit out of the game.
During my second attempt, after having mapped Q/E to their respective triggers, I was able to arm myself with my shortened weapons. I thought that maybe I might have a better chance, even though swinging as wildly as before when I was unarmed didn't instill any confidence in my survivability this time around. Eventually, another guy came out with a sword and I briefly considered dropping the weapons I was holding to see if I could instead pick up the 5ft tall floor-standing candelabra to have a bit of range, but I wasn't sure if a two-handed weapon required greater skill than I had already shown. But before I could make the attempt, the attacks came and I was killed. And the game froze at the "You Died" screen. Again.
Granted, this would be an incentive to not die, to not have to deal with the game freezing on me, and while I was interested to see what weapons would be randomly chosen for me, I ultimately decided that that was my final attempt. Another contributing factor was that even with mapping the Q/E keys, attacking still felt awkward, although since a main focus of the mechanics was around QWOP-style physics-based hilarity, I'm not sure how well this will translate to either controller support or future Steam Deck support without significant tweaks. Since my focus in this series of Demo Time articles has been on how the various demos play on the Steam Deck, I might revisit with a mid-week article if I play it on my laptop, albeit with downgraded graphics, and report back how it handles with keyboard/mouse controls.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
And I've Battled and Bled for it All
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