Demo Time: Half Sword [UPDATE] (PC)

 

Half Sword

Release Date: TBD

Systems: Windows, Linux

Publisher: Half Sword Games

Developer: Half Sword Games

Time Spent: +15 Minutes

Well, I downloaded the Half Sword demo on my laptop just to see how different it played with using the mouse and it did feel a lot more intuitive just using a mouse instead of the touchpad, and after playing three times, and dying three times, I can definitely see the appeal and the fun in this wacky and bloody wobbly fighting sim.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I first had to turn down the graphics as they defaulted to Epic settings and my laptop was maxing out at 8 fps.  I then switched it to low settings and it jumped up to 79 fps, then 49 fps at medium, so I left it there.  During the actual gameplay, the frame rate dropped to 20, but that was something I could handle for a few dozen additional pixels on my player's bald little pate.

I found it a little more difficult to actually grab the weapon that was on the table as I kind of had to aim above where I had the mouse cursor on the screen.  I don't actually know what the mechanism behind that could be, but it was still something that I noticed.  But I was able to grab an axe-like small pikeless halberd-like weapon, but I was swinging like an inebriated maniac and wasn't able to make contact with my like-dressed assailant; to note, the game auto-equipped it in both hands.  But then I noticed that the 30-second timer to continue at the top of the screen was not 30, but was 60.  This number wasn't a timer, but a score.  This fueled me a bit more to continue even though I had never won a single combat encounter.

But then the game crashed.

I decided that I would lower the graphical quality to low because I have no qualms about playing a game that doesn't look great as long as I can play the game and I know what it is I'm doing.  This time around, the first table I found had a blue Colovian Fur Helm (because that's what I'm going to call it from now on until I find something different or am corrected) and a bearded axe.  This time around, I was successful in killing my opponent and maiming the second before I too was killed.  During combat, I was prompted to double-click to make a thrust attack, and while I don't know if this was weapon-specific, this tactic never worked regardless of the weapons I ended up using.  This time around, for those keeping score at home, I scored 250 points.

My third and final encounter was my most successful run.  I found what I think was a bident (like a trident, but two) and had a great time with this weapon primarily because of its reach.  I didn't need to have great combat skills because I could swing the bident around wildly (swerving the mouse around wildly) and with luck puncture some part of my enemy's body.  In one encounter I just slashed the guy to death with repeated lacerations across the chest.  In the next, I slashed the guy's pants open at the thigh, and then a bident up under the jaw is what did him in.  In the third encounter, I punctured the guy in his chest then proceeded to shake him side to side to keep him off balance until he died.  The fourth guy managed to somehow either disarm me or wounded one of my arms which made me drop the bident and so I ran away, ended up finding a small mace-like object, but couldn't get in close enough before he beat me to death with a pair of forge tongs.  Plus I got a final score of 420.

Half Sword ended up being a fun demo even on the lower graphical settings and occasional hiccups, but I don't know if I would buy the game for my current laptop as playing on the Steam Deck was, well, you can read about it here.  What I learned, at least in these early combat encounters, was that reach was vastly more important that the weapon itself.  It will be interesting to see what the final game shapes up to be.  Will it be an endless combat arena to achieve a higher score?  Will it be like a puzzle where you go to pre-generated rooms with a set selection of weapons and armor to go up against a specific number and type of enemy?  Will there be a progression system where you can buy/sell equipment to use in future combat and what would the penalties be for dying, because you very much die.  Will you be able to create your character?  Will there be a weapon/armory encyclopedia for equipment that you've found so that you can actually know the name of the weapons/armor you're using?  Half Sword is still very much in early development so I look forward to eventually killing armed opponents in as many goofy and bloody ways as possible on either platform, but the Steam Deck will need further optimization.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

По сырой земле, что в твоих слезах

Demo Time: Half Sword (VSD)

Half Sword

Release Date: TBD

Systems: Windows, Linux

Publisher: Half Sword Games

Developer: 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