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

Demo Time: It's Kooky - Land of Aotearoa (VSD)

It's Kooky - Land of Aotearoa

Systems: Windows, Linux,

Release Date: Q3 2024

Publisher: Roshan Nowshad

Developer: Roshan Nowshad

Time Spent: 10 Minutes

It's Kooky - Land of Aotearoa is just that, a kooky little point-and-click find-it game from New Zealand-based indie game developer Roshan Nowshad.  Not being a resident of the Southern Hemisphere, I had to look up "Aotearoa" to find out that it is the Māori name for what was later named New Zealand, or specifically, the North Island.  This is all somewhat important as will be made evident a little bit later.

The bulk of It's Kooky is a point-and-click timed finding game and the demo consists of three separate stages with each stage making up a single black-and-white drawing uncrowded with people* where you look for things that are out of place.  We're talking really out of place, not just someone holding a shovel in a kitchen or five forks at a place setting, but more like a horse wearing swim trunks and sunglasses while wakeboarding behind a 17th-century European jolly boat.  Or a bear (I think it's a bear, or it could be a giant bipedal capybara; no, yeah, it's a bear) running while holding a large two-tiered birthday cake.  You know, kooky things, things that are out of place.  Each stage has a counter of the number of silly things you have to find and at the end, you are told how fast you found all of the objects.  You're also unable to zoom out to see the entire picture, otherwise you could just click everything in a few seconds.  Forcing the player to zoom in and pan around a bit not only elongates the amount of time spent in each stage but also allows the player to have a closer look at some of the amusing illustrations.  Surprisingly, or maybe not because this is a demo, but I noticed no randomization in the placement of some of the characters you're supposed to find, so every time you start, everything is in the exact same place. Sadly, this means that apart from younger children who are just starting out playing video games, there is little replay value.

Māori and New Zealand history also play an interesting part in this game.  Before you start each stage, there is a title screen that sets the location for where you will be looking for strange and silly things that don't belong; not that a person sitting in a recliner up in a tree canopy would be normal in any time period.  These bits of information range from something you might find in a history textbook, to information that the State of Florida would likely decry as being too woke.  At least in the demo, the historical information did not seem to play any factor in what was needed to look out for, but it honestly made me feel a little "eh" looking for a bird rollerblading on a stump after reading about how European colonizers deforested 99.7% of kauri forests on the North Island in the 19th century.

I think I would self-categorize It's Kooky - Land of Aotearoa as a wind-down game, something to play after a higher energy or mentally taxing game, like Dark Souls or Final Fantasy VII.  But then only so long as there are new things to find rather than replaying previous stages where you already found everything that's a bit silly.  It would also be incredibly short as I spent 10 minutes on the Steam Deck in total and that was only three stages and 30 silly things; although the last stage does introduce an additional item to locate in specific stages.  There are other games in the It's Kooky franchise and they both look to be in a similar vein, although they vary in price from $2.99 - $1.50, so I would expect It's Kooky - Land of Aotearoa to be similarly priced.  And really, for that amount, maybe this game doesn't really need to be any more than it already is.  A bit of silliness, a bit of New Zealand history, some amusing art, and some appropriate background music.  Maybe that's just enough.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

*P.S.  What I mean by "uncrowded" is that yes, there are people as you can see above, but we're not talking Where's Waldo level of crowds.

Demo Time: Dreamcore (VSD)

Dreamcore

Systems: Windows, Linux

Release Date: TBD

Publisher: Montraluz

Developer: Montraluz

Time Spent: 56 Minutes

I am not very much an art person.  I mean, I love art but don't ask me to analyze a painting and expect anything more than a couple of sentences.  And then there's "modern art". . .wait no.  "Modern" apparently refers to art created between 1860 - 1970, I must be thinking of "post-modern" art.  No, not that either.  I might be thinking of some combination of pop art, conceptualism, and minimalism.  I'm not really sure.  All I know is that when my family visited an art museum in DC 23 years ago (It might've been the National Gallery of Art), I enjoyed the museum until we got to the section/wing that had art that had been created in what felt like the last 10 years (so, in the 1990s) and I just lost all interest.  I could look at a single Bosch or Dali painting for an hour and just be captivated the whole time.  Or whatever kind of Americana folk art this is called.  The point to all of this rambling is that before I started Dreamcore, I couldn't give you a great description of what it meant for a video game to be categorized as "liminal."  Apparently it's the trend in art the last 5-10 years, but what that means in terms of a video game, I couldn't tell you.

Until I started writing this article.  All that the "liminal" genre tag means is the sense of uneasiness that exploring a place that would normally be populated creates.  So for instance, Dear Esther as you explore an uninhabited island.  Or Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, which I assume explores this concept as you walk through an uninhabited English countryside village after the Rapture; although I haven't played it yet.  Or Gone Home where you explore and walk through your empty childhood home reading documents, letters, newspaper clippings, etc while finding out about your family's goings on for the last handful of years.  I don't know, maybe those aren't accurate depictions of liminal spaces in video games, but that's how I interpret them based on the definition from Wikipedia.

To some extent, I don't feel outwardly creeped out by liminal spaces.  Like, looking down an empty hallway in a hotel isn't uneasy.  Yes, I've seen The Shining.  But maybe you just need to hang out in a hotel hallway for an hour or two after 1 AM because you don't have your room card key.

Anyway!

Dreamcore.  Specifically the first and only playable environment.  What the other four environments are were not listed on the select screen, only that they would be "coming soon."  First off, this game/demo looks amazing and looks damn near photo-realistic on the Steam Deck.  If you're particularly anal about immersion though, you might be upset that there is no movement in the water as you walk through it, although it does prevent you from running.  I actually questioned for a moment how the footage was created for me to be able to walk and look around wherever I wanted (as if I hadn't walked through a 3D space created from a real-world location before).  It became clear, maybe 20 minutes in that the rooms/spaces in Dreamcore felt like they were procedurally generated, although I was still under the video game player mindset that there was some sort of progression that I needed to decode through the various markings on the walls, the shapes of the doors, and the occasional music that would creep up.

There were rooms where faint music would swell but then fade away.  There were archways and doors that had images scrawled on them in black ink.  There was an elevator that would would ding but the floor didn't change beyond 37.  There was a flashlight on a stool.  There were triangle doors with arrows scrawled above them, pointing me to go to one or the other.  There were rooms that were completely dark and was prompted that I would require a flashlight to enter them.  Which I had.  So I did.  After nearly an hour of walking through these rooms filled with pools, inflatable tubes, smiley face balls, strangely shaped pool floaties that maybe had faces on them, I decided that I was going to call it quits.  Then I looked at the discussion page through the Steam Store and everything I had thought when I quit the game was somewhat accurate.

To me it felt like the entire purpose of "Dreampools" was to take a familial location and let the player explore locations that felt as if they could have been conjured in a dream.  According to the Steam Discussion pages, in previous builds of the game there used to be a shadowy figure that would show up every so often in an inaccessible place, but they would not do anything, just be there to help amp up the tension and uneasiness, but were removed sometime late last year (2023) due to the developer not being happy with the animations.  There also apparently is a legitimate "end" to "Dreampools," possibly something to do with a basement (maybe?)

However, there were definitely places in this game where I did feel uneasy and unnerved.  When I first came upon the pool that was filled with different-sized pool floaties with what looked like eyes on them, I got goosebumps.  As in the kind of goosebumps that rise from behind your ears to the top of your scalp while simultaneously running down your shoulders.  All within a second or two upon entering this room.  And this was well over 30 minutes into playing so I was 99% sure that nothing was going to jump out of the water and start chasing me, it was just creepy.  I don't think I was trying to figure out who had placed the pool floaties in the water because someone must have placed them there because they're there and I know that I didn't place them there if someone else did that where are they now and are they watching me right now?  On the most basic level, it felt like, "Well that's new and unsettling."

Now knowing that there are about 300 individual rooms that are not procedurally generated with a specific end in mind makes the thought of jumping back into "Dreampools" feel a little daunting, but only if I think of it like a traditional video game.  If I think of "Dreampools" as an experience to wander through to experience a sense of unease in an amazing-looking setting, then this is exactly what it is.  I am very interested though to see what the other four locations are, and the fact that I can run this at the highest visual settings on the Steam Deck is all the more appealing; the fan does kick in almost immediately and I think I could probably run the batter down in an hour, but thankfully the high-speed charger cord is long enough to reach from the power outlet to where I am laying in bed.

JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Be Drowned in the Lake of the Abyss

Demo Time: Miniatures (VSD & PC)

Miniatures

Release Date: Q2 2024

Systems: Windows, Linux, macOS

Publisher: Other Tales Interactive

Developer: Other Tales Interactive

Time Spent: 42 Minutes

Hoo boy did I have a journey with this game.  I first started it on the Steam Deck because it's easier and more comfortable to play games on that platform while lying in bed than it is on my laptop.  And I figure that a lot of games are going to want to be Steam Deck verified/playable to help increase their sales.  Miniatures is a point-and-click game where, at least in the demo, you receive a box from an Ikea-adjacent store and you construct a piece of furniture with the rest of your family.   This isn't a building sim though, you're not following instructions and following a step-by-step guide, but each scene is more of a single-screen vignette where you perform a specific action and then there is a transition and you move onto another step.  Not necessarily the next step, just another step.  You go from screwing on a single hinge to playing with the bolts before being visually scolded by a creepy motherly hand.

So I started the game on the Steam Deck and sat at the screen following the titles for about 20 seconds before realizing that I could actually do something and that something was to turn on the lights.  I first started by using the right trackpad and thinking I could use the R-Trigger, but instead, I had to use the A-button to select things.  Only on my fourth attempt (more on that in a bit) did I realize that I could use the left joystick to move around the cursor which was a huge relief because needing to use the same finger (in this case, my right thumb) to move the cursor and press the selecting button did not feel good.

Fourth attempt, yes.  Actually, this ended up being five total attempts at playing Miniatures on the Steam Deck and it all came down to a single screen that refused to work for whatever reason.  On the fifth task, a handle is placed near the center of the screen.  When the cursor turns black over the handle and I click it, two opposing hands grab either side of the handle.  Now, depending on which attempt I am referring to, different things would happen, although both were in the same vein.  The first thing that happened was that the cursor turned black when it was over the bottom left hand, but nothing happened when I clicked the hand.  So I tried rapidly clicking the hand, but still nothing happened.  After a few minutes of more nothing happening, I exited back to the main menu and then restarted the game from the beginning.  The second time, the cursor was black regardless of where it was on the screen.  The same thing happened the third time and that was the last time I played that first night.  The next night, after having posted on the discussion board (thanks Vasokolbaso), I tried and the cursor was white regardless of where it was on the screen, and again, nothing happened regardless of where I clicked.  My fifth attempt was on my laptop to see if it was a problem with the game or just a problem with the Steam Deck.  That time I was able to progress, successfully breaking the handle, and ended up "finishing" whatever the piece of furniture our family was assembling.

I genuinely don't know if there is additional content for this one particular furniture project. Still, the empty spaces in the box at the beginning of the game as well as the description on Steam say that there are "four graphical adventures" and this one felt pretty complete.  I also wonder if the glitch that I experienced was somehow a "me" issue and not one experienced by other Steam Deck users, but as far as I know from the discussion pages, I might be the only one?  I also don't know what the price point would be for this kind of game if this is 25% of what will eventually be offered and as it is, I can't imagine that there will be a whole lot of replay value apart from showing it to other people and watching them experience this fun and weird game.  Experience.  Thing.  It's definitely my type of wind-down game where I just want to experience something with minimal effort after something more taxing.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplanman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Demo Time: Of Love & Eternity (VSD)

Of Love & Eternity

Systems: Windows, Linux, macOS

Release Date: TBD

Publisher: Acorn Bringer

Developer: Acorn Bringer

Time Spent: ~30 Minutes

Of Love & Eternity (OL&E?) was a strange demo that really felt more like a proof of concept for world and atmosphere-building than actually showcasing anything resembling a finished game.  There is a brief intro that shows a King figure killing an armored woman, followed by an armored man who rushes in and immediately mourns the loss of the killed woman.  The King then kills the man, who then passes through a visualized cosmic etherealness and comes to as a skeleton in a dungeon and is approached by a death-like figure and given a load of exposition.  The remainder of the demo is spent running through hallways in a forest, reading descriptions as they come up on the screen, punching at nothing, and collecting some form of firefly-like light source which is then used to bypass moths (I think) to cross a makeshift log bridge to rest and contemplate at a campfire.  That's more-or-less it.  Maybe about 30 minutes, maybe less if you don't backtrack like I did.

Let's get to some of the technical details and get those out of the way.

Visuals appear to be a big part of how developer Acorn Bringer wants the game to be viewed.  By default, there is a pixely and graininess to everything that makes it feel like you're watching something decades old, but different in the way that the game might have looked on PS1 hardware.  There is the option to turn off the film grain and the pixeliness, but there is also the odd option to totally make the game unplayable by reducing the game to a mess of large pixels so that it really only retains the color scheme of the rest of the game.  Wo to the person who sets the Dither to type xXx, Size: X, and 4 Color Steps and accidentally backs out of the menu.  I'm sure that there's a way to immediately fix this, maybe backing out of the game entirely resets the resolution/dither.  You can also turn off the dither effect completely, but I really feel that that takes away a lot of the charm.  Yes, visually it does look a bit better, but it's almost like trying to play an SNES game without a CRTV filter turned on.  The image is crisper and the lines are more defined, but it doesn't feel good.

Secondly are the controls.  This being a third-person perspective game with a movable camera, I looked for an "Invert Y-Axis" option but couldn't find one, so this led me to frequently look up at the sky or down at the ground whenever I would turn.  It did become a little easier the longer I played, but I was somewhat thankful that there wasn't any combat because I felt like it would not have ended well for me.

I didn't have any issues running it on the Steam Deck.  There was a windowed pop-up config menu when I started the game that required me to manually pull up the mouse and I just left it on the settings that were there by default; I can't remember what the actual resolution of the Steam Deck's screen is so I left it as is.  The only other thing I would change controller-wise (apart from adding the option to invert the Y-axis) is that the B-button had the same function as the Start/Menu button, which brought up the menu/question if you wanted to return to the main menu.  Not that it happened, but I could see myself accidentally hitting the B-button when I think I'm wanting to cancel something, then again accidentally clicking -Yes- to go back to the main menu.

It's hard to say what kind of game Of Love & Eternity is trying to be.  As mentioned, there is a punch button which implies that there is going to be some type of fighting mechanic.  How fights would operate I am unsure about.  The atmosphere and the fact that you play as an undead knight running around in a forest with ruins scattered about implies (there's that word again) that it might be somewhat Soulslike. Still, it could also end up being closer to the targeting/fighting started with Ocarina of Time.  It definitely doesn't feel like there's going to be a horde rush mode however, or maybe there will be no actual combat and the punch button will only be used to solve environmental puzzles.  It's hard to say judging from just the 30 minutes in the demo.

But what is presented here, I very much enjoyed.  I liked the graininess (ditheriness?) and I liked the occasional thunder and lightning claps that put me on edge.  I like seeing ruins off in the distance, backlit by blue lights and an eerie cemetery filled with red lights.  I enjoyed being constantly on edge not really knowing what was going to happen in the fog-filled forest.

I look forward to seeing what will become of this game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Ancient Falls