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.
Well, sharpen your sword and polish your armor, because Half Sword is ready to spill its guts all over early access: it launches Friday, January 30. That’s just next week!
To celebrate, the developer, aptly named Half Sword Games, released a comically grisly new trailer set to a soundtrack of what I’ll call one of the most delightfully unhinged songs ever written for a game in history. Watch and listen for yourself:
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 headMake him begCrack his skull like a rotten egg
Push his faceinto the mudBathe your blade in the bastard’s blood!
As the carnage ramps up, the singer becomes ever more gleeful and bloodthirsty:
Claw your wayTo the topLet their corpses be your crop!
Make them begMake them bleedI shall give you what you need
Riches, powerLove of the crowdCome 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.
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