blade & sorcery

May 11, 2020

Become a Blade Master in These 6 Ultimate VR Sword Fighting Games

Virtual reality (VR) has proven to be a technology which excels at plenty of videogame genre’s, especially when it comes to physical interaction. One of the best examples of this is melee combat, whether that’s hand to hand or using weapons. And who doesn’t love being embroiled in some fantasy adventure where survival comes down to how well you can swing a sword. So here is VRFocus’ favourite VR sword fighting examples.

This is a list all about bladed combat, going toe to toe with enemies in a battle of wits and endurance. So that means titles like Beat Saber will be excluded as while they do feature flashy swords you’re not dueling in any way.

Until You Fall

A title that’s still in Early Access for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Valve Index, Until You Fall is the latest from Schell Games.

Offering a highly stylized experience that pulls no punches, Until You Fall arms you with a selection of weapons, from short swords to knives and axes. The aim is to get as far as possible without dying, death resetting the areas, enemy locations and more, for a different experience each time.

Schell Games might have added a storyline and magical qualities to enhance various character attributes but the main draw is still the combat. Most areas split enemies up so it’s mostly 1v1, allowing you to charge in and do some serious damage. Opponents attacks are indicated to aid blocking, whilst you can break their guard and unleash powerful specialised blows. One of the most visually arresting titles here.

Swords of Gargantua

While Until You Fall was purely single-player, Yomuneco Inc’s. Swords of Gargantua provides both solo and multiplayer gameplay to keep players entertained.

A fast-paced rogue-lite action experience, Swords of Gargantua focuses on realistic swordplay for one to four players, blocking, parrying, and attacking deadly foes with a mixture of over 30 weapons. You have to fight though101 floors of enemies to reach the colossal end-boss, Gargantua.

Currently supporting PC VR headsets – with PlayStation VR and Oculus Quest in the works – the studio has added and continues to add plenty of content for when you’ve completed the main quest.

Ironlights

A pure PvP dueler, Ironlights by indie developer E McNeill is one of the more unusual combat titles on this list but shouldn’t be overlooked.

Supporting PC VR headsets as well as Oculus Quest, Ironlights is about thoughtful use of the weapons provided, rather than all-out action and flailing wildly. You can choose from a selection of characters each with a close combat weapon as well as a ranged attack.

The trick with Ironlights is that combat takes place in slow motion and weapons instantly break when they make contact, continually needing to be replenished by swinging them behind your back.

Ironlights is another title which offers both solo and online play, with the single-player campaign providing seven levels to unlock across Bronze, Silver and Gold leagues.

Another Early Access title which has built a loyal following thanks to its gameplay, Blade & Sorcery is a medieval fantasy sandbox for all your bladed combat needs.

Blade & Sorcery does feature ranged and magic combat but its the sheer selection of medieval weaponry, the full-body physics and the way you can be creative in combat that makes the experience so much fun.

Supporting PC headsets like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Valve Index, Blade & Sorcery is continually updated by developer WarpFrog so you can be sure there’s always something to do.

Gorn

Probably the most ridiculous VR videogame on here, if you’re looking for anime levels of blood and gore then Gorn is it.

The opponents might be spongy, rag-doll gladiators but they can put up a fight and in the small arena you need to as well. Weapons wobble all over the place but this ain’t no cartoon, hack arms off, smash skulls in and paint the place red with claret, in this single-player hack ‘n’ slash.

It’s on PC headsets like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Valve Index with a PlayStation VR version arriving 19th May.

Shadow Legend VR

Time for an actual story-driven VR adventure, with castles, knights, ancient evil and of course a sword in Shadow Legend VR.

As the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, it’s up to you to save your kingdom of Anaria from the destruction of Lord Adaroth. Shadow Legend VR is great for those who want more context to their battles, rather than pure brutish arena battles.

With interwoven RPG elements the videogame provides an entertaining medieval adventure across both PC and PlayStation VR headsets. The action isn’t quite as finessed as others on this list but there are still epic boos fights and hidden secrets to find.

May 7, 2020

Blade & Sorcery’s Huge New Update Will Add Armor, A New Map And Spells

For all of 2020 (and some of 2019) Blade and Sorcery fans have been waiting on the game’s next big content drop, Update 8. After a few delays — some brought about due to the COVID-19 pandemic — the update is nearly here, and it’s looking absolutely huge.

Originally, Update 8 was intended to focus on the combat simulator’s magical aspects. But, while all the spell updates are still in place, it will also add a heck of a lot more. For starters, you’ll have new sorceries, like the ability to set enemies on fire and mess with gravity. In the clip below, you can see enemies float into the air, making them even easier to deal with than ever before.

But one of Update 8’s most interesting additions looks to be armor, which adds a needed touch of strategy to the game. Enemies can now sport different tiers of armor that will have varying resistances to different weaponry. The strongest armor plating will see you seeking out weak spots for stabbing or resulting to clobbering enemies with heavier objects.

Elsewhere, the update will add a new map named Citadel. You can get a glimpse of it in this armor footage posted earlier this week, though the team says it’s keeping most of its surprises under wraps for launch.

There’s much more where all that came from. In fact it’s a little too much to keep track of; head on over to the game’s Steam page and check out the last few announcements to see everything that’s on offer. For now, developer WarpFrog is aiming to get the update out before the end of May, though acknowledges it might slip again. Whatever happens, it looks like it will be worth the wait.

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March 10, 2020

Could Realistic, Advanced Physics be the Gameplay Differentiator to Take VR Mainstream?

Sometimes, it’s difficult to put your finger on why and how virtual reality (VR) gaming differs to traditional gaming. Of course, there’s the obvious immersion point – in VR you’re actually in the game rather than viewing it – but what about gameplay mechanics? How do they really differ? The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR and Fallout 4 VR are amazingly immersive in VR but, outside of being able to move your weapons in independent directions, is the core gameplay any different from their flatscreen incarnations?

Boneworks A growing trend in the VR scene has been the rise of titles that attempt to utilise realistic physics-driven interaction systems as core gameplay mechanics. This trend began with games like H3VR and Gorn and has gained momentum recently through titles such as Blade & Sorcery, Boneworks and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. These videogames are based around employing consistent, universal and realistic physics rules to every object in an experience so that when a player manipulates or uses that object it reacts realistically (or at least consistently) to both the player’s input and all other objects and masses in the VR space. It feels very much like the next step on the evolutionary path of VR gaming and one that truly differentiates it from traditional gaming.

Adding weight and mass to thin air!

What does this mean in practice? In the titles mentioned above, not only can almost every item in their worlds be picked up, moved, thrown and manipulated but there is also an attempt to give each item weight and mass. Quite a difficult thing to pull off convincingly when in the real world the player is just pushing air particles around! When I pick up a huge axe in a videogame like Blade & Sorcery there is a realistic approximation of its weight. I can’t just pick up this axe with one hand and waggle it around weightlessly. It has realistic physics and it will droop uselessly if I use it with one hand, greatly diminishing its damage potential if I try to hit an enemy (as would be the case in real life). Rather, I need to pick it up with two hands and mime slow swings like it has actual weight. This sounds unintuitive but it’s anything but. It’s actually a lot of fun and surprisingly effective at making you believe you’re swinging around a hulking great piece of metal. Furthermore, if I swing the axe at a wall it will bounce off it rather than just glide through. If I hit a pot it will smash. If I crunch it into a competitor gladiator’s arm it will (gruesomely) dismember them!

Realistic, advanced physics take VR immersion and gameplay to the next level

When we talk about realistic physics simulation this is what we mean. While it might not seem like the most obvious selling point for VR – “realistic physics” doesn’t exactly scream must play – the benefits are immense. Firstly, it adds hugely to the overall immersion. Visually placing you in an environment is one thing in VR, but when you’re placed in a space and then each object you touch, grab or swing reacts as you expect, and has its own physicality and weight, it’s amazing how your brain can be tricked into believing that what is in front of you is somehow real and actually there. I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the first few areas of Boneworks simply overturning tables, pushing over filing cabinets and picking up and throwing computer screens. It’s just so much fun to simply exist and mess around in a VR space when you can grab and manipulate all the in-game objects around you.

Secondly, and very much in line with the trend we’ve seen in VR gaming during 2019 and early 2020, there are endlessly entertaining ways to incorporate realistic and consistent physics into gameplay mechanics that facilitate player creativity and expression. The most obvious example is through weapons. When your weapons and your enemies have weight and presence it’s remarkable how many ways to tackle combat situations present themselves. Suddenly, every cool move you’ve seen in a sword and shield or gun-based action film is there for you to emulate. A quick search on YouTube for Sword & Sorcery’s best kills will throw up all manner of complicated and convoluted (and, it has to be said, cool) melee combat sequences which show a whole range of sword, axe, knife and pike sequences that are equal parts shocking and thrilling in their brutality and creativity. On the less gruesome side, if that machine gun now has weight and presence in-game (as in Boneworks), not only can you use it to shoot an enemy (as you would in any videogame), but it can become a multi-purpose tool; one you can use to push open doors or hook over a ledge to use as a climbing aid or as a bar on a zip line.

There’s an almost endless amount of ways you can manipulate these believable in-game props to come up with creative and original ways to defeat enemies, overcome puzzles or navigate parts of the environment. This level of interactivity is just not possible in traditional 2D videogames. They are bound by input methods on a gamepad or keyboard and there’s only a limited number of possible combinations. When motion controls are coupled with in-game objects and weapons that have physicality, the combinations of possible manipulations and consequences are nearly endless and don’t have to be pre-programmed.

Advanced physics are more than just realistic gore

So far I’ve focused on combat but physics-based gameplay lends itself equally well to a whole multitude of titles. Gadgeteer is a great example of how consistent and realistic physics can enhance a VR puzzle videogame. Each lego-like piece that you use to create reaction contraptions (think Rube Goldberg machines) revolves around realistic physics and how one piece interacts with another. The fact that in VR all of these pieces can be touched, pushed, lifted and manipulated like you would in real life lends Gadgeteer an incredible tactility while also allowing various tracks to be flexibly laid out in full 3D spaces. Being able to pick up and handle each intricate piece like you would in the real world, while also seeing them react to other objects as you expect and anticipate, based on your inherent understanding of how real-world physics work, makes the game incredibly easy to pick up and play and in no time at all you’re able to create elaborate chain reaction machines that will surprise you with their scope.

The challenges of implementing realistic physics

So why don’t all VR games incorporate advanced physics simulations and why haven’t they since VR first appeared? Well, for one thing, these physics are difficult and complicated to bake into a videogame. It takes developers many, many hours of development time to understand how to implement these physics and to work through all the various permutations of how each object in a game reacts to another.

The second consideration when implementing realistic physics is how far to take them. Just because a VR title has astonishingly realistic physics doesn’t necessarily make it a fun videogame. Arguably, Boneworks has the best recreation of realistic physics we’ve yet seen but there are moments when it can be annoying from a design perspective. There have been numerous times when I’m running through a level only to find that my character’s foot is stuck on a pavement curb and so I can’t move. Likewise, my gun has often smashed into a corner as I try to round it quickly or a limb gets stuck in a large grating. This also points to another issue with implementing realistic physics in VR: ’jank’. All VR physics titles that I’ve played so far have janky moments and you’ll often see an object react strangely or an enemy contorted into bizarre positions or tripping over the smallest item. Glitches and bugs are part and parcel for implementing these complex systems but it can still be immersion breaking to see some of the ridiculous scenarios thrown up.

Will Half-Life: Alyx find the perfect balance?

So, there are clearly some steps that need to be taken to find the right balance between implementing realistic physics-driven gameplay while keeping a videogame fun, accessible and polished. We’ve already seen this happen to some extent with The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners, which provided a slightly watered down physics simulation when compared to Boneworks or Blade & Sorcery, but still made sure that key object iteration and combat had that immersive physicality and weight. More excitingly though, Half-Life: Alyx, which is only weeks away from launch, seems to elegantly combine detailed, realistic object interaction and physics simulations with immense polish and accessibility. If it nails that balance we really could be on the cusp of a VR gaming revolution – one heavily based around realistic physics that will provide unheard of levels of player interaction and will be hard for a mainstream gaming audience to resist.

January 29, 2020

Getting To Grips: Boneworks & The Walking Dead Prove The Future Of VR Gaming Is In Physics And Interaction

Never in a million years would I have wagered The Walking Dead would make for a great VR game. This is a brand, nay, an entire genre, that’s steadily slowed to a creative crawl, with seemingly every possible tie-in and conceptual angle hacked away at, sparing neither life nor limb. And yet, somehow, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is a gory delight.

Skydance Interactive doesn’t owe its unexpected success to a piling body count or tough story-telling, but instead the rules its vicious world establishes early on. Moreover, it is the finely-tuned level of user interaction that rewards you for adhering to them.

Like a growing number of VR titles, the Saints & Sinner’s experience is designed with physics and interaction at its very core. Need to stab a zombie in the head? You’ll have to properly thrust your blade into their brain with a disturbing degree of intention, not just waggle a stick in their direction. Nasty cut need healing? Grab a bandage and physically wrap it around your arm to patch yourself up. It turns a traditionally trite mechanic into an entirely new experience, one that seamlessly splices its way into the pressured world of survival horror inventory management like never before. It proves to be far more compelling than it has any right to be.

Ten minutes of holding off the hordes, and it is tough to go back to the feather-touch feel of older VR games. Dual-wielding pistols don’t carry the same sense of heft, and can be aimed and fired like they’re balloons. Axes and swords phase through enemies as if they were made from thin air. Perhaps most damning, monsters and foes can grab hold of you, but you feel powerless to properly shove them away. But here, you have a physical presence, one that demands a higher degree of real-life imitation than has been asked of us in the past.

This isn’t a new concept, of course, but it is evolving. Free Lives’ Gorn, RUST LTD’s H3VR, and WarpFrog’s Blade & Sorcery arguably started us down this path. Gorn, for example, earned scores of sales for its slapstick, uncompromising violence and Blade & Sorcery did the same by delivering the most satisfying melee action yet seen in VR (or, to face the uncomfortable but more telling truth, providing the most realistic stabbing you’ll find in VR). Hot Dogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades (H3VR), meanwhile, avoids the violence issue by making its enemies hot dogs while growing a significant audience by continually refining and expanding what ends up being an enormous physics-laden playground. But it is 2019’s Boneworks that serves as the real poster child for this new style of play; a game obsessed with the minutiae of reloading a gun. In this physics funhouse every enemy must be grappled with and, most impressively, every puzzle solved with a genuine injection of player invention.

Crucially, though, this fledgling approach to VR design is anchored around one of the core tenants that makes this technology so special; it makes you someone.

In Boneworks, it transforms you into a sort of gun-slinging Superman; enemies are mere toys to be ruthlessly experimented on. For Blade & Sorcery, you become the brutal, elitist gladiator front and center of a summer blockbuster poster. In The Walking Dead, it makes you the idiot you laugh at in zombie movies, the one making all the mistakes you swear you’d never make. It is the true embodiment of, well, embodying someone else.

Hurdles remain, of course, all of which are equally important to somehow pull yourself over. The Walking Dead and Boneworks offer compelling evolutions over Gorn and Blade & Sorcery, but neither is perfect, often content with letting sandbox-style carnage fill in for a lack of more decisive campaign design. Boneworks in particular never fully escapes the shackles of the hugely promising technical demonstrations it started life as.

We’ve got our tracked fingers crossed that Half-Life: Alyx serves up the next step in this journey. Valve’s Source engine broke ground with its physics-driven breakthroughs, but more importantly, its creators gave these inventions context. It took its stunning foundations and made them a living, breathing feature inside an otherwise excellent shooter.

Even Alyx, though, isn’t coming to the most important VR headset on the market: Oculus Quest (at least not natively, it isn’t). The games we’re talking about here push the processing power of PC VR gaming to the max with their complex systems. Quest, by comparison, is running smartphone-class processors and that means the jury is still out on whether Facebook’s standalone system will be able to handle these significant innovations; the upcoming port of Saints & Sinners and the spin-off Boneworks game will likely be the judge of that, but translating the satisfaction unlocked by these PC VR games to standalone VR will be vital to keeping that content library fresh in the years to come.

There is, of course, the matter of what happens when this devilish level of violent detail reaches the masses, though that’s perhaps a topic best saved for another time.

But it is here where you see VR gaming that’s truly native to headset and headset alone. True, you could play Saints & Sinners with a pair of Move controllers on a PS4, but I’d guarantee the loss of depth perception and enemy proximity would make for a painful translation. Without a VR headset, it would be virtually impossible to negotiate your way through most of Boneworks’ minute interactions.

VR headsets might not have moved onto a true ‘next generation’ of products yet but, remarkably, VR software seems to be getting there without the leaps in fidelity and control we’ve come to expect from successive hardware. That suggests that, by the time PSVR 2, Rift 2, Index 2 and others are ready for the limelight, we’ll finally have a gaming ecosystem that’s figured itself out. Quite an exciting thought, that.

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January 8, 2020

Next Blade & Sorcery Update To Overhaul Magic System With New Spells And Character Designs

According to a recent update on the Steam page for Blade & Sorcery, the developer outlined what’s coming up next in Update 8, which is looking like it’ll be one of the biggest updates the game’s gotten in quite some time.

Blade & Sorcery is a melee-focused combat simulator with arena battles that take place in a handful of different maps. There is no storyline, it’s more of a sandbox combat game, but it features an impressively details physics system that makes combat immensely satisfying.

You can read some of our thoughts on Blade & Sorcery here and watch some gameplay using the Valve Index controllers here.

In the Steam page post it says the next update has been delayed a bit into Q2 2020, but as a result it’s introducing a ton of features. Specifically, two new spells in the form of Gravity and Fire, as well as version 2 of the Lightning spell. You’ll also be able to “merge” spells and they’re introducing a tutorial, new armors for NPCs and the player, as well as new character designs and an overhaul of the material collision logic and effects. Plus, new weapons as usual, as well as the ability to mod armor and spells.

That’s a ton of new features for a free update while the game is still in Early Access. During its development its gotten new maps, tons of new weapons, lots of mod expansion, and advance game systems like the ability to climb any surface by leveraging the collision detection.

Blade & Sorcery is available on SteamVR and Oculus Home for Rift as an Early Access title for $19.99.

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July 8, 2019

Blade & Sorcery Livestream: Brutal, Bloody, And Violent Medieval Combat

Curious about how we livestream the way we do? Then look no further than this handy guide for general tips and this guide specific to our Oculus Quest setup.

We’re back again with another livestream!

For today we are playing Blade & Sorcery, an absolutely intense, brutal, bloody, and violent VR combat game that’s got some of the most intricate and realistic physics we’ve seen yet in a headset. There’s not much of a game here yet, but it’s one of the most fun sandboxes out there.

We’re also switching back over to Twitch today after experimenting with livestreams on YouTube for a while. Since we’re affiliated we have some really cool perks we can offer on Twitch such as awesome sub badges to reward subscribers, fun emotes, and the ability to donate bits to support the stream and fund improvements. We’re gonna do lots of fun stuff like giveaways too in the future that will all be automated within the stream chat.

This steam we will be using an Oculus Rift S and two Touch controllers to play an Oculus Home version of Blade & Sorcery. Here is where you can find today’s stream once it starts around 1PM PT:

Watch BLADE & SORCERY VR – Bloody, Violent Gladiator Battles from UploadVR on www.twitch.tv

Since we are migrating from YouTube you can see our most recent past archived streams over in our YouTube playlist, which is where you can watch archived Twitch streams in the future too. There’s lots of good stuff there so make sure and subscribe to us on YouTube as well!

And please let us know which games or discussions you want us to livestream next! We have lots of VR games in the queue that we would love to show off more completely.

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December 12, 2018

‘Blade & Sorcery’ Early Access Review – Bloody Sandbox Battles Aplenty

A story line can be useful for its ability to frame the action; it gives you a reason to fight and fuels your hunger to reign victorious over the hordes of NPC baddies. But if you’re easily urked by mediocre stabs at the hero’s journey monomyth and just want to cut to the bloody chase, then Blade & Sorcery might scratch that itch thanks to its combat-centric sandbox and stab-happy rag doll enemies.

Blade & Sorcery Early Access Details:

Official Site

Developer: Warp Frog
Available On: Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR)
Reviewed On: Rift, Vive
Release Date: December 11th, 2018

Note: This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time. This review is an assessment of the game only at its current Early Access state and will not receive a numerical score.

Gameplay

As a sandbox combat game, Blades & Sorcery doesn’t feature scores, leaderboards, and it contains no story; it’s a single-player game that puts you in the midst of successive waves of baddies that span classes such as lighting mages, archers, and a number of melee grunts that try to take you down.

There’s plenty of weaponry lying around to make whatever fighting style you’re keen to enact a reality. But before I get into that, there’s the sordid details of what it feels like to stab a dude in the face. You’ve probably seen a variation of the gif below, but here’s a great one from VR YouTuber The Baron for your viewing pleasure.

Baddies seem to be cartoonish enough to make the game’s hyperviolence less of a turn off than I initially thought would be the case. They’re more on the ‘zombie’ end of things, so pushing a dagger into a skull in slow-mo, or driving a Roman gladius right through the heart didn’t really present any of the moral quandaries I’m sure I’ll be forced to revisit when VR games have a greater degree of photorealism. For now, these are just virtual crash test dummies, so I let myself don the mantle of Beef Supreme and enter the arena unfazed by the horrible acts yet to come.

When Blade & Sorcery works just right, and you can pull off an epic chain of god-like hits and full-body stabs on several enemies, it really makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something awesome. In the two or so hours of playing, I was able to replicate some of these dashing moves seen above, although they certainly don’t come completely natural at first. You have to concentrate on making sure you remember your four holster points—two behind each shoulder and two on each hip—move through the fray, activate the temporary slow-mo at decidedly cinematic moments, and make sure to not flail around with your melee weapons. That’s a good amount to remember when you’re in the thick of it, but as they say, practice makes perfect.

Users are given a choice between various swords (both single and two-handed), a bow and requisite quiver of arrows, and various gear that you can either throw (or levitate) at you squishy enemies. That’s right, you can telepathically move objects including large rocks, weapons, and traps like a low-hanging chandelier that can cut down anything in its path. A single magic ability is currently available, a lighting spell, although the in-game menu has open spots for three more spells.

You can practice all of this either in the arenas before you order up a wave of baddies, or in your home which has a full selection of weapons.

As a physics-based game your weapons have a virtual heft to them, letting you finally clank your swords together for that gladiator-style cinematic moment, or stab straight through the belly of your enemy. You shouldn’t rely on your natural instinct to strike quickly though because your physical hands will go out of sync with your virtual counterparts. This, in my opinion, is an awesome way of making sure the player doesn’t waggle the sword, or treat it like it’s a weightless object with impossibly fast strikes. Frankly, physics-based melee combat is something I wish more games used, making Blades & Sorcery one of the exemplar titles to accomplish it with such apparent ease.

The game doesn’t go without some personal niggles though, which you’ll find in the Immersion and Comfort sections below.

Immersion

Although Blade & Sorcery is clearly a sandbox game, I still can’t help but wish there was something behind the combat, some reason to finish off a wave and move forward outside of virtual bloodlust and the primal urge to gank dudes 300-style.

The environments are well constructed and could ideally play as a backdrop to a much larger game. As it is now, the game is pretty bare bones; there isn’t a progression system, unlockable areas, unlockable weapons, arena bosses—there’s just you and the waves of bad guys that your order up to slay at will. That said, Blade & Sorcery isn’t biting off more than it can chew, and that’s probably for the best.

Each of the three arenas has a pedestal with a book-style menu where you can select your difficulty and wave number, the latter determining the number of baddies that can spawn at the edges of the maps. Having to deal with baddies in the here and now always has its way of physically immersing you, but the book menu isn’t really the most graceful way of tossing you into the action. This is an early access title, so there’s plenty of community-driven improvements likely yet to come, but dropping you into an arena and making you choose one of four arbitrary difficulty settings with no real knowledge of what they really entails makes it feel more like a tech demo than a game as such.

If I had to change just one thing about Blood & Sorcery, it would be this: Instead of three random arenas (castle keep, medieval town square, and Roman arena) that you can select at will, I would love to see some sort of progression system that lets you unlock each successive arena after winning, eventually ending up in the hardest area at the hardest difficulty.

Stepping back from ‘ifs and buts’, once you’re in the thick of the action, the immersion factor ramps up nicely. In terms of locating baddies when on the move, the most noticeable class by far is the archer, which makes a twiney stretching noise when they draw their bow. Otherwise detecting baddies is mostly visual, as you can quickly find for or five armored brutes sneaking up behind you with little else than a few spoken lines to tip you off.

Controls aren’t overly complicated, but like I said, they do take some practice to master. Knocking an arrow is less ‘automatic’ than more archery focused games, although aiming and shooting is mostly an easy experience. There are no visual stats HUD or HP counters, only an increasing level of blood-red in your vision to tip you off that death is imminent.

Comfort

Comfort options are fairly thin at the moment. Two artificial turning options exist at this stage in development: smooth turning and snap-turning, the latter of which is actually just a very quick smooth turn. You can also choose to turn off both if you happen to have a room-scale sensor setup.

While I have no problem with smooth forward motion, which is dictated by either head-relative or hand-relative direction, the snap-turn left me feeling a bit unbalanced after a solid 30 minutes of playing. I think a hypothetical blink-style snap-turn would have let me play for longer, albeit less visually immersive amounts of time.

If you’re prone to nausea due to artificial locomotion, you may want to adjust your play style accordingly. There is a jump button, which personally made me feel a bit wonky with too much use. I never really found a need to jump though, so you can ignore it, or even turn it off the menu settings.

Conclusion

Blade & Sorcery strongly demonstrates that physics-based melee can work in the right conditions. It’s not clear at this point whether it will stay on the tech demo side of things instead of a more fleshed-out game though. Early adopters of the game GORN don’t seem to have a problem with that in the slightest, so hopefully those impressive slow-mo combat gifs will keep on coming.

Note: This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time. This review is an assessment of the game’s current state, and will not receive a numerical score.

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