Sure, Mordhau and Kingdom Come: Deliverance exist, but for select historical nerds out there, the combat those games have on offer might not be enough. However, real enjoyers of HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) could have their every wish fulfilled by Half Sword, a brand new bloody medieval dueling simulator that just released in early access today published by Game Seer.
Deriving its name from a technique used frequently in real-life sword fights of old where a combatant grips the blade of their weapon, players have had a taste of Half Sword for quite awhile before its official release. A demo version of the game has been available since 2024, spurring on many to give it a whirl and post their exploits on social media. Half Sword aims to provide an accurate fighting experience, but its physics-based combat allows for the same janky shenanigans that caused similar simulation games like BeamNG Drive to blow up. And so it was for Half Sword, which amassed hundreds of thousands of wishlists, millions of downloads, and even more attention online with its gory, goofy, medieval action. Though at least right now, it appears that the early access release isn’t doing too well based on Steam review metrics. The Mostly Negative (which changed to Mixed during writing) rating the game has looks to originate overwhelmingly from reports of poor performance, however, so the gameplay that fans fell in love with doesn’t seem to have changed much. Which means that within an update or two, reviews of Half Sword will likely reflect how excited everyone was for it during the demo. Developers Half Sword Games have been diligent about updating the game in the past–which begs the question why the demo version wasn’t just released in early access sooner–and they’ve already launched day one hotfix along with an acknowledgement of the issue.
The full version of the game comes with more fighting arenas, structured challenges, more armor and weapons, better physics, a new dialogue system, and even a coat of arms creator–isn’t that neat? Half Sword has so far proven that it has the stuff to be successful, and indeed its gameplay speaks for itself on the many social media posts fans have posted, but it will be interesting to its developers handle it as a paid product for the first time.