The solo dev behind RPG Sword Hero is promising a 'seamless open world' with amazing combat, intricate simulation, and systemic dismemberment—the demo on Steam makes me think they can pull it off

I was at an impasse the first time I reached the end of open world RPG Sword Hero's combat arena demo. I managed to bandage up the stump where my right arm used to be, recently hacked off by the big burly knight man locked in the arena with me, but could no longer pick up my weapon.

The game's planned system of robot prostheses for when this sort of thing happens has not been implemented yet, and more to the point, the arena gates would only open when one man was left standing.

I had one potential recourse: An incredibly satisfying kick attack that ragdolls enemies and sends them flying, a perfect pairing with the instant death spike wall in one corner of the arena. Unfortunately, night had fallen, bathing everything outside a ring of torches in impenetrable darkness.

I wish I could say I rose to the occasion and blind-launched this miniboss into the spikes, but the run ended in failure. I was better prepared next time, bringing a torch to set on the ground beside the spikes, letting me lure the knight to his death before he could land a single attack.

Sword Hero has an eyeball-popping trailer that promises the moon⁠—or at least a massive, reactive open world RPG, apparently mostly made by one guy⁠—but its early demo backs those bold promises up: I've found myself drifting back and replaying the short sequence of arena fights for the past two weeks, racking up a total of 3.2 hours fighting the same six battles over and over again.

The trailer has a wonderfully catchy theme that screams fantasy and adventure, but also something more strange and mysterious, much like the world ForestWare is building. Watching the trailer, I made ever more contorted, demonic variations of the Onion Sickos face with each new detail shown:

• Warrior man drawing his blade against a giant moth on a snowy mountain⁠—I'm listening.
• Crisp-looking, dodge and parry melee combat against an overwhelming mass of brigands⁠—Say more.
• Your arm gets chopped off, permanently, sending the hero rushing to the nearby town through open fields. In the background, an incongruous train runs on elevated rail, and behind that, a ribbon of land extends into the sky, revealing this all takes place on a Halo-style ring world⁠—I'm sitting up now. You have my attention.
• A Geigeresque contraption called a "physician" attaches a Berserk-style prosthetic to your stump. Our hero turns to thievery and blasting skeletons with lightning bolts to pay it off. Also? We've got three warring factions we can join⁠—This is podracing.
• Our hero Prince of Persia wallruns over a pit in a dungeon—Now you're just being ridiculous.

"A seamless open world, full of secrets and stories to tell, closely following the style of the cult-classic Gothic series," reads Sword Hero's Steam page. "No invisible walls⁠—you go wherever you please right from the beginning! Just watch out—The wilderness of Wes is unkind to the unprepared, with beasts such as the Greyskin, Giants, Dragons and other monstrosities roaming the land, in a strictly non-level-scaling fashion."

How tragic

Gothic remains a woeful gap in my own RPG digest, but the promise of open-ended, unforgiving RPG reactivity in a weird world screams Morrowind to me. ForestWare's ambitions also include NPC and physics systems closer to Oblivion, or even Baldur's Gate 3.

In ForestWare's most recent dev diary, they outline a "Tragedy Events" system that sounds like how NPCs in Skyrim would send bounty hunters after you when you steal from them. "NPCs record all deeds they see around them," ForestWare said in the video. "These deeds can make them hate other creatures in the world, and increase or decrease their morale, which can cause them to flee.

"These deeds [when] made by you can trigger their so-called 'Tragedy Event,' which would be special for most NPCs. This can be something like having a specific item stolen from them, one of their objects destroyed⁠—for example, an expensive vase⁠—and more nefarious things like their spouse being killed."

The NPC's Elder Scrolls-style daily schedule will be overwritten with anything from depressive behavior, to a small chance of a new "tragedy personality" where they might train and gear up, then hunt you down for revenge.

In another video, ForestWare showed off a sample robot prosthetic from the game, an arm with a retractable blade, revealing that the dismemberment sequence shown in the trailer wasn't meant to be scripted or part of the story, but a mock-up of how Sword Hero's entire system of limb damage, dismemberment, and bionic augmentation will work. You could theoretically reach a point where you're full Adam Jensen or Malenia, with all robot limbs, or go in the opposite direction, keeping full natty by taking good care of yourself.

The gauntlet

These would all be huge promises for a major developer to keep, let alone a seemingly-solo operation supported by an indie publisher (Crytivo), but Sword Hero's combat demo on Steam not only showcases a ton of environmental and NPC reactivity that wouldn't be out of place in Baldur's Gate 3 or Breath of the Wild, but the combat system is so fun, it could carry a much less ambitious game⁠—a linear action game, say, or even just an expanded, roguelike version of this arena demo. It's that good. First, though, here are some of the impressive aspects of Sword Hero's simulation I noticed:

• Enemies will insult you, then loot your body after you die.
• As I mentioned in the intro, torches and other light sources are needed to combat the game's extremely obscuring shadows at night.
• If you draw your weapon in front of the shop keeper, he'll slowly grow hostile then attack you. If you beat him up, he'll refuse to sell to you or let you do more fights.
• All items, from normal stuff like lore books to decapitated heads, severed limbs, and whole bodies, can be picked up, carried, and thrown.
• Open braziers in the arena can be exploded with magic or weapon attacks.
• As was my downfall, if you lose your dominant hand, you can no longer equip your weapon or pick things up, but that goes for enemies too.

These are all really nice RPG touches already on display and working well in this tiniest of sandboxes, and you can add to that a classico, window-based inventory system like in Morrowind or Baldur's Gate 3, a quite fun lockpicking minigame, and snippets of RPG lore that already have me invested in Wes, the kingdom on the ring world where Sword Hero takes place.

The city of Wesport is guarded by a three-headed dragon, but one of the heads hates humanity, so the other two outvoted it by encasing it in molten iron, and they're still weighed down by the imprisoned head to this day.

Rebellious heathens say there is something divine and powerful in the tunnels that hollow out the ring, but the government of Wes insists there's nothing to see here. This lore was delivered in the demo through in-game books that you examine as 3d models, as if through a magnifying glass⁠—a tactile, immersive touch that I love.

And aside from all that, this combat system has me hooked. It reminds me most of the Jedi Knight series, with a camera closely following the direction your character is looking, controlling more like an FPS than most third person action games.

Similar to The Elder Scrolls, the direction you're moving when you attack determines how you strike (thrust, swing, spin slash) with your weapon swinging in wide, slow arcs that you can effectively aim mid-animation with the mouse, almost dragging them across enemies. When you land a hit, it feels chunky, with a satisfying sound effect and hitstop, while kills and dismemberments launch into full slow-mo.

Sword Hero also has the best kind of parry, a Sekiro-style perfect block where correct timing pushes enemies back and gives the player mana for special abilities, while a mis-timed block still shrugs off damage, but also depletes your stamina.

The abilities that use mana in the demo are winners, though I think the spells could use a buff to damage or crowd control⁠—the wizard character can rapid fire lightning bolts or use more mana for an AoE explosion, but he felt a lot weaker than the martial options.

That's because the warrior and rogue get that absolutely incredible kick, ragdolizing enemies and sending them flying like a Garry's Mod experiment gone awry. Comboed with my best friend, the instant death spike wall, it's like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic never left us.

I already love Sword Hero, and it is now one of my most anticipated games. Sword Hero does not yet have a release date, but you can wishlist the game and try its combat demo for yourself on Steam. ForestWare will also be launching a Kickstarter campaign, currently scheduled for January, and you can follow its pre-launch page to stay abreast of updates.