Canadian outfit Sinn Studio is currently working on a realistic sword-fighting game for virtual reality headsets known as Swordsman VR. They originally announced the game back at the start of May with a Reddit post in the Oculus sub-reddit, but recently they dropped the first official alpha gameplay trailer, featuring some of the in-game play you can expect to experience from the sword-fighting sim.
The game is scheduled to release this summer for PC and on the PS4 for the PlayStation VR. The game will feature dynamic combat and an actual story mode.
Based on the promotional art it looks like a game about actual male warriors engaged in proper sword-fighting combat. Hopefully it doesn’t pull a swerve on us and include some “strong women who don’t need no man”.
You can check out the new alpha gameplay below, courtesy of VR Focus.
The game looks like it has some potential, and the enemy AI behavior and kill strikes look entertaining, but obviously there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done.
For instance, near the end of the video the player-character swipes at the enemy AI’s face and even though the enemy’s face gets bloodied, he just keeps fighting like nothing happened.
It would be nice if there were more reactive stances, attacks, defenses, parries, and ripostes in accordance with how they are attacked.
Also, to keep players on their toes, if a player receives damage or is attacked in the face, the screen should get bloody red, impairing the player’s vision.
It should be about finding the right attack pattern, adjusting to the attacks of the AI and then counter-attacking.
Hopefully the game is right proper polished when it releases this summer on PC and PSVR.
You can keep tabs on the development of Swordsman VR by visiting the official website.