Bushido Blade is one of those video games that has become a legend. The PlayStation 1997 fighting game was defined not by combos and health bars, but by tense and fast sword fights in which a single blow could kill you or your opponent. Since then, there have been very few things like that.
Enter Hellish Quart, with early access today. It’s Bushid-ish – there are swords, there are duels, and there are deaths from a blow – but it goes a step further by having all your movements based on physics.
The game’s Steam page says its developers want the game to have early access for one to two years. In addition to receiving feedback from the player on board, they will use this time to develop a complete singleplayer campaign. Given its historical background, I hope it will be a bit like The Ridley Scott Duelists.
I never played Bushido Blade, but I’m sure people talked to me about it. I say it’s “transcended into legend” because I swear that half the people who talk about it didn’t play it either – they just read about it and think it sounds cool. Instead, I will choose to think of Hellish Quart as the enhanced version of Nidhogg, another fabulous one-on-one sword fighting game. I’ve had many hours of fun beating up friends and trying to get eaten by a big worm in Nidhogg, and I expect the same from Hellish Quart.
Unfortunately Hellish Quart doesn’t have an online multiplayer yet, but it does have a local multiplayer and supports Steam’s “Remote Play Together” feature, which allows you to play local multiplayer games over the internet. Which means that it kind of has online multiplayer, I think. But there is no magic Steam feature that adds worms to games, so there’s still a lot to look forward to.
There is a demo that you can download via Steam and the full game will cost £ 11.46 / $ 14.44 / € 11.89.