Bushido Blade is one of those video games that went down in legend. The 1997 PlayStation fighting game was not defined by combinations and health bars, but by fast, tense sword fights in which a single attack could kill you or your opponent. There has been little else to it since then.
Enter Hellish Quart, it’s available early today. It’s Bushid-ish – there are swords, there are duels, and there is killing with one stroke – but it goes a step further in that all your movements are physics based.
The Steam page of the game says that the developers plan that the game will have access one to two years early. Apart from the feedback from players on board, they are going to use the time to develop a complete singles player campaign. Given the historical setting, I hope it’s a bit like The Duellists by Ridley Scott.
I never played Bushido Blade, but I’m probably made people talk about it. I say it was “transmitted in a legend” because I would swear that half of the people talking about it did not play it either – they just read about it and think it sounds cool. Instead, I’m going to choose to think of Hellish Quart as the revamped version of Nidhogg, another fantastic one-on-one sword fighting game. I had many hours of fun donating pals and being eaten by a big worm in Nidhogg, and I hope for the same from Hellish Quart.
Unfortunately, Hellish Quart does not yet have online multiplayer, but it does have local multiplayer and supports Steam’s “Remote Play Together” feature, which allows you to play local multiplayer games over the internet. I mean it’s kind of online multiplayer. But there is no magic steam feature that adds big worms to games, so there is still a lot to look forward to.
There’s a demo you can use with Steam, and the full game costs you £ 11.46 / $ 14.44 / € 11.89.