To Carry a Sword

"To Carry a Sword" is I think at least partially an academic exercise, which might have been "Will people pay nine bucks for a 2D browser tier game in 2022" and the answer was no. But the game itself is an interesting idea implemented poorly. It's basically FTL meets Oregon Trail, RNG encounters backed by a lightweight RPG system/stat survival backdrop, and set in the medieval era as you take a role in a trading caravan. What do you do in the game? This plays more like an RNG stat grinder (hence the FTL/Oregon Trail comparisons) than a fully fledged RPG. I don't really like RNG punishment games all that much and combining that game design philosophy with a weak technical delivery is probably what caused this to fail. The game features really lacklustre 2D visuals (does the developer not know 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid-1990s?). Gamers don't spend thousands of dollars on gaming rigs and the latest 3D graphics cards to play 2D games. Even mobile phones and game consoles can do 3D graphics now. There's no excuse. The developer chose not to do the job of a real game developer and create meaningful bespoke levels, narrative based gameplay progression and so on. Instead, they decided that "Procgen IS content!" and lazily tried to use procgen algorithms to create infinite, samey, repetitive, soulless levels, because that's a lot less work. As a result of this poor decision, the game gets tired and repetitive almost immediately. Developers must learn that procgen is a terrible substitute for creating real content. It should not be used as "ez-mode" for content creation, as the developer tried to do here. Let's look at the price and what kind of value this actually offers gamers. There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $9 USD for this. Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded. A peak of [b]6 concurrent players[/b] (according to SteamDB) for a "free" game is a disastrous public reception. Out of 130 million potential players here on Steam, almost nobody was interested. Even though this is "free". That level of rejection speaks a lot for the quality of the game. Given that this free game won't increase your game collector count, is it worth your time to add it to your library? Give this one a miss. Although it's free, your time and storage are valuable resources, and the market is filled with superior options. Remember what I often say... if you don't agree with what I've said about this game, by all means add it to your library and play it. My review is just here to inform your decision, and if you think I was wrong and you downloaded the game, then I've done what I really wanted to do... inform your decision.

It's a good game for an hour, after that it gets repetitive, grindy and goes no where. The mix of 2d combat along with text heavy works well and will inspire me personally if I ever work on a fantasy game. Thank you for that.