Honestly, I don't know why I made an appointment for the Digital Kingdom studio project, which does not correspond to the titles I play or the titles I am interested in. Attention, I am not saying that Swordship is bad at all, far from it. Just, I want to be honest from the introduction: I absolutely do not correspond to the target. See instead:
Swordship is a shoot'em up... but without the shooting component. You will tell me. What's left? Above all: how to survive? Quite simply by dodging enemy fire and arranging for them to kill each other. With optimal placement and movement at the right time. Of course, nothing is that simple. You have to follow the rhythm. One second too soon, and the shot misses the enemy. One second too late, and our one-life ship explodes. The reason I suck at this style of play is because I have two left hands and terrible coordination!
The story takes us to a post-apocalyptic future where the earth is covered by the waves due to global warming. Humanity has gathered in three gigantic underwater cities that exchange millions of containers of goods every day. But some try to survive on the outside, either by choice or by obligation. During the presentation, the comparison was made between the Empire and the Rebels from Star Wars. We play one of these rebels, ready to do anything to recover some precious containers that will improve the life of the banished.
The action is viewed from above with vertical scrolling. Yes, I was not mistaken. The ship goes well from top to bottom (not a traditional horizontal scroll). Everything is fluid, through frenetic combat that takes to fight several enemy factions, with varying abilities. The player also has the choice between several variants of Swordship, each vessel having a unique active ability.
The graphics are simple and effective, with a lot of work done on the visibility of the action: the ship, the enemies, the shots, the ground areas... Through procedurally generated levels that can be affected by a changeable weather. The main objective is therefore the recovery of containers because, in itself, the enemies can be just ignored even if their number risks becoming problematic in the long term. The recovery is done by crossing the big yellow line (which can be seen below on the left), an action which can endanger and which sometimes proves impossible to carry out due to enemy attacks. Then, you have to deliver it, again by managing to position yourself in a specific place on the screen, on the kind of nacelle that you can see in the screenshot on the right.
The progression is deceitful.... Because these collected containers are the currency of exchange to install passive improvements. But this comes at the expense of points as those same containers are also used to boost the score. It is up to everyone to choose: ease or ranking! Finally, ease... All it takes is one mistake and the game is over. I should rather say slightly reduced difficulty.
I did not advance very far in the game because the person who presented it to us also had the greatest difficulty! We limited ourselves to the first two levels, in which turrets appear at regular intervals, aided by drones that lay mines. Once back home, I had access to a demo, but it was not very conclusive. If the difficulty of the fights does not scare you, and you appreciate the style, Swordship will be released in December this year, on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC.
