"I can't type as fast as you're funding": Solo dev buried in over $250,000 learns there's a huge appetite for deep open-world RPGs inspired by early '00s classics like Gothic, Fable, and the anime Berserk

Solo developer Csaba "ForestWare" Székely found out the easy way that there's massive demand for the type of game he's making: a deep, systems-driven open-world RPG inspired by early-'00s classics like Gothic, Kenshi, Arx Fatalis, Blade of Darkness, Fable, and best of all for me, the beloved manga and anime series Berserk.

Sword Hero, which is a title I just love, is an ode to that very specific time in the early '00s where open-ended gameplay was still a novelty and developers were constantly pushing interactivity to new levels. I still remember freaking out because Shenmue actually let you use the vending machines, holy crap.

Sword Hero more specifically is a medieval fantasy RPG with a focus on player freedom, consequence, emergent gameplay, and realism, or as much realism as you can have when fire-breathing dragons are in the sky. There's a day/night cycle, dynamic weather, crime and punishment system, behaviorally complex NPCs that'll loot bodies and grieve dead loved ones, corpses that rot into the ground instead of disappear, and stats that visibly change the way your character looks (more strength=bigger muscles, permanent scars from battles, etc.).

Combat is extremely involved, centering around directional attacks similar to Kingdom Come: Deliverance where you want to strike and defend in relation to your opponent's positioning, except here. "each bodypart tracks their own health, armor, and debuffs separately." So for example, whacking someone in the head is going to do more damage than a strike to the leg, but if you use enough force/persistence, that leg will end up giving out either way and your foe will go down. Complete limb amputation is a thing too, which I imagine is where the Berserk inspiration is manifesting.

You'll have a huge range of options for doing that, as well, as Sword Hero will let you stock your arsenal with, you guessed it, swords, but also hammers, flails, maces, axes, daggers, bows, throwing weapons, bombs, poisons, traps, spells, necromancy, summons, and... "limb mutations."

I tried playing Sword Hero's free combat demo on Steam and went in with the misplaced confidence of someone with 150 hours in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and got my ass whooped, over and over, until I reluctantly slowed down and learned the rules. It's a deeply challenging, often frustrating experience, but similar to Kingdom Come, once you learn the ropes it's proportionately satisfying overcoming the odds.

As with any violent, action-packed RPG worth its salt, there are also some cozy elements to Sword Hero, with a Fable-inspired housing system where you can buy and rent out rooms, houses, and larger abodes, and furnish and decorate them to your heart's desire.

Crucially, thank goodness, there's a cooking minigame that carries that same spirit of authenticity as the rest of the game. Recipes use ingredients that actually make sense in real life, like the combination of flour and water into dough, and you can cook on any hot surface, even if that's a burning bush. Placing that dough on a smoldering pile of leaves, you'll see it gradually poof up into a loaf of bread, where as placing it in a pot full of boiling water will turn it into pasta. You get the idea.

The more I read about Sword Hero, the more it's becoming one of my most anticipated RPGs. As a kid, I was always fascinated by immersion-driven games that 'let you do anything,' and I guess I'm still a sucker for developers who find new ways to make you go, "you can actually do that?!" or gasp at NPC intelligence. The game's demo proves ForestWare has the know-how to deliver on an incredibly ambitious combat system for a solo dev, so I'm fairly optimistic they'll be able to deliver on at least the majority of Sword Hero's premise.

Apparently, I'm not the only one confident about Sword Hero, as the game's Kickstarter has racked up an astonishing $255,558 in crowdfunding against a modest $35,000 goal. In a Kickstarter update, ForestWare said the game was funded in just two hours, and in a subsequent update, that "I can't type as fast as you're funding." Not a bad problem to have, I'd say.

Sword Hero is currently slated to release in December 2027.

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