Hellish Quart
The most authentic 17th century sword-fighting game you’ll play
IT ONLY TAKES ONE DEEP SLASH OR GUT STAB TO END A ROUND
I’m so enthusiastic about this swordfighting game that I’d better start with a disclaimer: Hellish Quart is in Early Access, and it’s pretty rough. The menus look like placeholders, the planned campaign is absent, and the only way to play online multiplayer is streaming. But it’s just so fun regardless.
HellishQuart (weird name, I know) is a 1v1 dueling game: The goal, naturally, is to slice or stab your opponent to death, or at least strike their dominant arm hard enough that they drop their sword (or their hand flies off). There are hidden health bars, but like PS1 classic BushidoBlade, it only takes one deep slash or gut stab to end a round, and your opponent’s life. A lot of rounds end in draws, since it’s possible for both fighters to strike vital arteries at the same time, or even one after the other. It doesn’t necessarily matter that one fighter is spurting blood and the slow-mo death cam has already kicked in. As they die, their body is going to finish whatever it was doing, which can include landing a killing blow of their own.
Rounds often end with a scimitar in someone’s head within two seconds, but a quick resolution isn’t a given. If the AI and I both survive our opening gambits, a fight can go on and on as we trade nicks, shove and block, and dash in and out of range.
The animations occasionally get wonky—physics will do that—but they’re mostly great. HellishQuart has just one developer, Jakub ‘Kubold’ Kisiel, whose CV includes animating Geralt’s moves for The Witcher3. I especially love the way the characters boast after slaying an opponent, strutting around in an uncannily modern way.
DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD
Blocking is handled automatically, but if you block too much your opponent may cut through your guard. At close range, where it’s impossible to swing a sword properly, regular attacks automatically become knees and elbows that push your opponent back with a brief stun. It’s also possible to manually push your opponent’s sword hand away, although I rarely manage to pull the move off as the timing is quite tricky. Harder yet is to land a grab on the AI, which results in an automatic round win—a nasty decapitation move, for some characters.
Unfortunately, I don’t have anyone to play local multiplayer with, but just fighting the AI has been fun enough to kill five hours. Steam Remote Play Together does make online multiplayer possible (you can also use a service called Parsec), but I didn’t have a great result. My opponent, who was just 90 miles northeast of me, found the lag too disruptive to play properly. Your results may vary, it just depends on the particulars of the broadband environment you and your friend are in.
Future plans for HellishQuart, which Kubold expects to be in Early Access for a couple of years, include more fighting styles and characters (with the help of mocapped fencers), more AI types, more arenas, a story campaign, and full Parsec integration for more seamless multiplayer, which is nice, but still not ideal.
As for the story campaign, right now there’s just a teaser cutscene, and you don’t get the sense that it’ll be the game’s strong suit. No big deal: I’d be happy just to see some refinements to the fighting system. As I get better at HellishQuart,
I’m starting to desire a finer level of control over my stance and the motions that initiate my attacks.
If you’re not sure you want to go along for the Early Access ride with this one— and it is a bit sparse right now—there’s a free demo you can try. You can find it on HellishQuart’s Steam page.