[Luke Siuty, Indie Game Magazine] It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I’m a fighting game enthusiast. I get into the complex mechanics, the show-offy moves, the mind games, and high execution curves. When I saw Puny Human’s Blade Symphony, a tactical sword-play 3D fighter, I knew I was in for something good. Created in the Source engine, the game was originally a Half-Life 2 mod, and in 2011, the company ran a successful Kickstarter. It is hard to believe, but yes — this beautiful-looking title is an indie production. Totaling five years in development, I’ve looked at the Early Access version of the game, so keep in mind that many features of the game can change or improve.
Puny Human has announced that its swordfighting game, Blade Symphony, will go free to play in 2018. The team targets to launch the F2P by the end of January 2018. Moreover, the engine powering Blade Symphony will be upgraded. Currently, the game uses the Portal 2 version of Source, however the F2P version will transition to the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive version of Source.
From the review, "3 years later, Blade Symphony is on Steam and available to the public. It’s incredibly polished, and offers a unique form of gameplay that combines the sort of precision typically seen in the Fighting genre with a third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective and an accessible control scheme. The result is an experience that allows all players to jump right into the sort of head games and predictions that make the genre so intimate without the crazy learning curve normally associated with fighters. In this way, it’s not unlike this year’s Nidhogg or last year’s Foiled."
Blade Symphony is about the fantasy of being a swordsman and all that comes with it: honour, skill and etiquette. If you’re responsive to those ideas to even a small degree, it is a fighting game with tremendous depth and promise. It’s a realisation of its core fantasy that’s original enough in its execution to stand up as a competitive game in its own right.
