The medieval combat simulator Half Sword has garnered 600,000 wishlists on Steam
Publisher Game Seer shared the successes of Half Sword with GameDiscoverCo. This is the debut project from the similarly named studio, Half Sword Games.
Half Sword
Here are its key achievements.
- The game has 600,000 wishlists on Steam, with 400,000 acquired over the past six months following the open playtest that started in July.
- At the time of writing, the title ranks 55th in the Steam chart for the number of wishlists among all upcoming games. The full release date for Half Sword has yet to be announced.
- The majority of Half Sword’s wishlists come from North America—36% of the total number. Western Europe takes second place (20%), and Asia is third (11%).
- To date, 840,000 people have participated in the Half Sword playtest on Steam, and the demo version has been downloaded 1.7 million times. Besides Steam, the game is available on itch.io, where it has been downloaded 369,000 times.
- The cumulative number of video content views related to the game on YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok has surpassed 100 million since July.
- Every day, 250-1000 new subscribers join the game’s Discord servers.
According to the developers, Half Sword initially was no more than a standard training project. The creators drew inspiration from The Elder Scrolls series, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and Exanima.
They now believe the game has gained fame thanks to the combination of two gameplay aspects—realistic combat physics and deep historical accuracy. Notably, Half Sword recently received a "bloody" update, allowing players to decapitate opponents with "juicy" sound and visual effects.
GameDiscoverCo founder Simon Carless believes that Half Sword has every chance to become a leader among fun cooperative fighting games with realistic physics, alongside Gang Beasts and Party Animals. While the latter have gained popularity due to their cartoonish setting, Half Sword is a serious, naturalistic combat simulator.
Finally, an essential factor in its success was the release of a free demo version and the execution of an open playtest of the game.
