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Shoot ‘em up, without the Shoot’ em | Swordship - Review

862 View2022-12-06

Dodge ‘em up is a genre entirely new to me, and so far I like the concept. Swordship is one such game, it takes the notion of shoot ‘em up but removes the shooting part and makes the fundamental gameplay all about the art of dodging and deception.

You are a Swordship pilot, trying to steal and smuggle supplies from megacities hoarding them in the face of a post apocalyptic water world. Delivering these stolen supplies to those unfortunates living outside the megacities.

Swordship’s gameplay is pretty basic but unique. Zip through the various randomly generated express water transport lanes — complete with dynamic weather — stealing and redirecting important goods. All while avoiding dangerous security measures the megacities put in place. Lasers, turrets, bombers, mines, all of these bullet hell producing mechanics are out to obliterate you in one shot. Aside from positional movement, you can also dive down in the river as an additional dodge maneuver, and very much makes it a somewhat engaging 2.5D game.

Your Swordship doesn’t come equipped with guns or missiles, and all you can do is avoid these projectiles and explosions, or tricking them to make them destroy each other: Have two turrets point to each other, then dodge at the very last moment to make them shoot each other, or trick enemy air support into a friendly fire of bombarding cannons; High risk, high reward — The anxiety level is high with Swordship, especially when doing the last split-second maneuvers, dives, and experiencing near misses, complete with occasional slow motion effects. You can very easily die in a heartbeat.

It’s not all too difficult though as you can select between 6 different Swordships that can be upgradable with various skills and power ups that can change the tide. For example, The EMP blast that can disable everything, it can certainly help you escape hellish situations and give you breathing room. The enemies also telegraph their attacks cleanly and with enough practice, you can clearly see and anticipate them amidst all the bullet hell and visual clutter.

Swordship also features rogue-lite elements. At the end of every level, you are scored and given options as to which upgrade to install. Increase your score, or add to your extra life. Add modifiers that can help you with your run such as increasing pick-up times, drop rates, or explosions that clear the path when doing a required combo. When you die, there is a quick restart system which is a nice convenience, especially when you’re frustrated enough with all the deaths. When all your extra lives are spent, you restart over without all the upgrades.

The art style and sound design of Swordship is admirably cool and flashy. The beautiful aesthetics of the smoke effects, speed trails, and explosions fully fits the game’s frantic gameplay, not to mention the artistic slo-mo shot whenever you perform a sick move, all of it adding a great deal to the game’s charisma.

Swordship is fun enough to keep you invested for 10 hours to fully unlock everything, and more if you absolutely enjoy the anxiety-inducing risky rewarding gameplay it banks itself on. Highly recommended for Shoot’ em up fans especially those looking to explore further evolutions of the genre.

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