How Half Sword makes bloody, brutal medieval combat feel real

I enter Half Sword’s arena, bald and shirtless with burlap pants and empty hands, knowing that death is on the line, and I’m already in trouble. 

My identical twin stands 20 feet ahead of me, arms raised in a boxer’s orthodox stance. We’re nobodies, a pair of 15th-century European commoners who’ve lived lives that historians would dismiss in generalizations. 

And we both know that only one of us will survive this fight.  

I press down on my left and right mouse buttons, and my arms raise, mirroring my opponent. We shuffle to the middle of the dirt arena. He strikes first with a devastating right hook, and the time for feeling each other out is over. I attack in a panicked frenzy, swiping my mouse left and right to attack. When my punches land with satisfying thuds, spurts of red blood dot the air. (Of the three available choices at the game’s start, I picked the most realistic, bloodiest gore mode.) 

At first, most of my attacks whiz past my clone, who ducks and bobs as I let loose. But soon I start to get the hang of battle, timing my swipe-strikes so they reliably circumvent his defensive stance. His battered cheek turns the livid red of fresh butcher shop meat, then purple, and I realize that I’m not just fighting—I’m winning. Or at least I think I am? My cheek could be just as tenderized as his for all I know. 

Ruthless aggression remains my strategy, and a minute later, my right fist pulverizes his jaw. He staggers back, and I see that his torso is purpling too. As I charge, I notice pools of his blood—our blood?—caking the dirt floor. After a fresh flurry of blows, he collapses, and I add kicking to my quiver of attacks. My twin dies in the dirt, and I think that maybe the history books will remember me after all. 

My prize for victory: Another fight in this brutal tournament, this time with weapons and multiple enemies. In that fight, I lose an arm within 10 seconds and die within 20. I’ve still got a lot to learn. 

This is Half Sword, developer Half Sword Games’ hyper-realistic, physics-based medieval combat simulator. Calling it a fighting game doesn’t even come close. I only won that first fight after spending what felt like an hour just trying to figure out how to put my dukes up, let alone attack. It’s wild and weird in the best way, which is why we spoke with two of the game’s creators—Creative Director/Art Director Ivan Nestorov and Game Director Frank Togonidze—about how Half Sword came to be and why this unique game requires extra effort from its players. 

The story of Half Sword begins with frustration and Togonidze’s interest in martial arts, but probably not the kind you’re thinking of. Togonidze practiced Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA), which focuses on centuries-old fighting styles with weapons that span from fists to daggers and longswords. 

“I was thinking about it since I first tried messing around with Unreal in 2016,” Togonidze told the Epic Games Store. “I was doing HEMA at around that time, and was not satisfied by the way medieval combat was represented in games. The first project that got named Half Sword was created in the 2019-2020 winter as the first and only portfolio piece to get into game dev school. Throughout my two-year study period at that school, I remade it several times, but the idea was always the same: a game about medieval combat, but you actually freely control your weapons.”

He was looking for something that treated combat in video games as seriously as he treated it in his personal life, and he had to build it himself. Half Sword exists at the intersection of historical accuracy and simulation, re-creating in great detail what fighting was actually like in the medieval era. 

“I ended up stopping on the full physical simulation as the main mechanic,” he said. “Videos of active ragdoll people cutting each other with swords got traction on Twitter and Reddit, and people gathered around it. From that student project, it turned into something real.” 

Togonidze was studying in Japan when Half Sword was born, and when he returned to Eastern Europe to his native Georgia, he formed a company to create the game. 

“I want to be proud of being part of one of the very few Georgian game dev studios,” he said with a smile, “so I'm going to make an emphasis on this here.” 

With the ethos of the game in place and a business set up to make it, it was time to build a team to work on its look and combat. Half Sword’s Art and Creative Director Ivan Nestorov joined the crew back when “everything visual was very bare-bones.”

“I saw these strange yellow mannequins Frank used as prototype models to showcase the mechanics he had been working on back in Japan,” Nestorov said. “I just knew I needed to work on a game like this. It had a charm and intuitive look to it, so I could not resist reaching out and getting involved with what I saw.” 

One of their first collaborations was to bring historically accurate armor into the game and test that with the existing combat system. 

“I had some late 15th-century helmets on my hard drive that I sent Frank very early on,” Nestorov said. “He made it so that you can stab through the eye slits of the helmet, and we knew that this could be a cool idea to expand on.” 

He added that combining historically accurate armor with Togonidze’s physics-based combat strengthened the game’s realistic conceit. 

“Following further on the historically accurate approach to the game, where we can have complex combat that also can be represented with real historical arms and armor, showing how real, old armor works against swords, maces, and so on, was very exciting,” Nestorov said. “We figured that we do not need fantastical elements to make a compelling experience. Accurate medieval equipment just works, and due to the physics, we can show how it can protect you and even make an enemy a way more formidable force while wearing it.” 

The studio grew over the next few years, attracting developers from Argentina, the other Georgia, India, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Everyone on the team works independently, Nestorov said, and no two days are quite the same. 

My first successful (fist)fight was the most bare-bones experience, serving in a sense to teach players how to control their characters. I survived at first by swinging wildly, but I won by learning and adding precision to my attacks. It gets way more complicated with armor and weapons. 

“In our case, the mechanics and physics are the core. It strikes the three points pretty well: It feels good, it works, and it's fun (we think),” Nestorov said with a smile. “I think the moment that clicked for me was when we started adding more armor in the early versions. It just clicked (or should I say ‘clanged’?) when you can cut an unarmored enemy into small pieces. But that became a bit more tricky once you have protective elements, forcing the playstyle to play more with thought than mindless stabbing and slashing. And the feeling when you wear a full set of armor, the sounds, the reflections, and the feel that you are confident in your own ability and the armor to show you are here for business, is priceless.”

There is no particular story in Half Sword, nor is there an ending. It’s a realistically simulated tournament of medieval combat. Victory pulls players forward, as does their choice to don combinations of heavy or light weapons and armor. 

“The idea is that you, as a player, can immerse yourself in a late 15th-century setting with armor that represents this period as closely as possible,” Nestorov said. “Clothing, weapons, environments, and armor combined, putting you 600 years back in time to experience medieval combat. However the player wishes to make their build, the limit is your social status and what you can afford.”

Half Sword asks a lot of its players, which is kind of the point. Nestorov describes it as “experimental for the player” where “[hand]-holding the player feels kind of wrong.” 

“The game is a learn-as-you-go type of experience,” he said. “To master it, like in any martial arts, it takes time and practice—and some extra time to perfect. But that's a part of the journey.” 

You can download the Half Sword Demo in the Epic Games Store today, and add the full Half Sword to your wishlist.