I’ve recently become addicted to the History Channel show “Forged in Fire” again. I don’t quite have the time and money to take an actual blacksmithing class at the moment, so this little game was my attempt to scratch the itch of learning a new skill. As the price may hint, this game is a very basic, indie game.

This game does a pretty good job at following the basic process to make a sword. Yeah, you are more a bladesmith, than blacksmith, but that’s for the best, making horseshoes and doornails isn’t as exciting. You form your steel into a billet, then heat, hammer, and repeat until you’ve got your sword. Get a good quench and sharpen it and you’ve got something worth selling. All of these tasks are handled like simple mini games. You have to get up to the right heat without burning it by watching a thermometer, and how sharp your sword is depends on how close you click to 100%. As you gain experience, you can create layered Damascus billets, but the mini game involved is confusing and not well explained. It’s all a bit arcady and there’s not as much depth to installing your handle and pommel as would’ve liked.

Of course, this is “Fantasy” Blacksmith. You are cast as a lowly medieval blacksmith making weapons for adventurers. That also means no power hammers or electric grinders. You start off with basic iron, forging oversized letter openers for the local town adventurer to go beat giant rats with, but as you increase in skill and renown, you can craft using saturnite or mithral. The swords you forge don’t have to make logical sense either, you can design them to have flames or spikes, or weird curves. There are enough selections though you could recreate a gladius, katana, or broadsword pretty faithfully. You’ll get more money for them and more exposure for being the sword a hero used to slay the dragon.

The game can have a rather slow pace once you’ve mastered the process, you have to wait for customers to knock at your door, and they seem to come just infrequently enough to kill the pacing. There was plenty of times I was just standing at the door waiting for the knock because I had completed my sword and was either out of money or trying to save it for an upgrade.

You can, and must, buy upgrades to increase the variety of swords you can forge. Buy new furnaces that reach higher temps or anvils that help hold the heat longer for more hammering. There’s also a magic system for enchanting swords, but I never bought those upgrades, because eww, magic. There’s a dice game you can buy for your shop, but it wasn’t really worth the money.

All in all, this game is good for a short little play session, which is good it’s not too terribly expensive. It did what I wanted it to, let me pretend I’m a blacksmith, so I can’t knock it for that.