While perusing medieval history videos on YouTube I came across this game. Hellish Quart was covered by sword fight enthusiasts and most agreed it was a pretty accurate, realistic, sword fighting game. It wasn’t too expensive, so I decided to give it a try.

First is the graphics and art design. The menus are stylized to look like pages from a historic sword fighting manual. It’s very simple, but fits the game’s theme. Your selection of fighters skew Eastern European, lots of Cossacks and steppe people, but there are a few Western European fighters thrown in. There’s a strong feel of historic authenticity in the character designs, with just enough flair thrown in to show off their personality. Everything from slovenly raiders to nobles of the court. There’s a fair smattering of arenas to fight in. Each one is set in a late medieval locale, such as a village square, a grassy field, a tavern, or in front of some gallows. These arenas are fairly drab, often muted in color, with not much to gawk at. While they aren’t much to look at it does let you focus on the actual fight going on. There’s no background music for your fights, instead relying on the ambient sound of creaky bridges or gusty winds. The main menu music has a very Slavic folk song feel to it. It would fit in with the Witcher 3 soundtrack.

And the gameplay is the focus of Hellish Quart. I am not an expert of sword fighting techniques, but from what I’ve heard this game gets the closest at recreating an actual fight. I think this game usually leans more towards fencing style duels over HEMA style fighting. Each character has a list of combos they can use. These aren’t wild Mortal Kombat type combos, but they let you pull off feint attacks or more advanced sword maneuvers. I’ve yet to master them, but you can also pull off flashy finishing moves that kill your opponent with the most flair. You can use your free hand to help direct or deflect your opponents’ sword, which is apparently a real fencing technique. Characters fall into different types of fighting style, there’s several sabre fencers, a few longsword fighters, and some more traditional rapier fencers, which are usually the ones I enjoyed playing the most.

There’s a hidden stamina bar and you don’t have a traditional health bar. As the fight progresses, your fighter will naturally get a little tired. This effect takes effect quicker if you’re constantly attacking or dancing around, exerting yourself. Losing stamina makes it harder for you to deflect blows. Most of these fights aren’t to the death. You can get a lucky strike and kill your opponent or lop a hand off, but often maiming them is enough to win the match. Both of you are real people, so it takes only one good blow to knock you out. It means most rounds move at a quick pace. You aren’t chopping away at a health bar, you are angling for position and waiting for your opponent to expose themselves. Not every hit is a guaranteed match ender. You can give & receive glancing blows to the hand or arm that hurt your stamina, but don’t end the fight.

A very bare bones arcade tower mode was added recently. You pick a fighter, get a short intro text blurb about why they’re fighting and proceed through a tower of fencers. At the end, the final boss shows up and there’s some animated cutscenes that play when you defeat him, then you get an outro text blurb about your character’s fate. The only other game mode is just one off vs. matches. You can also play online, but it requires some advance setup. There’s also a proof-of-concept trailer of a cutscene for the game’s proposed story mode.

All in all, Hellish Quart seems to be suffering the same fate as Ground Branch. It’s a very fun, early access, realism minded, action simulator but the drip feed of new substantial content is slowly starving the game’s success. Work is still being done, but at a snail’s pace. The story mode has been long promised, as have one or two fighters that show up as “coming soon” on the roster. I can only recommend this game at a sale price, even for sword fighting buffs. For me, I’d seen most all the content I wanted to see within a day or two.
I wonder if maybe this game is a passion project by developers who work on this when not working on “real” games.