About the Game
Half Sword is an immersive, physics-based medieval combat simulator that offers players a unique experience of becoming a commoner-turned-knight, fighting brutal tournaments in 15th-century Europe. With innovative gameplay mechanics, you can wield your weapon with precision using your mouse, feeling the intensity of each clash as you ascend the ranks to face formidable opponents.
Immerse yourself in the rich tapestry of history with our meticulously crafted collection of historically accurate arms and armor. Experience the diverse and vibrant array of armor from history, offering players an authentic glimpse into the past.
Become the champion of the Arena by besting your opponents in various brawls and tournaments. Prepare for an unparalleled combat experience where your every move matters. All animations and maneuvers are meticulously designed with a strong foundation in realism.
Your control over weapons is genuine, as we have crafted a combat system based on the expertise and feedback of Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) practitioners and sword fencers. Through this dynamic system, players can immerse themselves in the intricacies of swordplay and learn the art of the game's combat mechanics.
Survive bloody battles to gain renown and claim wealth to buy new equipment or forge your own armor and weapons tailored to your combat style. Feeling confident? Bet on your success to potentially boost your earnings and further your progress.
Every story needs an end, and in Half Sword, it often means losing your head - quite literally. As this is a simulation game, death is final…
Be Warned: Half Sword is an extremely violent and gory game. I mean… we do have a Chief Blood Officer. Witness skull-crushing blows, limb decapitations, and gruesome displays of entrails and bloodshed, all intricately tied to the weapon and armor choices of both you and your opponents.
Screenshots
11 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Tried to address here as much of it as I could and added some things on top from myself.
Patch 0.6.1.1
- Reduced run speed. Faster than 6.0, slower than 6.1,
- Less equipped characters are much less likely to rush a better equipped opponent,
- Returned classic Al Thrust. Tapping Alt Thrust key will now toggle Classic Alt Thrust, while holding it down brings you to New Thrust Mode (thumb grip),
- Added Brawling option to Free Mode. Currently it doesn't work together with Carnage because how Level Manager sets up fight (these two are two different modes for it). So choose one at a time,
- Height and Weight sliders for Free Mode expanded. You can be very very small or very very big now.,
- Fixed (hopefully) lighting in Forrest map. It was good on my machine but I saw that it was too dark for others.,
- Made sword pommels and guards more effective for striking to make Mordhau grip even deadlier.,
- Knives and other bladed weapons that I forgot to set up correctly for reverse gripping should work properly now. Vertical reverse grip,
- Disabled Wood Tint and Leather Color options in Weapon Forge temporarily. They didn't work with new materials, but once they are set up correctly they gonna be back,
- Leather Straps can be dyed in Armor Customization menu now. Materials were not set up correctly before, now it should work,
- Blued Steel should apply correctly to armors now,
- Added an option to reset your game completely at the Innkeeper. We still don't have multiple save file support yet, we will add it later. Now total reset will delete your current save file so better back it up.,
- You can strangle people to death now. First they lose consciousness and if you keep choking them they die, It takes time,
- Fixed bug when character loses weapon but thinks they still have it (hopefully fixed),
- Some other stuff
Kept you waiting-
It's been a while since you heard from us last time, and we sincerely apologize for such a long period of radio silence. More than anything, we want to make a game that you will love to play, and we want to thank you all for your support, because it is the main force that lets us continue working towards that. We always preferred to speak with our actions, not words, and today we have something to show. The result of all our work during this silent time is finally here!
Update 0.6.1 Major changes:
Combat
Reverse gripping. Added the ability to rotate your weapons (vertically for bladed weapons and horizontally for the rest) by holding down the Swap Hands key. With swords, you can go to the mordhau grip if you do that from the halfsword grip. But be careful, without proper hand protection you may cut yourself :3
Alternative stance. Reworked alt thrust so that you can perform zwerchau. With two-handed swords, you also rotate your weapon horizontally to the ground. Can't wait to see what master strikes you perform. This particular feature was inspired by the mod The Art of Combat by Seancarter78 We are sure that with this update you can make even more cool stuff, fellow fencer.
Stronger wrists. Made wrists more rigid so that your weapons flop less. Basically returned wrist mobility to Demo settings, but also reworked animations so that you can cut from more angles. We will continue exploring more historical techniques and refining the feeling of combat even more to bring Half Sword as close as we can to the ultimate medieval combat simulator.
Performance
Active Ragdoll Total Overhaul. Massively optimized ragdolls and rebuilt the whole structure from the ground up. Gonna be frank, I made this system years ago and it worked well, but was too performance-heavy. Now it is twice as good performance-wise and hopefully feels the same (or even better).
New foliage assets. Optimized the hell out of the trees (thanks to our new hire - Eldar). The guy is really good, you will feel it in the Forest Map. - General asset optimization. Removed things that worked badly and replaced them with stuff that works better. It is an ongoing process. We slowly but surely optimize our stuff. Step by step, we will make this game run on toasters (fingers crossed).
Armor and Weapons
Armor material customization. Now you can change the metal and color of your armor at the Armorer. Better metal gives more protection and restricts your movements less. Also, you can dye the fabric of your garment in any medieval color. We plan to expand armor customization even more in upcoming updates.
Equipment affects mobility. Made characters faster and more nimble in general, but heavy equipment (including both armor and weapons) will affect that. The heavier you are, the heavier the movement feels. Increasing physical strength makes you move more lightly in armor.
Axes. Added lots of new axes both as premade weapons and as new modules for crafting. - Armor protection rebalance. Refined the math for armor protection. It should be harder to one-shot a fully armored knight now.
Rigging and skinning. Gradually refining how our armor looks in motion. Arm armor in particular should look much better and have less clipping (thanks to our new hire Danny). It is an ongoing process. We also have lots of new and ready assets for armor and weapons awaiting implementation, so we will be able to give you new tools to play with soon.
Game
Expanded Free Mode. You can choose maps and time of day now, and the maximum amount of opponents has increased to 10. Your character's height and weight can also be customized in the Inventory (the UI for that will be changed soon).
New map. Added a new map, Pit. Basically a Yard map but with a hole in the center. We will start adding more unique maps soon, but first we are reworking and optimizing the existing ones. - Bridge Fight. Added the combat scenario "Bridge" for Pit and Slums.
Better AI. AI is more responsive and aggressive now. Next, they will learn how to fight in groups.
We have a lot planned for the future, and there will be more changes to the overarching gameplay loop soon. Fight well <3
If you have installed mods be sure to do a clean reinstall. We also recommend stating a fresh save for best results.
In this new hotfix, we focused on blood optimization, alongside other performance improvements.
Blood:
Reworked blood with partial implementation of in-house next gen blood system (RT Blood) that should offer better performances alongside more realistic environment interaction. This include:
- New Wall decals splatters,
- New floors decals splatters,
- Better blood particles on weapons trails,
- New and more optimized particle behavior,
- RT blood splatters are now spawning in a much more responsive rate,
- Some fluid blood particle were removed for now for performance and are being worked on
Overall, do not forget that Blood settings can be adjusted for amount of blood force, particles, overall decal amount!
Other:
- Messer hilts redesigned,
- Various minor optimizations,
To talk a bit about the future, next update will not be a hotfix but a bigger patch, including new content. We're tackling stuff that require more work, and thus will require more time. We thank for your patience as we keep improving the game during its Early Access.
Thank you again for your support and patience,
Half Sword team
In this quick hotfix, we focused on some bugs that appeared with the previous physics changes:
Physics
- Muscle progression wasn't always triggered when spending stamina; it is now fixed
- Stealing an enemy weapon was sometimes not updating for the weapon's owner, and this forbade you from hitting the enemy with it. It is now fixed.
- Unsheathing your weapons now should feel less janky
Optimization
- Applied more foliage optimization to outdoor maps
Balancing, Weapons & Armors
- Added gambesons to the Peasant tier
Sorry for the inconvenience, and we shall see you very soon for more fixes and tweaks.
Thank you again for your support and patience,
Half Sword team
In this hotfix we started looking at your feedback on physics + rolled some additional fixes on the AMD blood polling, as it seems some AMD GPUs were still impacted:
Physics
- Lowered character physics substepping intervals. Expected results: better physics precision. Character control and combat should feel better.
- Disabled collision between character and their weapons. Weapons should less get stuck during combat and longer weapons shouldn't cause wielder to fall over when stuck.
- Kicking is now possible when you are on the ground
Blood
- Lowered gravity effect on blood particles, now they fly around more dramatically and are more noticable.
- Reworked decals spawning
- Fixed more AMD blood polling bug.
Optimization
- Cleaned up various materials
Localization
- Fixed special characters in various languages which weren't part of the font
Let us know on how you feel about those changes, and in the meantime we will continue working on improving the game,
Thank you again for your support and patience,
Half Sword team
Hi everyone,
In this hotfix we focused on the outdoor maps, as it seems to cause you a lot of troubles, and did some more blood optimization on performance.
In this third hotfix you could find:
Further foliage optimization, notably on Forest and Slums map
Blood optimization
Slums map colliders set up correctly. Now you the round end properly when you go out of map
You can talk your enemies into submission via the taunt mechanic, NPCs will react
Minor bug fixes
We're aware that some of you still have the blood splatering issue on AMD cards and are working on it as fast as we can.
And of course, we continue the work on other fixes, tunning, and feedback implementation.
Thank you again for your support and patience,
Half Sword team
Hi everyone,
As promised we're starting on optimization & content updates.
In this second hotfix you could find:
Partial Slums map foliage optimization, more to come soon.
Retirement bug fix (Constant new character creation window)
Forged weapons weird physics bug fix
Ball crushing nerfed (still OP) and sound effect added.
Liver hit added
We apologies for the inconveniences and thank you for your feedback as we keep working,
Half Sword team
Hello everyone!
The wait is finally over! Half Sword is officially releasing into Early Access today!
We made it to the 30th of January! We are extremely happy to finally open the gates. We know you have been sharpening your blades (and your patience) for a while now, and we can’t wait to see you in the arena.
As you understand, this is just the beginning of our Early Access journey. We have packed in as much new stuff as we could, but the work doesn't stop here. Bugs, funny physics glitches, and performance tweaks are things our tiny team will be tackling non-stop as we move forward towards the full release. Please, feel free to inform us of any issues that affect your immersion in the skirmishes of Half Sword directly on our official Discord.
For those who wish to support our development even further, we have also released a Supporter Pack today. It contains the Soundtrack and awesome extra stuff. It is entirely optional, but it helps our tiny team continue working on the game we all love.
Thank you so much for your continuous support and enthusiasm. It really means the world to us to see you play what we have created.
Now, go plunge your swords!
See you very soon, The Half Sword Team
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2397300/Half_Sword/"]
Known issues (we're working on it!)
Hair migh wrongly render sometime
Slums perf issues
Blood splaterring on AMD GPUs (fixed)
While in a Free Abyss run, a Press G to give up prompt apeears, while you're not supposed to give up fight for you soul in hell
Some localization are still placeholder
2h handed weapons might have wrong handling if you swap hands
Current Release
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Uploaded Jun 22, 2026
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System Requirements
How to Install
HalfSwordUE5.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
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11.0 GB
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