Swordship Review (Xbox One)

STAFF REVIEW of Swordship (Xbox One)

Friday, January 27, 2023.
by Adam Dileva

I absolutely love shmups (shoot-em-ups). You know the ones, where bullets are all over the screen and you somehow have to dodge them in pixel perfect fashion all while trying to destroy your enemies. Well, I can tell you I’ve never played anything quite like Swordship before, and while I guess it would kind of belong to the shmup genre, it also doesn’t really either.

Imagine a shump without the shooting. I guess that would make it a 'mup'? I don’t know, I just work here. If you’ve ever wanted to challenge yourself and play a shmup for pacifists, look no further than Swordship, a shmup without the ability to actually shoot. Odd I know, but stick with me, as I initially thought it was a crazy notion at first too. But somehow, developers Digital Kingdom made it work, forcing you to focus on your maneuvers and dodging since you have no real way to directly retaliate against your enemies.

It’s an interesting and unique take with a really minimalistic aesthetic and addictive roguelike gameplay, complete with an attempt at an interesting narrative. Dodge and weave through enemies and their attacks doing everything they can to try and destroy you. You’re going to need lightning quick reflexes and be able to react and think even faster with the best way to trick enemies into destroying one another so you can escape and survive.

Global warming has caused havoc on the environment and most cities now lie underwater. As cities trade containers of goods with one another, those that have been exiled from the cities for various reasons don’t have an easy time, doing what they can to simply survive. You are a member of The Banished, a rebel group that looks to steal these containers of goods from the greedy cities and distribute them to the poor and needy to survive. Think a classic Robin Hood tale, but on speed boats that can do sweet dives underwater. That said, while there’s a story, though it won’t really matter to you, as you’ll simply be doing runs over and over to try and beat your best score.

Swordship’s main hook is that you have no weaponry on your speedboat, yet must outlast and survive the constant onslaught from your enemies. Each run is also randomly generated, so it’s more about reaction than it is memorization. Because of this there’s plenty of replayability, but this is almost offset by the overall lack of content.

Your speedboat only knows one speed – full throttle. You don’t need to worry about laying on the gas or hitting the brakes, as it’s constantly moving forward, somewhat like an auto-scroller, you simply move and maneuver your Swordship along the water in the corridor you’re speeding down. There are 3 stages and then a boss, each stage is then broken up into a few separate levels. Each level will have a certain amount of those coveted containers that need to be swiped, and once they are, or missed, the level will end moving onto the next.

For example, the first level has two containers that will eventually come up for grabs. Once both are deployed, those are your chances to secure them for your people or will pass on by, still finishing the level though. Since you’re always rushing towards the bottom of the screen, this is where you’ll see a yellow lined marker to indicate that these containers are about to appear, giving you just a few moments to prepare and hopefully catch them with your Swordship by being in line.

Of course each stage has a different feel and slightly varied aesthetic and biome background, but the main differences are the new enemies you face off against in each. With ship upgrades, differing abilities, randomized runs, weather conditions and more, there are some reasons to keep coming back if you really enjoy trying to best your high score.

When you manage to snag and steal a container, as the level ends you’ll have a choice to make. Do you send your collected containers back to The Banished, receiving a big score bonus in return, or keep it for your own gain, allowing you to upgrade your Swordship for that run and gaining extra lives? Upgrades will help you on each run, changing special abilities or passive parameters to your ship itself. So it’s a matter of determining your skill, as taking a score boost is much better long term if you don’t die often, but swapping score for extra lives may be better for you in the long run, especially if you end up making it to the boss. The score at the end of the run determines which unlocks you finally get, so it’s important for new bonuses and even extra difficulty modes.

This is a roguelike though, so you can expect to fail and die a lot, so all that matters is the final score you get before your last life is gone. The problem with this is that to unlock the next tier reward, you need to constantly beat your last score, or else the run was essentially for nothing outside of ‘fun’ and practice. The overall XP/Score bar doesn’t stay filled between runs with your progress, so it’s all or nothing.

Controls in a shmup (still going with that genre distinction here) need to be air tight or else the game is dead on arrival. Thankfully for the most part controlling your speedship is quite responsive, as while I did have seemingly unfair deaths here and there, it was more from me not paying attention to something, not the controls. Remember, you have no weaponry, you simply need to dodge enemy attacks to stay alive long enough to steal those containers.

Where the strategy comes in is defeating your enemies. But how do you do so since you don’t have any guns? I’m glad you asked. You actually need to use enemy bullets and attacks against their own. Each enemy attacks you in a different way, so how can you trick them into attacking their own team? Quite simple really. Usually you just have to maneuver your ship behind an enemy so the other can fire at you, inadvertently hitting their ally, thus destroying them. Some enemies fire a laser at you after a moment of locking on, others drop mines that will explode when you’re in their range for a moment as well. You’ll know when to dodge once their red indicator goes from light to dark red, then it will explode or fire, so you better be out of the way.

The easiest way to dodge is to simply be out of the line of danger by moving your ship, but you’re also able to have your ship dive underwater for a short period at a time. This is how you’ll get under some fire beams, lasers and simply out of danger quickly. It takes some practice to learn enemy attack patterns, especially once you finally reach the boss, but you’ll slowly gain the reaction skills to make further progress each run. Once you learn how to act as bait and then use it to your advantage, you’ll be having successful runs in no time.

I quite enjoyed its minimalistic style; simplistic, small color pallet, but it works. The basic looking ship and enemies also have an appealing style, allowing you to see everything happening on screen so you’re able to avoid all the attacks. It’s colorful, basic, and it’s just pleasant to look at. The soundtrack is done quite well, having some good beats that keep your head bopping as you go for ‘just one more run’.

While I’d argue the $25.99 CAD price tag is a bit steep for how little content there is, the gameplay is quite original, as I would have never thought about playing a shmup that has no shooting. Lacking some sort of online leaderboard or modes does bring in the monotony and repetitiveness quite quickly, as I was only able to sit and play a few runs at a time before getting the itch to move onto something else for a break.

**Swordship was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 6.7 / 10
Gameplay: 6.0 / 10
Visuals: 7.0 / 10
Sound: 7.0 / 10

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