The success of video games such as Soul Calibur, The Elder Scrolls and Infinity Blade suggest that gamers like swordwielding games of all sizes.
Author and self-described "swordsmanship geek" Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash) has a dream of creating a PC game with an initial goal of giving players a taste of the two-handed longsword, a standard loadout in late medieval and early Renaissance Europe.
Last month, he and the team at Subutai Corporation -- which includes fellow authors Mark Teppo (Lightbreaker: Codex of Souls) and Greg Bear (Halo: Cryptum: Book One of the Forerunner Saga) -- launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the game called Clang.
The Sword of Damocles hangs over the project, which three days from its deadline is tantalizingly close to its goal of $500,000 -- as of Thursday afternoon, $426, 479 had been donated.
In a video on the Kickstarter site, Stephenson describes the game: "It's not going to be an open world where you can wander around killing badgers and harvesting magic weeds because those things are expensive. So, by process of elimination, it's going to be an arena game. Lots of fighting not a whole lot in the way of plot or character development. But that is kind of what we do for a living, so we can always add that stuff in later once this thing is up on its feet."
The game will use a third-party PC motion-sensitive controller rather than a standard controller with buttons and joysticks to more realistically simulate swordfighting. "We've got a lot of people out there who like to play games with swordfighting in them who might be ready to step it up to something a little more interesting," Stephenson says.
Needless to say, those swordfighting video game fans need to move quickly. To help drive support in the final days of the Kickstarter drive, Min-Liang Tan, the CEO of gaming company Razer said he would pledge $1 to the Clang campaign for every 'Like' and 'Share' off his Facebook post about the game.
Stephenson recently did an interview with Eurogamer and there are plenty of videos on the Kickstarter project site to check out.
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