Bladesong News

Greetings, swordsmiths! We are entering a very exciting phase for Bladesong. We finished our Vertical Slice – a playable section of the game, basic implementations of core features and a quality bar close to where we imagine the final game to be. In our case, this means that we now have a first working version of the game’s Campaign Mode on our hands: Forge swords for customers, manage your forge, and at the end of each in-game day, experience a bit of the story set in Eren Keep. It’s still an early preview, gameplay will go through quite some changes and progression is virtually non-existent, but it illustrates the vision we have for Bladesong.


The fine folk at DevGAMM are hosting various game dev conferences throughout the year and we got the chance to be part of this year’s DevGAMM Gdańsk! So, we travelled to Poland and got a host of great opportunities:

First, we got the chance to take part in a Public Pitch – 5 minutes on stage to present Bladesong to publishers and investors. The jury loved the pitch and we even got recognition for the Best Public Pitch ❤️ The whole thing was recorded and can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWlTLJhM5EE

Second, we were one of three nominees for the Digital Vikings Award in the category Most Innovative Game. We almost couldn’t believe it when we heard the name “Bladesong” and could take the award home!



Last but not least, we were part of the Games Showcase! People stopped by to play Bladesong’s Creative Mode and make their own beautiful swords and horrendous abominations. For us devs, this was the first chance to look over the shoulder of new players and see where things aren’t going as smooth as they should be. Very insightful indeed!




Armed with our Vertical Slice and the great feedback we got at DevGAMM, we started saying hello to publishers to help us with the release of Bladesong! Of course, in this day and age, self-publishing is a valid option, but there’s more to it than simply hitting the release button on Steam: reaching out to content creators and the press, getting into online and on-site events, finding opportunities for collaborations, structured testing and feedback sessions, localisation and a few other things. Managing all of this costs time and money. A publisher should be a boost to our team, so that we devs can focus more of our attention on making the game fantastic. We’re going to take the time and make sure we find the right partner for our beloved Bladesong.


You’ve seen Bladesong’s all-about-the-swordmaking Creative Mode in the playtests and videos, but there’s another side to the game: the Campaign Mode. To illustrate that idea for the Vertical Slice, we have put a lot of work into building customer commissions, rating swords according to physical principles and improving our narrative systems and our dialogue tool Serpent Tongue.




We are pinning down Bladesong’s next major milestones as we speak. Another playtest will be part of this, so we will let you know when the time comes!

For first-time playtesters, we are keeping the sign-ups open – just press Request Access on our Steam page and you’ll get a notification from Steam when it’s there!

If you have taken part in a previous playtest, Steam won’t notify you again, so watch our Discord for announcements.


Thank you for being part of this.
– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️

[h2]The time is here, swordsmiths![/h2]

Go to our Steam page, hit "Request Access" and play the Bladesong tech demo until February 11. Our Discord is already buzzing, so join the fun and show off your best creations!

Swords shall be made ⚔️

– David and the Bladesong team

In seven days, you will already be making swords right within Bladesong’s Creative Mode – so it is high time for another edition of our dev log The Cutting Edge to summarize what’s new!


…will run from February 4 to 11, Sunday to Sunday. To join the playtest, request access on our Steam page – if you have not done that, do it now, and make sure to wishlist and follow Bladesong while you’re at it! We have planned some things before and during he Playtest, so we’d love to see you join our Discord if you’re not on there yet! Like the first playtest in 2023, this one will be a tech demo playtest showcasing Bladesong’s Creative Mode - swords shall be made without gameplay limitations!


It has been a complicated beast to implement (and I’m sure you’ll find some remaining quirks if you try), but Bladesong allows for up to three fullers now! The outer two have optional symmetry or can be controlled individually, so you can create all sorts of interesting designs:



Fullering makes the whole mesh a lot more complicated which takes its toll on performance. We have overhauled our blade update routines, which improves performance across the board and makes the game run faster than before.





Bladesong now features a Share button! With a simple click, your sword design gets stored in the cloud and magical three-word combo put into your clipboard. Share it with other players, and they can conjure a copy of the sword in their own game.




Accidentally deleted a part? Want to A/B toggle a change? Or simply don’t like where it’s going? A much requested feature from the first playtest, Bladesong now features an undo/redo system using Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y.




For the new sword part thumbnail UI we have shown last time, we have now added some matching tooltips. These tooltips are shown when hovering over the UI as well as the 3D parts on the sword itself, and show information about the part, the material and the weight.




We have added some long overdue spikes for proper Heavy Metal deathblades, as well as two more “Enchanted Steel” materials for you to experiment with.



Last but not least, we are excited to welcome Alvaras Turskas to our team. Alvaras is a talented 3D artist and sword lover from Lithuania. He is getting started as we speak and will help us create all the beautiful sword parts that will complete our library. Check out his work here!



One more week, everyone. Swords shall be made.
– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️

FEBRUARY 4–11 ⚔️

A Bladesong playtest is coming. Sign-up is open now on Steam, just click “Request Access” and you're set.

We'll spill more details over the next weeks. We're excited for this, and we hope you are too.
Thank you for being among the early believers in the idea, it means a lot to us! 🔥

– David and the Bladesong team

Welcome, swordsmith, to our new official Bladesong developer log The Cutting Edge! With this format, we will give you all the red-hot details of what we're forging in the SUN AND SERPENT headquarters. Let's take a look!


If you took part in the the first Bladesong playtest, you will remember the bland list that was our sword part library. Well, no more! We recently revamped it to show nice thumbnail images instead:



The recently added engravings are now displayed with thumbnail images as well. We also took some time to refactor the underlying architecture of how our engravings are set up in engine. Adding new engravings is now a much quicker process for us devs, so we can add entire alphabets like the Elder Futhark:



In addition, this brings us one step closer to a feature we would like to implement at some point: assignable engraving materials. Instead of an engraving being inherently gold-plated, you would place a vanilla engraving first, and then assign a material in a second step – gold-plated, blood-of-my-enemies crimson, blue glow of magick, you name it. To be implemented at some point in the future.





[h2]Artwork[/h2]
To tell the story of Eren Keep, we are working with a host of fantastic artists – we will introduce them to you when the time comes. For now, this means that we need to work out the details of relevant locations, bring them to life in our heads and put it all into words, sketches or whatever shape helps communicate the ideas to the artists working out the visuals. Watch this space for more sneak peeks at illustrations, concept art and the occasional WIP sketch.

[h2]Steam Page Updates[/h2]
Our Steam page still looked pretty empty. Considering that it’s the landing page and first source of information on Bladesong for many, it was time to give it some polish! Have a look and if you haven't wishlisted Bladesong yet, make sure you do to fuel the team's motivation!


That's it for today. Stay sharp!
– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️