Bladesong News

Greetings, swordsmiths! It’s time for an insight into what the Bladesong team has been working on in the shadows. Read on below and say hello on Discord!


Bet you didn’t see this one coming… Blade wizard and highly-decorated community champion Resuru has joined our team! Res is a creative powerhouse and we’re stoked that he’s helping us make this game a reality!


Previous playtest feedback has clearly shown that we’ve been criminally neglecting fantasy parts so far, so Res has been sketching like a maniac and has come up with a host of creative concepts for the future.



But fret not, we’ll of course not forget our history either! E.g. here’s a lion head pommel from the Von Schwerzenbach collection and Resuru’s heavily inspired 3D mesh you will see in Bladesong one day:


Bladesong is a creative swordmaking game, but our vision goes further. Two weeks ago, we’ve posted a job ad for a Narrative Designer who will help us take you on a journey to Eren Keep and make sure it’s a visit you won’t forget.

This is the first time I’ve officially posted a job anywhere, and honestly, I wasn’t quite prepared for it. We’ve received hundreds of applications and while we’re of course glad to hear from so many great people, there’s a bitter taste to this. You’ll likely have heard the news of the layoffs that have happened all across the games industry since 2023, and we’ve spotted the many closed or “restructured” studios again and again in candidates’ résumés. The industry is in bad shape, and I can only hope that it will recover from this soon, both for the sake of the developers whose livelihood depend on this, and players who would like to see passion and wit be the driving factors behind the games they play.


In Bladesong, you forge swords for your customers, meeting physical and stylistic requirements through the blade and through hilt parts, which you acquire from vendors or craft yourself – if you can. We have built a prototype for all of this months ago, but for a simple first shot, everything was very scripted. Commissions, vendor inventories, it all was set up by hand to illustrate the idea. We are now rebuilding these core systems to be more dynamic: vendors will have certain part types and materials to work with and refill their stock as required, commissions will be generated in a meaningful way so that you can actually solve them, and last but not least, the game will offer various ways for you to progress by learning new sword parts, unlocking new techniques and more.




Over the last few months, we’ve been showing our prototype (the scripted one) around, talked to publishers, investors, funds and collectives who support self-publishing, in search of the best way forward for Bladesong. We’re happy to report that this search has now come to an end. Stay tuned for an official announcement 🔥

Thank you for your continued support!
– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️

The Third Bladesong Playtest is over! Thank you so much for joining the fun. We will take a minute to catch our breath and will then be back with an outlook on what's next for Bladesong.

– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️

Swordsmiths! You can now play the development preview of Bladesong until June 30! Simply hit Request Access on our Steam page and you're in, the request will be auto-approved.

Join us on Discord to share your creations and participate in community challenges!

– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️

[h2]June 17–30. The Age of the Third Playtest is nigh.[/h2]

Request Access on Steam now! If you took part in a previous playtest, there's nothing you need to do, it's is still in your Steam library and will be unlocked on the 17th.

We're crazy excited for this! Watch the video below and keep your eyes open over the next two weeks for updates on what to expect.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
– David and the Bladesong team 🔥

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 ⚔️