SWORDSHIP
Duck and dive in a shoot-’em-up where you can’t fire back
Developer Digital Kingdom
Publisher Thunderful
Format PC, PS4, Xbox One
Origin Switzerland
Release Summer
Making a shoot-’em-up without any shooting feels like a bold move, but it makes a kind of sense: after all, bullet-hell shooters have always tilted the balance towards avoidance. The emphasis is less on where you’re firing and more on jinking out of tight spots, threading your vulnerable ship through a colourful onslaught of glowing death orbs and pulling through by the skin of your teeth. Swordship focuses purely on that adrenaline rush of survival: staring down death and then deftly swerving it at the last possible moment.
The colour-coded art design is key to being able to read what’s happening amid the chaos of explosions. “I like to work with simple shapes, simple colours, and to create something really effective with [few] elements on screen,” lead artist Benjamin Vurlod says