Full Frontal Fatherhood in Dad By The Sword
The one thing I truly admire about Dad By The Sword is its blatant nonchalance. Starting off as a design experiment to create a cool sword-fighting experience, it quickly morphed into a game of paternal ultra-violence thanks to an endless stream of dad jokes during its development.
Apart from sounding totally misguided and completely moronic, you can’t help but feel that this game is going to involve a good chuckle. And that’s because it combines the intensity of sword-fighting with the stoic and hopeless father figure trope. I suppose I admire it so much because it’s being crafted out of enthusiasm by the folks over at Rocketcat Games, who thought it would be a laugh to fearlessly merge two seemingly contrasting concepts.
Dad By The Sword is currently in early development stages, originally inspired by old sword-fighting games and “Playing Dark Messiah Might of Magic again” leading to the nostalgia being destroyed. “Dads” are also an obvious inspiration alongside the recent “daddification” trend in recent games… not too sure about that one; whatever the developers are on, it’s strong stuff.
There’s seemingly no end to the dad puns and wince-inducing word-play. In order to defeat your “Anti-dad” enemies such as the “Worm Wizzards” and “Shorts-men” you’ll have to engage in “Dad-ly combat”. This’ll involve dismembering your enemies to disarm them or shattering their armour with one fell blow of your sword – who also happens to be your dad. “Derks” or Dad-Perks can be gained that’ll allow you to become the perfect father-figure, whilst finding “Dadcessories” will grant you a secondary weapon to give you another ability (bowling balls and guns to name a few). Each time you play it’ll be different as each dungeon is randomly generated. It’s also perma-death, “accurately” portraying the difficulties fatherhood brings in real life.
Dad By The Sword has a neat cartoony art-style that isn’t trying to be flashy or anything special. It fits the fun “I don’t take myself seriously” attitude that the game exudes, whilst also making the gory dismemberment amusingly brutal as opposed to straight up R-rated.
Witness dancing hot dogs in this rather “interesting” trailer that left me somewhat confused.
