Like Tiger Woods in a brothel, I just can't resist a bargain, and the latest bargain basement beauty to grace my Steam account shows that quality games don't grow on trees.
Developer: Konstantin Koshutin
Publisher: Kranx Productions
Released: 29th octover 2009
Platform: PC
As you may have read elsewhere on InvertMouse, I am a big fan of the content on Valve's Steam network - I have serious misgivings about the digital rights side of Steam, but let's put those aside for now. I particularly love the pocket money indie and retro gems they put up to tempt me every few days. One such irresistible morsel was Hammerfight.
There's no other way to say this, but this £2 gem is little more than virtual conkers. Yes, it's dressed up like a Cossack's boudoir, and yes, it has more Steampunk pretentions than Jules Verne's lovechild, but at its heart, a 2D physics battler where you swing your heavy thing in order to destroy your opponents' swingy, heavy thing is fundamentally 21st century horse-chestnuts on shoe laces.
But like David Beckham, simplicity is its charm, and it's only when the developer deviates from this pure and holy idea that the game begins to fall apart like a non-vinegar-soaked, oven-baked 1-er.
Stop. Hammer Time.
Like the best games, the basic controls are child's play to pick up, but difficult to master. Simply move your mouse, and your bathysphere-like ship moves around the screen.
Dangling from your craft by way of a dirty great chain is a big heavy lump of stone/iron/spikey-axe-death, and as you move the ship, the ball-and-chain reacts as you would expect; swinging, pulling and dragging you around the screen. By wrestling with the pendulum physics you can propel yourself around quickly or snap back to send the flail crushing into your similarly armed opponents.
The sense of momentum and weight is wonderfully realised in what is little more than a browser-based, flash game, and when you get a good hit the bone-jarring impact can knock the fillings out of your smiling face.
Skip to the end
Sadly, unlike many Flash games, Hammerfight's downfall is that it has been fussed over too much. Here we have a fantastically simple concept that works very well, buried beneath a Frank Herbert-esque, Middle Eastern-styled plot that even if you skip through still forces you to individually bypass every part of the conversation. THIS IS AN ACTION GAME, NOT A PISSING BIOWARE RPG MAGNUM OPUS! I guess the developer (Russian designer Konstantin Koshutin*) didn't have someone looking over his shoulder saying 'enoughski is enoughski'.
To make matters worse, the checkpoints are frequently placed before the plot pieces so you have to click through them every time you die - and you will... a lot. The game's unique combat mechanic (Steampunk conkers) is extremely challenging, and fantastically rewarding when you get it right. But it will take time to learn, time spent pulling your own lips off in frustration as you wade through some lost tribe plot bollocks again and again and again.
Mallet's Mallet
The unwanted frills continue with some seemingly unnecessary customisation options that allow you to swap out your weapons for others, detach and steal opponents' weapons and even combine weapons together. But this is so poorly explained, badly implemented and too bloody complicated for a frenetic action game that it would be better left out. Besides, I was far too afraid to try any of it for fear of dying and having to re-watch some 'Molyneux's Magic Carpet' era conversations between Aladdin extras I couldn't give a toss about.
Hammerfight is a 'nearly' game, but it has enough going for it for me to recommend you give it a whirl (for less than the price of a pint, who can argue?) and to want to see a sequel that corrects the faults and gives the gameplay room to breathe. But I'm warning you Konstantin, if you don't remember that in some cases 'less is more' I may come round there with my 69-er.
* 'Konstantin's Kosmic Konkers' would have been a much better title.