Sword Slinger by Firebelley
Way back when I reviewed Frontline Zed, I lamented the passing of Flash games. There’s an art to creating simple, understandable games that could easily chew away hours of your time that I think is disappearing these days.
Well, if Sword Slinger is any indication, Firebelley must miss them as much as I do. This game is like an extra-polished version of the kind of thing you’d find at the top of the Newgrounds charts, and I say that as a compliment.
My Sword Will Not Sleep
Sword Slinger’s premise is a simple one: some smirking goblins are alive in a single-screen level, and that needs to change. You accomplish this by, unsurprisingly, slinging a sword at them. Sure sounds like a bog-standard game, right?
Not so fast! You don’t accomplish goblin genocide here by controlling a character who slings a sword themselves. Instead, Sword Slinger plays more like a puzzle game meant to teach you how programming logic works.
In each level, you program your sword with triggers and actions meant to affect which way it’ll be slung. Program it well enough, and it should sling itself into all of the goblins and let you advance to the next level.
The meat of the game is spent figuring out the best ways to program your sword for the level you’re in. Maybe you need it to bounce in a certain direction once it hits the ground. Next, you might want it to fly in one direction, then another after a few seconds. Or maybe the solution is to have your sword shoot arrows at the goblins as it flies.
These are just a few of the options available to you, with the game adding more as you progress. It gives the game plenty of variety, and figuring out new actions is consistently fun.
In My Sword I Trust
Sword Slinger is the right kind of “one more try” puzzle game. It starts off simple enough to understand and adds its more complex elements gradually. While it, unfortunately, does suffer from some trial and error, the levels are short enough that it rarely bogs you down for long.
It helps that its presentation is charming, too. The simple white-lines-on-a-black-screen design is tried-and-true, and the goblins themselves are funny. They even shout encouragement to you as you try to murder them!
Ultimately, the only real criticism I can level at the game is that I wish there was more. More levels, more actions, more enemies, more everything really. Fingers crossed for a sequel!
Sword Slinger is available via Steam and itch.io.
Watch the trailer for Sword Slinger below: