The thing about metal is that, in addition to being very sturdy, it also weighs a ton. Sure, aluminum is relatively light, but steel is the metal of choice when it comes to a material worthy of bashing around an enemy with, and that stuff is dense. There’s only so much even the most knowledgeable metallurgist can do to get the strength to weight ratio down, so a big sword is also going to be incredibly hefty. The hero Ezra apparently does his sword-shopping from the same blacksmith as Cloud Strife, but unlike Cloud’s weapon Ezra’s also doubles as a handy tool for traversing the challenges of the dungeon.
GigaSword is a metroidvania-styled adventure featuring a very large sword in a world designed to use it to full advantage. It’s got a very strong attack that can chain into a three-hit combo, a nice mid-air ground strike, and also acts as a tool for a number of dungeon’s mechanisms. Opening doors, for example, is a lot easier when the required key is a giant sword, and platforms that open doors stay nice and activated with that much weight stabbed into them. Without the sword Ezra is much more nimble, able to jump higher and cling onto platform edges, not to mention swim when necessary, but he’s also defenseless aside from the ever-available dodge roll. A good amount of the GigaSword demo is spent figuring out how to use the various level tools and machinery to get the sword where it needs to go, which is frequently much higher than Ezra can lug the thing bare-handed.
The GigaSword demo is the first two areas in the game, right up through the first boss encounter. While the combat is fairly simple hits land with a nice impact, and the sword has more than enough uses outside of a fight that it’s almost always in use. Planned features are hinted at but not ready yet, such as the ore enemies drop being used to upgrade the sword’s abilities at save checkpoints, and hopefully some kind of map is in the works as well, but even it its early state GigaSword has a good feel to it and is very playable. The demo was just released today as part of the BostonFIG festival, held online this year, and it’s available for freeover at the ever-reliable itch.io. It’s definitely worth a nice evening’s exploration, so head on over and give it a play.
