Hellish Quart is an early access Sword Fight video game, rooted in Historical European Martial Arts, from Polish developer Kubold
. It was released in early access on Feb 16th, 2021 via Steam and GoG. Gameplay is focused on realistic recreation, via extensive Motion Capture, of one-on-one sword duels with faithful 17th century weapons and fighting styles from across Europe. Narrative arcs are planned for the future. The game’s name comes from the term for a specific cut in fencing, slicing an opponent from their right hip to their left shoulder.
- Acrofatic: Gideon is very portly and the character select screen shows him knocking back a pint. However, he is still a capable swordsman.
- Action Girl: Three of the current selectable fighters are Marie, who wields a rapier, Isabella, who uses a two-handed long sword, and Marta, a smallsword fencer.
- Anachronism Stew: In the 17th century, Isabella's longsword is on the tail end of becoming obsolete compared to the sabres and rapiers most other fighters are using. However, Italians did continue practicing the longsword longer than other nations did, and you can't have a swordfighting game without someone wielding the classic cruciform sword. The history buff mode calls the longsword a flashy weapon primarily relegated to tournaments and other entertainment venues at this point in history.
- An Arm and a Leg: A strong slash to the hand may result in amputating it. You can even chop off both hands if the attack is lined up just right.
- Armor Is Useless: Pointedly Averted. The Final Boss of the Arcade Mode is Samuel, wearing a breastplate, helmet and arm braces. He can take multiple scoring hits and he taunts you for being unable to hurt him, until a burning wooden awning falls on top of him and he has to strip the armour off (as it is scalding him). After this, he will die in one good hit like everyone else, but you only get one shot at it.
- Artistic License – Martial Arts: The game attempts as much as possible to avert this, as a small but well-placed hit can instantly incapacitate or even kill an opponent. As such, successful gameplay is less about stringing flashy combos, and more about positioning.
- The Atoner: Samuel is traveling the land seeking revenge on a fellow cut-throat who betrayed him and left him a slave. Over time, he comes to reflect on his past life and the kind of man he was, and he has a bit of a change of heart...
- Badass Fingersnap: Inverted with Marta, who does the snap after winning.
- Barbarian Longhair: Samuel is a savage brigand with piercing eyes, long locks of black hair in a mess, and a ragged beard. It makes him look like Rasputin.
- Battle Amongst the Flames: The final fight of the Arcade mode against Samuel.
- Black Vikings: Defied. Alexander looks quite out of place and an example of Politically Correct History, but he is in fact based on Alexander Dynis, a real historical figure who lived in 17th Century Poland as a starostanote appointed by the Bishop of Krakow.note
- Boom, Headshot!: With the head having a very low amount of health, most hits to it will tend to instantly win the round.
- Brave Scot: One planned character is a Scottish highlander who wields a basket-hilted broadsword, complete with tartan. The History Buff mode makes a point to note that Scottish mercenaries were a very common sight in continental Europe in the 17th Century.
- Choke Holds: Yendrek's grab involves him hooking the head of his axe around the opponent's neck until they fall unconscious.
- Combat Pragmatist: In the intro, Barabasz holds Jacek at pistol-point during their arrest when Marie quickly tosses her mug of ale over the pistol, dousing it. This gives Jacek a chance to draw his sword and fight for his life. The fighters are not above shoving and punching their opponent to force an opening.
- Confusion Fu: Setting the ragdoll strength to a lower setting has the characters flailing their arms and weapons wildly, making any attacks difficult to predict. Also, Father Zera specializes in this.
- Critical Existence Failure: Averted, as suffering injuries will reduce the character's maximum stamina. A hit to the legs may also result in the duelist being slowed down to a crawl.
- Dance Battler: Alexander's standard stance has him constantly stepping and moving forwards, backwards, and side-to-side in a manner reminiscent of Capoeira signature ginga - which makes sense given that Capoeira's movement partially came from actual African martial arts. The motion capture was assisted by Historical African Martial Arts expert Damon Stith.
- Drunken Master: Father Zera is a monk trying to escape from his past as a crusader by drowning himself in booze. While he is obviously incredibly drunk, he still retains a lot of his skills, and his erratic movements might make him an even more dangerous combatant.
- Edutainment Game: The "History Buff" mode, where you fight random battles with random characters and get a little history lesson each time you win.
- Fragile Speedster: Laszlo, the Hungarian Hajdú, is light on his feet and has deadly lunge and sidestep attacks. But he can be quite vulnerable to attacks down the middle since he attacks from a high stance.
- Glass Cannon: Marie's rapier makes her a nightmare to deal with, as any lapse in defense can lead to getting skewered. However, in close range her long blade and low guard become defensive liabilities and her head is especially vulnerable to strikes.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: According to
Word of God, the planned story elements will depict the characters as fighting for various personal reasons, and not always the right ones. - Historical Domain Character: Some fighters, like Jacek Dydyński, Alexander Dynis and Ivan Barabasz were either a real life people or are heavily inspired by ones.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: If Marie or Marta get a successful grab attack, they skewer their opponent through the chest and back with their rapiers, killing them.
- Instant Death Stab: Frequently averted, as weak attacks will simply slow down the opponent, and the loser of the round will often remain alive, though too injured to keep fighting. Some strikes to the chest or head seem to kill the enemy, however, and so do grabs (often due to decapitating the opponent).
- Jack of All Stats: Isabella is a longsword user from the Iberian peninsula with somewhat moderate speed, range, defensive and offensive potential.
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Yendrek uniquely uses a Shepherd's axe rather than a sword, the trade-off being while he is unable to do any damage outside of the head, he generally has longer reach and is able to manipulate the opponent's weapon in unique ways via hooking the head of the axe around it.
- Mighty Glacier: Kalkstein is a Swedish gentleman who uses the Schiavona, a heavy dueling broadsword with a basket hilt commonly used in Austria and northern Italy. He can knock aside the enemy blade in most sword clashes and make deadly lateral cuts and thrusts, but he is quite a bit slower than the sabre users, both in attack and moving. Kalkstein also has elements of the Stance Character, as his moveset and attacks vary depending on which foot is facing forward.
- Mutual Kill: Happens surprisingly often (needless to say, Truth in Television), and results in neither fighter being scored. In "Right of Way" mode, the more aggressive fighter is scored the point in the event of a mutual kill.
- Off with His Head!: The end result of a successful grab for most opponents.
- Oh, Crap!: Sometimes, the unfortunate target of a successful grab will have just enough time to gasp in horror as their opponent pins their sword-arm before the killing blow comes.
- One-Hit Kill: Since the game emulates realistic sword combat, many, if not most matches are settled with a single well-placed strike. Sometimes Subverted because the character isn't actually killed immediately, they just sustain an injury of sufficient severity that they simply cannot or will not fight anymore (hack a character's arm and they will step away waving, as if saying "I give up, stop"; if the attack severed the opponent's hand then they are obviously in no position to keep the fight going).
- Post-Victory Collapse: Downplayed. Some of the fighters — particularly Isabella, Kalkstein, and Father Zera — double over in pain and exhaustion if they win a round after having suffered any damage. It doesn't mean anything gameplay-wise, but it helps to sell how painful even the "small" cuts and punctures must be.
- Religious Bruiser: Father Zera, the drunken fighting monk.
- Shown Their Work: All the fighters use real-world techniques and tactics, including grabs and pushes.
- Silent Snarker: Marie's win animations seem to suggest she is this.
- Single-Stroke Battle: Quite often, a fight is over in mere moments, and only a single successful attack is made.
- SNK Boss: The Final Boss for Arcade is an evil (and very stylish-looking) version of Samuel who on top of fighting like a demon, is wearing a hussar armour and helmet. Unfortunately, this puts the player at a massive disadvantage in the fight.
- Sociopathic Soldier: Samuel is a vicious hussar and murderer. His Arcade story however paints him quite differently.
- Stone Wall: La Verdadera Destreza fencer Marta. Her high side-to-side mobility and quick, low-commitment stabs that punish wide swings make her very difficult to attack aggressively. On offense however, her stabs are short range and her slashes are both slow and fairly ineffective with the smallsword she uses.
- Sword and Fist: In very close quarters, all fighters will punch or kick when attacks are used instead of swinging their weapon to knock their opponent off balance and open them up for follow-up blade attacks.
- Stance System:
- All characters have access to a “long guard” pointing their weapon straight out and attempting to push their opponent’s blade off line. It’s fairly limited in offensive capabilities but can be used to knock the opponent’s blade downward, creating an opening.
- Kalkstein, Isabella, and Father Zera all have more stance variety than the other characters. Kalkstein is the most obvious as he changes the front foot of his stance naturally just by moving diagonally left or right, which slightly changes all of his swings and stabs. Isabella is similar but changes her forward foot only through strikes. Finally Zera’s front foot doesn’t affect his basic moveset, but both he and Isabella have access to alternate “long guard” sword positions such as “iron gate” and “roof guard” for their longswords.
- Subsystem Damage: Health is tracked per body part and running out of health will result in instant defeat, making it possible to win by scoring a strong hit, rather than via overwhelming the enemy with lots of small hits. Notably, the weapon-wielding arm and hand of the fighter doesn't have as much health as their off-hand.
- Unstable Equilibrium:
- This is what happens if one character takes non-fatal damage and their opponent stays healthy. The wounded loses some maximum stamina, which makes it's easier for them to become exhausted (that slows them and weapons attack power too) and take more hits. Of course, it is more likely to just receive an One-Hit Kill instead.
- Overexhausting also reduces maximum stamina. If your opponent have forced you overexhaust to survive, you are likely to soon be in the position where you also must overexhaust to survive, except you no longer can overexhaust as much...
- Weapons of Their Trade: Yendrek is a Carpathian Highlander, and as such wields a shepherd's axe rather than a sword.
